By Have you seen the Netflix series 1899? Feel safe reading on, as I won’t give away any secrets, I promise. That series is the inspiration for today’s blog. The show follows international travelers on a steamship from London to New York in 1899. The passengers (who have secrets they’re trying to hide) don’t all speak English but figure out how to communicate. I semi-binge watched it, meaning I watched 2-3 episodes a night. At the end of the last show I thought my head was going to explode. There were several WTH moments. I am seriously thinking of re-watching to look for clues. I highly recommend you put the show in your play list and dive in. It was supposed to have 2 more seasons, but I read that Netflix isn’t continuing with the series. My hope is that the fans will rally, inspiring Netflix or another company to produce more seasons. But I digress.
At the end of the credits, Netflix suggested I watch the documentary ‘the making of 1899’. I am so glad I did! It was fascinating to see ALL the crew and their work and efforts that goes into a production.
I am familiar with similar levels of effort from my community theatre work. There are weeks of rehearsals, costume design, set building and painting, and line memorization that takes for a very short 3-4 day theatre production. The audience isn’t aware of the blood, sweat and tears. They only see the lovely end product. Likewise there are rehearsals (as a group and practicing at home on your own) leading up to a single choral performance. Quite similar to a RMIS implementation – there are weeks/months of screen design, data massaging, training, meetings that occur leading up to a go live….And if I can continue with yet another analogy, isn’t this what life is? Years of learning, loving, making mistakes, learning from mistakes, laughing, crying, hugging, fighting…all leading up to what? It is rare that you get ‘it’ perfect (insert RMIS, show, performance, life for ‘it’). And somewhere along the way you grasp the phrase ‘It’s about the journey not the destination’. Life is about the journey. It is about the growing and learning and the connections you make and the mistakes you make. Every physical or emotional scar means that you risked making yourself vulnerable. Your focus should be on your journey, the work you do to improve yourself, your world. Perfection should never be the aim (unless you are a Russian gymnast).
Anyway, the documentary introduced this thing called The Volume that is this technological wall that is just amazing…but while impressive, what got me was a quote from one of the actors about the show and the cast. She said ‘We are all on the same boat.’ The gist of that is we’re all in this together and we need to get along. As we gear up for what I suspect will be a dreadful presidential election year and as Russia continues its war on Ukraine and…and…and. Let’s remember we are all in the same boat.
Here’s the Zac Brown Band singing about it (I’m 90% sure the actress wasn’t referencing this song- but isn’t it a wonderful world that we can have this similar thoughts?)