Editorial

On titans, global brains and driving an open road

(6 min read)

What does it really look like to be singing and saying things few others are singing and saying?

And what is the song anyway?

Showrunner extraordinaire Shonda Rhimes knows a little bit about this. And she tells us all about what it is to be a showrunner, in her 18 minute 44 second TED talk which has clocked over 3.7 million views to date. The TED talk description tells us:

The titan behind Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal and How to Get Away With Murder, is responsible for some 70 hours of television per season.

The resonance of a titan frequency

I’ve viewed Rhime’s TED talk, called “My year of saying yes to everything,” at least five times now, as well as pored over the TED talk transcript, and color-coded it.

This is the first time I’m sharing the end result, the data visualisation of something I’m calling “empathic colormapping.”

It looks like this.

Case study: Data viz of Shonda Rhimes’ 18 minute, 44 second TED talk.

This is Shonda Rhimes entire, 18 minute 44 second TED talk — color-coded and knocked onto its side (it runs from left to right).

You can of course listen to the TED talk for yourself, and read the transcript. Well worthwhile. And while it is a review of this work, in honor of the TED platform and her IP, I’m not replicating the full talk here.

However, there is one really notable thread in this talk that relates to our concept of frequency, and it’s something Shonda Rhimes calls the hum.

First of all, Shonda Rhimes explains why she’s in a class all her own — a titan — describing in detail the way she gathers her fans around the campfire to tell stories. And she disillusions us of thinking this is anything like a literal campfire, by clarifying that these campfires are burning all over the world.

These “campfires,” in fact, represent four television programs, 70 hours of TV per season, helping to create hundreds of jobs per program, and balancing a budget of 350 million dollars — all using her magnificent, global brain.

Humming a certain hum

But just when our mathematical-logical synapses are getting a little bit overwhelmed (and yep, pretty impressed) with all the numbers and data she’s throwing at us, she changes her tone to light up other parts of our brains.

“What makes it all so good,” she tells us — this remarkable level of activity and television show production — is “the hum.”

There is some kind of shift inside me when the work gets good. A hum begins in my brain, and it grows and it grows and that hum sounds like the open road, and I could drive it forever.

But more than telling you about what she said about the hum, I want to show you how she hummed it — in vibrant color — through just a few key pieces of her song.

First of all, she uses descriptives to explain this exhilarating abstraction she dubs the “hum”:

Shonda Rhimes: “the hum is music … light and air…”

And, because I’m still refining the exact colored highlighter to use, here are those color-coded words in readable black-on-white for those who might need more visual clarity:

The hum is more than writing. The hum is action and activity. The hum is a drug. The hum is music. The hum is light and air, the hum is God’s whisper right in my ear. And when you have a hum like that, you can’t help but strive for greatness. That feeling, you can’t help but strive for greatness at any cost. That’s called the hum.

And the only problem with exhilarating highs is that they can sometimes be followed by gut-wrenching lows. Shonda Rhimes shares one of her own a little later in her talk:

Shonda Rhimes: “I like that hum, I love that hum, I need that hum, I am that hum. Am I nothing but that hum?”

For this showrunner-extraordinaire, this global-brained titan, everything is humming along…

The nation I’m building, the marathon I’m running, the troops, the canvas, the high note, the hum, the hum, the hum. I like that hum. I love that hum. I need that hum. I am that hum.

Am I nothing but that hum?

And then the hum stopped.

Overworked, overused, overdone, burned out.

The hum stopped.

While in what she calls “the homelessness of her humlessness,” Rhimes comes to a startling realization when her toddler asks her a simple question.

Shonda Rhimes: “…I realize two things…”

And then my Southern waitress toddler asks me a question. I’m on my way out the door, I’m late, and she says, “Momma, wanna play?” And I’m just about to say no, when I realize two things. One, I’m supposed to say yes to everything, and two, my Southern waitress didn’t call me “honey.” She’s not calling everyone “honey” anymore. When did that happen?

The hero’s journey seldom runs smooth and Rhimes’ journey has many more twists to it, but we’re tracking with her as she gets back in touch with the three daughters, the titans-in-training who call this titan “Momma.” It is through them that she comes to some illuminating “aha” moments about the hum.

Shonda Rhimes: The hum is joy-specific. The real hum is love-specific.”

She hums the crescendo of this symphonic piece:

The hum is not power and the hum is not work-specific. The hum is joy-specific. The real hum is love-specific. The hum is the electricity that comes from being excited by life. The real hum is confidence and peace. The real hum ignores the stare of history, and the balls in the air, and the expectation, and the pressure. The real hum is singular and original. The real hum is God’s whisper in my ear…

Then, beginning to wrap up her talk, she closes out with some final notes about this enhanced, expanded, expounded upon hum.

Shonda Rhimes: “My brain is still global. My campfires still burn.”

I said yes to less work and more play, and somehow I still run my world. My brain is still global. My campfires still burn. The more I play, the happier I am, and the happier my kids are. The more I play, the more I feel like a good mother. The more I play, the freer my mind becomes. The more I play, the better I work. The more I play, the more I feel the hum, the nation I’m building, the marathon I’m running, the troops, the canvas, the high note, the hum, the hum, the other hum, the real hum, life’s hum.

It doesn’t feel like we’ve been listening for more than 18 minutes when she closes out her talk with an invitation to play. And it’s a relief to discover she has much more to say for those of us who resonate— including another TED talk on the future of storytelling, a book-length meditation on her remarkable “Year of Yes,” and a Masterclass on the intricacies of writing for television (the link points to her 1:48 minute official trailer).

But right here, right now, Shonda Rhimes has shown us — on several nuanced levels throughout this TED talk and in resonant tones that will speak to different people differently — just a few ways to channel our song, to dance our dance, to play in a globe-sized sandbox.

And to find our hum while doing it.

There is of course more to say about the color-coding — this empathic colormapping concept. This is barely the beginning .

But we might bask a little longer in that hum and save the empathic-intuitive underpinnings for another day.

(This is part six in a twenty part introductory series exploring the intersection of frequency, resonance and nuance, first published on Medium.)