Ideas are vulnerable
There’s this scene in Halt and Catch Fire that I think about all the time. Lee Pace (played by me) walks into an empty office with his business pal and smiles at all the emptiness. “Look,” Lee says, pointing across the room towards a chalkboard that has nothing written on it.
“It’s perfect.”
It’s perfect because, for now, there’s no broken code, no investors, no pain or animosity or drama between cofounders. There’s no money and middle management or stock options and meetings to get in the way. Here, in this space, it’s pure and clean because their only job right now is to fill this room with ideas.
But Lee Pace (played by me) thinks everything is perfect because he’s found someone he’s trusted to bring in, to share in all this emptiness. He’s found someone he can be vulnerable with, to experiment and tinker alongside without worrying about fear of snark or judgement; Lee Pace has found a partner in crime.
The point the show is making (I, Lee Pace, think) is that all ideas, at the beginning, are fragile and vulnerable. Talk about something too early or too soon with someone and they might shoot it down, tear it up. Or they’ll respond with disinterest and boredom. You want to write an album? Meh. You want to write poetry? That’s been done before. You wanna learn how to design a game? You want to fix this problem? You want to make a font? Or film a movie? Or be governor? Or fix the climate crisis?
Yawn. Boring. Try again.
There’s this enormous and overwhelming cynicism that exists out there in the world! It is sometimes unsurmountable, unbearable even!
And so one of the great lessons of Halt and Catch Fire is that you have to be extremely careful with the people that you let into that big empty room. You have to be optimistic and hopeful, but careful because if some folks have proven that they can’t be trusted with early, fragile ideas and experiments then you need to stop bringing them to the whiteboard.
And you need to find new folks.
Because here’s the kicker: each one of us has a responsibility to push back against this tide of overwhelming cynicism in the world even though most of the time it wins, crushing everything in its path along the way.
But if you’re lucky enough to find that room, and find the right folks, then maybe you’ll be safe, and maybe it won’t crush you.