Seek to Misconstrue + a
Failure: The Blog 
August 2018
- When This Executive Was Fired, He Took Charge
- Obeying The Speed Limit Has Never Been More Fun
- London Black Cabs Helped Uber Grow
- Bette Graham Created A Product To Fix Her Mistakes
- Flamin' Hot Cheetos Had An Interesting Start
July 2018
- Fear This Instead Of Failure
- Re-Releasing Songs Created Success
- A CEO's Purposeful Mistake
- The Tardy Student And The Unsolvable Problem
- Fixing Potholes Through Graffiti
June 2018
- A Surprising Mistake In The Oxford English Dictionary
- US Army Embraces Mistakes
- Blocking A Hymn
- Eddie Shore Was Truly A Tough Guy
- [Video] Elon Musk Didn't "Pivot" He Failed
May 2018
- 8 Examples of Mental Toughness Part 2
- Necessity Turned Accessory: Allen Iverson's Sleeve
- This Doctor Has Continued To Fail
- 8 Examples of Mental Toughness
- MIT Accidentally Creates New Smelting Process
April 2018
- Johnny Cash Quit Singing Lessons
- Cruise Control Came Out of Frustration
- Time Spent Gaming Pays Off In The Navy
- Rock Around The Clock Was a Commercial Failure
- Sigmund Freud Should Have Been Discouraged
March 2018
Inventor of Most Popular Guitar Could Not Play Guitar
You may not have heard the name Leo Fender before, until you associate it with the Fender Stratocaster electric guitar. Most sources agree, however, that Leo couldn’t actually play.
There are tons of articles that reference this claim all over the web, but perhaps the most profound is the final paragraph in an obituary from Guitar Player magazine:
Leo Fender neither drank nor smoked and had few close friends. He had no children. “His guitars and amps,” one associate said, “those were his kids.” He was described by more than one associate as something of a recluse. While he dabbled in photography, liked to play pinochle on a Saturday night, and owned an expensive boat, his only true hobby, perhaps his obsession, was his work. He was a man of few words. He did not play guitar.
Photo © absolutradio.de
It’s hard to imagine the life of someone who completely transformed music but did not contribute any of his own musical inspiration. We usually think of inventors as scratching an itch, as people who set out to solve their own problem or at least bring something into the world that they personally plan to use.
But not in this case. Although Fender died in 1991, a recent New York Times article reminisces about his influence and the company that survives.
IN 1948, a radio repairman named Leo Fender took a piece of ash, bolted on a length of maple and attached an electronic transducer.
You know the rest, even if you don’t know you know the rest.
You’ve heard it — in the guitar riffs of Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, George Harrison, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend, Bruce Springsteen, Mark Knopfler, Kurt Cobain and on and on.
Failure is the secret to success. If you want to create the sound that changes the world, you don’t have to be the artist that goes on stage. You just might be the artist in the lab, tinkering until you build something that can only sing in someone else’s hands.
You don’t have to play. You just have to start.
