Ok let me paint the picture.  Right now, I am sitting in a coffee shop just opposite my house.

Everyone knows me here. “Hey Tailor, the usual?” so I sit down, coffee arrives and so I start.

Sunday. It is the start of a beautiful winter morning.

It was around 2009 when Sue and I met. Dave, a good friend of mine had informed me of everything that Sue had achieved, career wise.

Sue used to head up one of the biggest record labels a few years back, in my favourite city, New York.

Now this grabbed my attention straight away. New York has always been a symbolism of how I have been chasing my dreams. If I could measure my dreams it would be with the same passion and buzz that New York runs on.

Prior to meeting Sue, Dave was explaining, that Sue had left the music industry and how she had become involved in counselling and she also invested in one of my favourite restaurants in Cape Town.

All I knew is that her resume was insane and I was really excited to meet this woman. With a story like Sue’s I could only benefit from meeting with her.

So, I met Sue at a coffee shop in Cape Town. There is really great franchise here in South Africa called Seattle Coffee, just the best. Being a coffee snob I think I would know.

I still remember being really nervous during our meeting and I could barely ask the right questions. Sipping slowly on my coffee trying not to spill or act stupid I proceeded to ask Sue about her career and how it was working with bands like REM and musicians like Madonna?

Sue was a woman of wise words.  Starring into my then 23 year old eyes and obviously recognising my insecurities of not knowing who I was as a musician at the time, she answered my questions politely.

An hour into the conversation I was still hanging on her lips.

You have to remember, I was 23 years old and I was basically meeting a celeb. (As I am typing this I am smirking at my young naive self)

I “just” started Tailor and didn’t have a clue on how to run a business or that Tailor would even end up being a business.

All I wanted to do was play shows and Sue was one of the first “industry people” I met who knew what the fuck she was talking about.

I remember leaving the meeting not knowing what to do with myself. I was filled with information that I didn’t know existed, or did I?

Do I write first, do I write for radio, do I book more shows, do I leave the country, and do I have kids and settle down?

Looking back on it now, Sue was one of the dots that connected me to so many others, she was conversing with my young self, but at the same time my older and much wiser self, soaked up all the knowledge knowing that Sue’s conversation was an investment.

The concept of dots have always fascinated me. I have absorbed the explanation that Steve Jobs had given it, that only after you’re there, can you then connect the dots. “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking back. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.

Currently I am reading a book by Malcolm Gladwell called Blink. It’s a must read or as The New York Times would say “Trust my snap judgment, buy this book: you’ll be delighted”. Summed up, right? Well that’s what I thought and now I am an addict for it.

I got recommend this book by a friend of mine and I wasn’t too sure what to expect.

When I turned the book over to read the summary I knew I was in for a treat, it read, “This book is all about those moments when we know something “without” knowing”.

How many times have we felt that “very” moment but could not place it, explain it, feel it and process it to its full extent.

The moment was just too big to capture. Like not being able to dream your dead but being able to dream the moment just before crossing over. Is the concept of death too big for brains to handle?

The adaptive unconscious, first coined by Daniel Wagner in 2002, is described as a series of mental processes that is able to affect judgement and decision making, but is out of reach of the conscious mind.

I tapped into it. That moment. I think the more we tap into the adaptive unconscious mind the more we manifest the power to do so in our everyday lives. I felt it when I met “you” and I felt it when I met Sue. There are people you will meet in your life that will teach you things:

Teach you to let go,

Teach you to be bold,

Teach you to maybe, just maybe love again.

She met me and I was invested and that’s why we “have” to take the time to embrace the various dots that brought us here.

Trust your gut. Know when to leave or stay and invest.

Oh and the lyrics Sue reminded me of; Alaska by Maggie Rogers, she sings “walking off the old me”

Love Tailor

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