What's YOUR Line?

For those who remember their dreams, do you ever get reruns? Mine are terrifying, like driving a car straight up a mountain so steep the wheels disengage from the sheer rock and I begin to drift back into space. Even scarier is frantically rummaging backstage for a script just minutes before I make my big entrance after not having bothered to learn my lines.?

Some dreams imitate life. I learned to drive in the Rocky Mountains. But in my experience, life can also imitate dreams though usually with a twist. On a real stage, if an actress forgets her lines, a script assistant scrupulously following every word will immediately come to her rescue.?

Marian: You’ll find it in Balzac.

Mrs. Paroo: {Line?}

{Script Assistant: “Excuse me—”}

Mrs. Paroo: Excuse me for living but I never read it.?

—Meredith Wilson, The Music Man

A few Broadway seasons ago, I enjoyed watching Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster review the roles of Harold Hill and Marion Paroo in Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man. In its iconic opening sequence, a train car of traveling salesmen back-and-forths a collective sermon on the state of their profession to the pre-rap rhythm of a locomotive chugging across the American Midwest.

Ya can talk, ya can talk, ya can bicker, ya can talk, ya can bicker, bicker, bicker, ya can talk, ya can talk, ya can talk, talk, talk, talk, bicker, bicker, bicker, ya can talk all ya wanna, but it's different then it was. No it ain't, no it ain't, but ya gotta know the territory.

When their syncopated banter turns to the prospect of a newcomer to their territory, speculation rhythmically turns to gossip.?

What’s the fellow’s line?

Never worries ‘bout his line.

Never worries ‘bout his line.

Or a doggone thing. He's just a bang beat, bell ringing, Big haul, great go, neck or nothin', rip roarin', every time a bull's eye salesman.?

Turns out the fellow, one Professor Harold Hill, does have a line, and these days it’s selling musical instruments and band uniforms to gullible children and their parents.

He's a music man

He's a what?

He's a what?

He's a music man and he sells clarinets to the kids in the town

In those days, if a person was asked her line’, it might mean one of three things.?

• “What’s your line of work?”
• “What’s your product line?”
• “What’s your pitch, your opening line?”

There are times, of course when a person’s line can mean much more. For Harold Hill, his entire life boils down to a single hopeful, heart-breaking line in the play's deciding moment. The mayor has seen through his con; an angry anvil salesman is hot on his heels; and a crest-fallen boy who worships the ground Hill walks on now believes him to be a total liar.

Hill: I always think there’s a band, kid.

In a life filled with hundreds of them, It’s Hill’s first truly genuine line.

My love for the theatre can spill over into my change work. With some clients, and not just those in Hollywood, I use scripts to steer an organization towards a common job ‘performance’. Instead of functional roles being defined in silos, it's critical that every member of the organization understand how their role ties to the vision and outcomes of the organization. To drive home this point, I encourage staff to write their own ‘lines,’ so to speak. They do this in the first person, as if on stage before the entire organization and its customers.

Hotel Software Engineer: I write the code that optimizes our yield when setting room rates 90 days out so that the customer gets their best value and we our best price for their stay.

Do I have a line? I do. Several in fact.?

Here’s my line when I’m at home:?

Scott: I am a happy husband, father, and grandfather in a kingdom of souls in number as the hours in a day, during which I love, worry, and rejoice over each of them.

And when I’m at work.

Scott: I am an American innovator, changesayer, and community developer hovering the middle distance between being and becoming.?

Just as we wear several hats in life, we learn and say many lines along the way: lines to get us up in the morning; lines that move us to write that best-seller: lines that drive us to the treadmill, finish that report, design that product—um—line. ?

What are some of your lines?

Are they written down? Have you memorized them by heart? Do you ever find yourself on your stage without them? Is there someone close you could whisper an aside for help who wouldn’t miss a beat?

You: Line?

Safely prompted, pure panic subsides into absolute confidence. You know once more who you truly are.

Scott Knell is an American innovator, indirectionist, and author of the weekly LinkedIn column Say the Change. To read his personal and professional retrospective on Being and Becoming, visit his blog at?Indirections I Have Lived By.

? 2023 Scott Knell, all rights reserved.