SS - 001 - Opening letter

Oh hey,

I twirled the numbers, spun them like silk... guess what? All those Amex and Chase points I found collecting like digital dust-mites. So many points.

A could have bought something big that goes vroooooom. One of those Atlanta or Houston luxury behemoths that fellas with plated teeth and sawed-offs proudly drive. They lay farrrrrrr back in their seat. One hand barely touching the wheel. I tried it once myself. Couldn't see over the wheel and almost hit something with fur.

So many points sitting lonely in two accounts. Enough to buy a Cadillac. Candy red... big and gas guzzling. Crocodile leather seats that hiss when you sit, and a shag carpet headliner tickling the roof. Chrome rims that spin like dizzy drunkenness.

But noooo, I traded the coolest Atl-Htown ride for two wings. Twenty-three flights. All of them like little portals into foreign cultures. Boarded every one, you'd be proud of me. Didn’t miss a single doorway to the sky.

Once, I zipped from Miami to Buenos Aires, chasing a Pisco Sour that kissed me silly in Peru—Peru! Of all places I found myself batty in love with an amazing cocktail during the briefest of layovers... and, with egg white foam still clinging to my teeth like much-welcomed vise-grips. 

See... told ya 👇🏿

Or maybe it's plaque? 

Who knows?  Selfie anyway, heaps of foam and foolishness and a rip roaring great drink.

Medellín

... My brain is like this. Random, scattered and bouncy.

In Medellín, oh my! I nearly lost my shiny Omega watch, and maybe a kidney, whoops! to a pint-sized, gnome-man with a rusty blade. He looked like a khaki colored Kevin Hart with alopecia.

He had a knife!
I had a laugh.
He snarled.
I cackled.
No one blinked. No blood, no fuss, just a silly dance of strong will in Parque Lleras. I had shoes older than him, and tougher too... That was a John Malkovich line... Appropriate for this tale of quasi-woe

Anyway.

Like all traveling brand strategist with fashionably comfortable shoes and too many notebooks, I wandered with three trusty artifacts:

• A Sony camera (I call it Mini-Goliath; it sulks when I lose its lens cap)
• A Montblanc pen (run over once, still writes like a champ)
• A notebook (stained, bent, beaten, battered and broken, doubles as a coaster)

Led by a catchy little tune beating away between both lobes, I wandered South America this go around. Snapping photos, scribbling ideas about unknown smells and sounds for clients who give two cents. No itinerary... ever, no guidebooks, just caffeine and a personal vendetta against whoever made this tune. Now you suffa

And the people! Oh, the people i've meet, they’re like old drinking buddies I'll never see again. Ever. Candies in a jar, all different flavors. People from all sorts...

... Cab drivers

... Restaurant workers and fellow patrons.

... Bartenders

... Fellow travelers

Good folks, curious like me. Awesome humans wrapped in unfamiliar languages with kin-like laughter. They looked at this skinny-fat Black American who crash-landed in their world like Kal-el. He looked nothing like familiar rappers or ball jockeys they've watched a bazillion times. But we clink glasses anyway, because curiosity and a willingness to participate in foreign lives is a language we all speak natively.

Culture, you know... (pause)

...it’s... it's not for observing. It’s for jumping in feet first without spotting the landing.

living...

amongst people who are different. Dancing tango with people who don’t sound like you. Breaking bread with people who don't look like you, argue like you, or even like you. And still, you laugh, you share, you clink again and again. 

When you do that, when you let go and participate, something wiggles into your soul, all muse-like and fizzy. Rememberable experiences worth deep belly laughs spills into your work, wakes up the sleepy, groggy creative juices, turns average work into meaningful work. Work that encourages scroll-happy consumers to stop, engage, participate than buy. Work that fosters community while adhering to purpose.

That’s where my ideas come from, by the way. Writers hate that question. “Where do you get your ideas?” Gaiman grumbles every time. King dodges.
Le Guin sighs. Ellison combusts.

But me? I grin. "Alex... Where do you get your ideas?" They come from living. Wandering. Participating. It’s not a recipe, no-no, it’s a way of seeing the world. I truly believe a multifaceted modern man. A man of many sorts is a man of many cultures... ergo the nickname. Manyface

What's Shapeshyfter?

It’s the home for the tiny, chattery minions in my head, the ones who whisper, “Go sit over there with those people." It’s a journal, a work-in-public adventure, all about the human experience. Marketers and fellow brand builders love their direct response chatter, tactics and charts, but who reps people? Who understands how to win them, surprise them, what pulls them close, what pushes them away?

I’m obsessed with culture. I gobble it up, study it, swim in it. I don't swim... First black stereotype in this newsletter but painfully true. I’m always scrambling for new ways to jump into lives that aren’t mine. Shapeshyfter exists to show this work.

Like Virgil said, “Show your work.”
This is mine. 

We don’t need more newsletters or brands or stuff. What we need is work that’d leave a hole if it vanished. Work that matters. Work that nods hey to people who care.

Alexander Manyface

Here’s my stick up-proof travel hack… I wrap Mini-Goliath in local grocery bags for camouflage. You gotta throw off tech-thirsty pickpockets who, presumably, overlook anything encased in flimsy Supermercado plastic. Never been robbed. Not once…