THE WORDS THAT FORMED ME

CHAPTER 23

Flowers Were Whatever Colour I Saw

I cannot remember the first time I heard Harry Chapin’s Flowers Are Red,¹ although I remember the recognition that came with it. The song did not feel as though it was introducing me to a new idea so much as placing a tune around something I had already lived. I had not been the little boy standing there with crayons in my hand, at least not in the literal sense, but I knew what it was to see more than the approved colours and discover that seeing them was considered the problem. The teacher in the song wanted an answer she could recognise, while the boy had made the administrative error of noticing what was actually in front of him.

That is the cruelty at the centre of the song, although cruelty may be too easy a word because it allows us to imagine the teacher as a monster and everyone else as innocent. She does not arrive carrying a whip, a government decree or a handbook entitled How to Remove Wonder from a Child in Ten Easy Lessons. She arrives with certainty, procedure and the comfortable belief that there is a proper time, a proper method and a proper answer. Those are respectable tools, which is why they can do so much damage before anybody thinks to question them.

The boy’s first offence is not that he is wrong. His offence is that he asks, in effect, why, and then makes matters worse by following it with why not. Those two questions have caused more discomfort in classrooms, offices, boardrooms, churches, governments and family homes than many openly rebellious speeches, because they expose the possibility that the accepted way may be no more than the repeated way. Authority can usually tolerate a request for information, but it becomes nervous when the question asks it to justify itself.

I have spent much of my life asking why and then, when the explanation failed to survive examination, asking why not. That habit has not always made me popular, and I cannot pretend it has always made me right. Sometimes a rule exists because somebody has already fallen into the hole I have just discovered, and sometimes the person insisting upon the procedure knows more than the clever bloke testing it from the doorway. The difficulty is that the same language is used for wisdom and inertia, so the person being told to conform must somehow decide whether the fence marks a cliff or merely the boundary of somebody else’s imagination.

School should have been the place where that distinction was explored, but too often it became the first place where the answer was valued more highly than the thought that produced it. There were subjects in which I could do what was expected and others in which the marks seemed to measure my willingness to reproduce the approved process rather than my ability to understand what sat beneath it. My eventual school result looked ordinary enough to anyone reading the number, yet the number never explained the mind that had produced it or the collisions occurring between that mind and the room. It simply became another red flower placed neatly beside a green leaf.

That is one of the reasons Flowers Are Red sits so naturally beside Dumbing It Down. The title of that much larger work was never intended as a declaration that I was surrounded by fools and had nobly lowered myself to their level, although there were moments when the temptation to write it that way was considerable. It was about learning to reduce the volume, shorten the explanation, hide the connections and make myself easier for the room to manage. Dumbing it down was not always an act of communication; sometimes it was the price of admission.

There is a difference between translating an idea and amputating it. Translation respects the other person enough to make complexity understandable, whereas amputation removes the inconvenient parts so nobody has to feel challenged by them. I built much of my professional life around translation because taxation, business structures and financial danger are uselessly impressive if the person sitting opposite leaves the room none the wiser. Yet I also learned that some rooms did not want translation at all; they wanted reassurance that the flowers would remain red and the leaves would remain green, preferably with the accountant’s signature underneath.

Not Your Ordinary Accountant grew from my refusal to accept that limitation. It was meant to say that an accountant could be more than a recorder of what had already happened, more than a compliance mechanic who arrived after the engine had seized and presented an accurate invoice for describing the damage. We wanted to advise before the disaster, speak in the client’s language and become part of the thinking rather than merely the filing. The difficulty was that “not ordinary” could be heard as a marketing flourish, a claim to cleverness or even a warning that the normal rules might not apply, when what I meant was that the ordinary definition of the role had become too small.

The confusion was revealing because people often say they want something different until difference enters the room and begins rearranging the furniture. They want an adviser who thinks beyond the obvious, provided the advice does not disturb the answer they had already chosen. They want courage, innovation and independent thought, but they would prefer all three to arrive wearing the same suit as everybody else. A multicoloured flower is attractive in a brochure; it becomes less welcome when it asks why the business has continued doing something that has not worked for ten years.

I recognise the anger in that observation, and there is no value pretending it is not there. Much of the anger in Dumbing It Down came from the repeated experience of seeing a problem, explaining it, being dismissed and then being invited back later to help clean up the consequences. The rage was not simply that people failed to take my advice, because nobody was obliged to treat me as an oracle and I was capable of being wrong with considerable confidence. It came from watching certainty receive greater respect than thought, particularly when the certainty was delivered by somebody whose main qualification was sounding comfortable while saying what the room already believed.

Harry Chapin’s teacher is frightening for the same reason. She does not defeat the child by proving that his colours are wrong; she defeats him by controlling the conditions under which he is allowed to speak. She has the timetable, the corner, the authority and the power to decide when his answer has become acceptable. By the time another teacher invites him to see widely, the first teacher no longer needs to be present because her work has been transferred into the child.

That final movement is what makes the song much darker than a pleasant warning about encouraging creativity. The child is not merely silenced for one lesson, nor does he wait patiently for a better teacher to set him free. He learns that safety lies in repeating the answer authority expects, and eventually the repeated answer becomes the only one he trusts himself to give. Conformity has achieved its finest result when the guard can leave because the prisoner now locks the door from the inside.

I know something about that internal guard. There were years when being seen as capable mattered so much that I adjusted myself to whatever version of capability the room recognised. I could be the accountant, adviser, mentor, performer, husband, father or volunteer required at the time, while the less manageable parts of me were told to keep quiet until there was a more suitable occasion. There is never a suitable occasion, of course, because the timetable is written by the same teacher who objected to the colours in the first place.

The result was not that I ceased thinking differently. It was that the difference increasingly travelled underground, where it gathered frustration, isolation and the kind of anger that does not always know which door it should use when it finally emerges. Outwardly, I could appear measured, practical and useful, which was largely true, but usefulness can become another approved colour if it is the only one a person is permitted to show. The room was happy with useful Jeff because useful Jeff solved problems and rarely required anyone to ask what the solving was costing him.

This is where the idea of helping up rather than merely helping out enters the chapter. I have used that distinction when writing about the plight of Indigenous Australians, not because I pretend to speak for people whose history and experience are not mine, but because I have watched systems confuse assistance with authority. Helping out can relieve an immediate need while leaving every important decision in the hands of the helper. Helping up must be prepared to transfer power, listen to the answer it did not design and accept that the person being helped may see colours the helper has never learned to name.

The distinction applies well beyond any one group or policy. A teacher helps out by correcting the picture so it meets the marking guide; a teacher helps up by giving the child the tools, confidence and room to discover what the picture might become. An accountant helps out by lodging the form and removing today’s problem; an adviser helps up by making sure the client understands enough to make tomorrow’s decision with greater control. The second approach is slower, less tidy and far more dangerous to anyone who has built authority upon being permanently needed.

There is discomfort in admitting that, because I have also built part of my identity around being the person who could help. The silent partner, the rescuer, the bloke with the answer and the person willing to carry what others had put down can all look generous from the outside. They may be generous, but generosity does not make them innocent of ego. Sometimes helping up requires me to step back from the picture and allow another person to choose a colour I would not have used.

That is where my own challenge to conformity can become another form of conformity if I am not careful. I can become so certain that the conventional answer is wrong that disagreement itself begins to feel like proof of intelligence. “Why not?” is a powerful question, but it is not a complete philosophy, and rebellion performed automatically is merely obedience facing in the opposite direction. The child with every colour in the box still has to look at the flower rather than assuming the most unusual crayon must be the most truthful.

Near the end of The Hunt for Red October,² Marko Ramius and Jack Ryan share a quiet exchange after the noise, danger and manoeuvring have largely passed. Ramius observes that a little revolution now and then can be healthy, but the part that stays with me is the small question he adds at the end: “Don’t you think?” The words could have been delivered as a pronouncement by a man who had just placed his life, his crew and a nuclear submarine inside one enormous act of defiance. Instead, the question leaves a space for Ryan to enter the thought.

That small addition changes the whole character of the sentence for me. Revolution without the question can become another teacher at the front of the room announcing the new official colour of flowers. Revolution followed by “don’t you think?” is still capable of arrogance, manipulation and theatre, but at least it acknowledges that another mind is present. It does not merely demand that the old answer be replaced; it invites the possibility that the replacement should also be examined.

Society says it values independent thought, although it usually adds conditions in print too small to read without professional assistance. Independent thought is admired once it succeeds, preferably at a safe historical distance and with the awkward edges removed for the anniversary speech. While it is occurring, it is more likely to be called difficult, disrespectful, unrealistic, disruptive or not a team player. Sheep are rewarded not because sheep are stupid, but because the movement of the flock is easier to administer than the decisions of individuals.

I have used the image of sheep before because it remains uncomfortably useful. The animal that stays with the flock is less likely to become lost, eaten or stranded, so conformity is not always cowardice and independence is not always courage. Human beings also need shared rules, common language and enough predictable behaviour to prevent every trip to the shops becoming a constitutional crisis. The danger begins when the protection of the flock becomes the purpose of existence and anyone noticing another path is treated as a threat to the pasture.

The line used by authority is often that conformity shows concern for everyone else. There is some truth in that, because every personal preference cannot be allowed to overturn the needs of a community. Yet the phrase can also be used to shame the questioner into silence, as though difference were automatically selfish and obedience automatically kind. The boy’s colours do not harm the other children, but his refusal to accept the teacher’s certainty exposes how little of her authority rests upon explanation.

Perhaps that is the part of the song that reaches furthest into me. I have often been less troubled by a decision than by the refusal to explain the reasoning behind it, and less offended by being told no than by discovering that nobody had seriously considered why not. The analytical part of me wants evidence, consequences and a chain of thought that can be tested. The human part wants the person asking the question to be treated as someone worthy of an answer rather than a disruption requiring management.

Those two parts did not always work together gracefully. The analytical Jeff could turn explanation into a cross-examination and then wonder why the witness had become defensive. The human Jeff could feel the old dismissal so quickly that the present conversation was forced to carry the accumulated weight of many earlier rooms. I may have been asking about one flower, while responding as though every teacher, manager, client and authority figure who had ever preferred red was seated behind the same desk.

That does not make the anger false, but it does make it mine to examine. There were times when I reduced myself to fit the room and then blamed the room for accepting the smaller version I had offered. There were also times when I delivered the full-colour explanation with such force that the people listening may have heard only the force. Being right about the existence of more colours does not guarantee that I have made anybody want to look at them.

Writing has become the place where I can make the attempt again without pretending the difficulty has vanished. On the page, the thought can wander far enough to show its connections, double back when it has been unfair and admit that the obvious villain may have believed she was maintaining order. I do not have to shorten every idea to the length of a meeting agenda or turn every emotional complication into an action item. The flowers can remain whatever colour I saw, but I must still describe them clearly enough for another person to decide whether they see them too.

That is why this chapter belongs among the words that formed me rather than merely among the songs with which I agree. Flowers Are Red did not teach me to resist conformity; that resistance was already present, sometimes as intelligence, sometimes as instinct and sometimes as sheer bloody-mindedness. The song showed me what can happen after resistance is punished often enough, and why a later invitation to be imaginative may arrive after the imagination has learned not to trust itself. It also asks whether I have occasionally become the teacher, confident that my broader palette entitled me to decide which colours everybody else should use.

I am older now, and the pressure to return to the approved colours has not disappeared merely because paid work is loosening its hold. Retirement has its own tidy picture of what a man should become, how quietly he should step aside and how grateful he should be that nobody requires his more difficult questions anymore. I do not accept that picture, although I am trying not to replace it with another compulsory design of my own. A little revolution may indeed be healthy, but the question at the end matters because it keeps the revolution from becoming a new classroom rule.

The crayons are still on the table, even if some have been worn down and a few of the paper wrappers are missing. I can see the appeal of red flowers and green leaves, and there will be days when those are exactly the colours I choose. What I can no longer accept is the insistence that they are the only colours available, or that seeing anything else is a defect to be corrected for my own good. The child’s question remains alive in the older man: why must it be that way, why can it not be otherwise, and what might become possible if the answer were allowed to begin with “I don’t know”?

Notes

1. Flowers Are Red was written and recorded by Harry Chapin and released in 1978 on the album Living Room Suite.
2. The Hunt for Red October is a 1990 film directed by John McTiernan, with a screenplay by Larry Ferguson and Donald E. Stewart, based on Tom Clancy’s 1984 novel. Sean Connery played Captain Marko Ramius and Alec Baldwin played Jack Ryan; the exchange remembered here occurs near the film’s conclusion.