Socially AWKWARD!

in #behavior5 years ago


Credit

We tend to think of famous achievers as being in control, of being comfortable in the spotlight and (if not always keen on public appearances) used to being in the limelight. This, of course, is not always the case.

Not picking up the social cues

That's a large part of being socially awkward. It not even being aware of how a social group expects you to behave. People who do pick up social cues but break the code are not socially awkward - they're just rebels and/or jokesters who tend to be admired.

In my previous post dealing with the Russian composer Prokofiev, I started thinking of some other Russian composers who, shall we say, were less assured than Prokofiev.

Rachmaninoff


Sergei Rachmaninoff Credit

One of them was Sergei Rachmaninoff. He was a big, serious-looking guy. His fellow Russian composer, the diminutive Igor Stravinsky described him as a "six-and-a-half-foot scowl". Unlike like his other two famous contemporaries, Stravinsky and Prokofiev, Rachmaninov was more conservative and not willing to delve into the kind of experiments the other two were doing. So needless to say, he and Stravinsky did not see eye-to-eye musically. But they respected each other as great musicians and of course shared a common background.

In 1942 both Rachmaninov and Stravinsky were exiled from the native Soviet Union and living in Los Angeles. Rachmaninov was keen to be friends with Stravinsky but didn't have the social skills to get that right. So he phoned his biographer and said:

"As I know how much Igor Fedorovich has always disliked my compositions . . . and he must know my attitude to modern music, I'm not sure whether I could invite him and his wife to my house—which I'd love to do—because I don't know how he would receive my invitation. Would you be so kind as to send out a feeler?"

Mrs Stravinsky liked the idea, and lo and behold this lead to friendly dinners in both houses. At one of these dinners, Stravinsky mentioned that he liked honey. So a few days later, Stravinsky heard a knock on the door in the middle of the night.

There was Rachmaninoff standing with a huge jar of honey, without explanation.

Stravinsky


*Igor Stravinsky Source

Not to be outdone, Stravinsky once sent a full-length posterior-side naked shot of himself to French composer, Florent Schmitt. In the letter, Stravinsky wrote, “I send you my nude body, which is not to be seen elsewhere …”

To avoid being flagged, you can view the image here

So just to illustrate that the biggest of stars can be very socially awkward, I leave you with Tom Cruise and his Oprah moment:

Also posted on Weku, @tim-beck, 2018-10-15

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