Crise, mas que crise?

One of the most interesting or fun things, from my point of view, is to see bands’ album covers on display in a record shop. Besides seeing the musical trends of the bands themselves and an approach, or rather a daydream, of what we will be able to hear after we buy the album or the cd, when we see the album cover we may even be a bit co-participants in the philosophy or spirit of the group. Who has never stopped at any record line, has quickly gone through hundreds of options until often reaching one that, although unknown, calls our attention? Perhaps their colors, photography, graphic design and even the typography itself make us, almost from the beginning, get a little closer to the group in question.

It’s quite a story with the 1975 Supertramp album “Crisis, What Crisis”. Against an industrial, gray, dirty, and clearly provocative background, there’s a person in front who, within all that environment, allows himself the luxury of sunbathing. With his sunshade, his bathing suit, and a table with a soft drink, he is still impassive and happy not to see reality, which is happening right behind him.

Supertramp – “Crisis? What crisis?” album cover, 1975

The truth is that each one of us interprets music and culture, in general, the way we want. The illustration on this album suggests these ideas to me, perhaps as a metaphor for today:

1. We must learn to live with the crisis. It’s not something that will go away, it’s a phenomenon that will live with us forever. The way we develop not against it, but with it, will allow us to succeed in our professional and even personal reality.
2. The crisis is no longer only about the economic state, it is also a global phenomenon that affects all spheres of human beings, whether social, economic, cultural, or emotional. In other words, we have to get used to the fact that, just because we live more comfortably, this does not mean that tomorrow the situation will remain the same. This is because what happens thousands of kilometers away from our remote control is likely to happen tomorrow, in our own home. Therefore, the sooner we adapt to this coexistence, to this understanding of the globality, the sooner we will start to use tools that will allow us to achieve the success of coexistence and from there achieve our goals, both personal and professional.
3. The work system has changed and will not return to the old methods. Agreements and contractual relations, labor, and interpersonal relations have evolved from the moment we determine that we are a particular project, different and successful, that is sold and bought, within a general context, that is, nothing is undefined anymore.
4. New formulas for professional development have appeared. Working from home, sending a CV to Mexico, and being accepted, relocating so that we can never be found, developing in multiculturalism, multifunctionality, or simply knowing how to make five-minute conversations to any kind of audience is something that is already assumed in our genetics.

It’s a pity that vinyl is something residual, just as the days of the CD are practically numbered in face of the new music download media, but it’s obvious that within the current vertiginous rhythm, within the chaos of the global phenomenon, within the new forms of social relations and within the day-to-day stagnation to which it leads us, I’m sure that currently, the main key is to know how to live with the crisis and to see, if there is one, the positive side of all this.

The man sitting in the sun, the man who simply smiles and is happy in front of everything that is going on behind him, suggests to me the new modern social being, readapted and socialized to the new environments, imitating the new forms of leadership, decision making, and global thinking. It is likely that this is all nonsense because the cover seems to be a parody, but it is no less true that we must coexist with new forms of development, new forms of work, and new social behaviors caused by a new form of global interrelationship.

In short,

Crisis, but what crisis?