Fender(“player” is for the Jay-Z trainspotters, you know who you are…)

I was thinking this morning about the things that are intrinsically us. Not you and I, us as in you. The things that, try as we might, we cannot escape.

I say this because I wanted a new suit. I saw a great one, tried it on, fit like a glove, I looked (and felt!) great. The problem is I don’t want a new suit, or at least don’t have enough call for it in my day to day to warrant it, so there was a quandry.

I was wandering around thinking about this a couple weeks back when I stumbled into a second hand music store and suddenly lost an hour to a beautiful near-mint left-handed Stratocaster. I saw in the back room of this music store playing away, lost to the world. I was even joined at one point by a guy on bass, who just wandered through and thought this looks like an ideal spot for an impromptu jam; it was great.

Reconciling wants and needs is, most of the time, like dragging together magnets with the same charge; you can hold them in place for a bit but they don’t naturally fall that way. Our businesses and brands are like that too, wants and needs can be so distant at times. The brand wants to be Coke, but it needs to be springwater. It wants to be Nike, but it needs to be a solidly-made shoe your podiatrist can recommend.

That of course is fine, if it is true. Nailing down the things that are fundamentally true is what is important, finding the things that cannot be easily ignored or argued with gives you a platform you can build on. Me in a suit is a pretty good imitation of a guy in a suit.

Me with a guitar in my hands I don’t have to fake for a second.