Interview with Catherine Harrison

Catherine Harrison recently wrote a post about ageism that attracted a lot of attention. I invited her to my studio to talk about it. We ended up talking about a lot of other stuff, too. Catherine’s book, “Three Colours, Twelve Notes” is available in bookstores as well as via Amazon.

Watch: https://youtu.be/1fX4t7tYYz8

Unedited Ttasnscript.

Jim Allan: Catherine Harrison. Welcome.

Catherine Harrison: Nice to see you Jim.

Jim Allan: You struck a nerve with a post that you made on LinkedIn, maybe elsewhere as well, and I wanted to get you down here to explain yourself and talk about it. It was about ageism in society, in the workplace, and in culture. So what made you write this?

Catherine Harrison: Well as we were just talking about a few minutes ago when we were setting up, we're both of a certain age, let's say, and it's been interesting through preceding the pandemic, but certainly through the pandemic, there's been a lot of reflection on life and people have been, myself included, have been thinking about where they are in life and what really matters and various perspectives. At least that's my jam. I mean I'm kind of a proponent of self-reflection and as you articulated and noticed, I look different than I did a couple years ago because through the pandemic I decided, you know what, screw the roots. I'm just gonna, you know, cut off all my hair and start over and see what happens.

Jim Allan: I wasn't gonna talk about your hair, but you brought it up.

Catherine Harrison: But that was kind of the precedent for it because in doing that, the number of people who commented, oh my gosh, I could never do that, that's so brave, I can't imagine, you know, you're showing your silver roots and it made me think, wow, it speaks to the ageism that we have, certainly for women, but I think it's rampant. So the more I actually talk to people in general about, through my work life and speaking about the book that I wrote and speaking about experiences around human-centred leadership and human-centred practices in the workplace, regardless of where you work, this notion of ageism kept bubbling up and I would say at first it is often towards older folks, but certainly I hear it a lot, I'm sure you do, towards younger folks too, right, this sort of bias attitude towards whoever's not in your demographic. I had just been thinking about that, I guess something triggered me a couple of weeks ago to write that little post.

Jim Allan: Something bad happened to you?

Catherine Harrison: It wasn't something bad, it was something I guess I noticed somewhere and that's usually how I, you know, decide to write a post. I think I see something, hear something, converse with someone about something and I go, oh, and also being 55, I remember the, perhaps you do too, when I was growing up there was an ad for freedom 55, you retire at 55 and I certainly don't feel like I'm that 55, but it was a nice number to really reflect back, you know, the 30 years before 25, 30 years hence hopefully 85 and that just kind of set up that whole post.

Jim Allan: So here's a quote from your post, I've heard from women many years my junior who are mortified to have colleagues or fans or dating prospects know their age, they fear it would limit their professional and social opportunities, perhaps it would. So you believe that?

Catherine Harrison: Yeah. That's just the reality out there. That is the, that is certainly the reality for many people, not all, but yeah, I've heard that from a lot of people, surprisingly, but not surprisingly because I've heard, and from men too, I've heard in certain industries and certain corporations, you know, if you hit 40, you're kind of over the hill and they're looking for fresh new ideas. You have to disclose your age at all times though, or is it just, I guess it's just a general look that people, they know you're not 16 and they know. Yeah, I think that's a good question. So it's not about formally or necessarily proactively disclosing your age. So you don't have to disclose your age. I think the question becomes, if it comes up, how uncomfortable are you in being honest about it? I've been privy to many conversations where certainly with women who will say, I would never tell people how old I am, right? What a rude question to ask. And I kind of think, well, who cares?

Jim Allan: Well, my mom lied about her age, I think, and it was fuzzy to me when she was really born, but, you know, it was for workplace reasons, I think, and there's a certain amount of vanity, I suppose, too, back in the day. A friend of mine, his mother died a few years ago at age 70, and when she died, he found out she was actually 80. Now he's in his 40s, he's probably in his 50s when this happens. I went to school with him. That's the whole family. So top that with you.

Catherine Harrison: Well, that just goes to speak to the power of the ageism that we're talking about, right? How do you keep that secret your whole life? I don't know. It was probably a painful journey.

Jim Allan: So what were you doing when you were 20? Or what were you doing when you were like 30?

Catherine Harrison: Well, two totally different questions. 20, I was still in university. Because back in the day, we had grade 13. So I had grade 13, then I took a year off, and then I went to university. And so when I was 20, I was still in university. And when I was 30, I had already started my career. I started my career right out of university and was working in the pharmaceutical industry, got married at 30, bought a house at 30. So even in that 10 year span, covered quite a bit of ground.

Jim Allan: Would you want to be 16 again? Would you want to be 26 again?

Catherine Harrison: Nope.

Jim Allan: Why? Why do you think?

Catherine Harrison: I actually think every age has an inherent value to it and a perspective. I really like the wisdom that comes with moving down the track a little bit more. There are certainly pros and cons, the upsides of being younger. I didn't have the arthritis back then. I could stay up later and do some of those things. But I don't, I certainly wouldn't want to go back and be those ages again. I think there's a real, hopefully, and I certainly can say this about myself, that if cultivated, there is a real sense of self that doesn't really develop until you're in your middle age. When you've been through some real life stuff, when you've been through loss, when you have been through the ups and downs, the successes and failures, for me, big life experiences like being a parent and raising a person to adulthood, being in different relationships, whether they be family, friendships, work, romantic, whatever, that you've been through enough of that to hopefully have a stronger sense of self and wisdom. To me, that's so valuable. I love this age.

Jim Allan: So I have a confession to make. I read your book and I really liked it. So it's three colours, 12 notes. So tell me about the Yoko Ono anecdote that's right at the very beginning of the book. Do you remember? You wrote it, right? You didn't?

Catherine Harrison: Yeah, yeah.

Jim Allan: Okay. Tell me about the Yoko Ono anecdote. Yeah. Right at the beginning.

Catherine Harrison: And it's a, yeah, it's a Yoko John Lennon anecdote that the, as the story goes, I mean, we can't validate this because we weren't there, but as the couple of times before they clicked and, you know, John fell in love, I guess. And as the story goes, it wasn't until he was at a show of hers and she was a performance artist that he went to one of the exhibits, which was this tall stepladder and you were to climb the stepladder and on the top of the stepladder was a magnifying glass and the direction was just lift up the magnifying glass and look at the word on the ceiling, which was the word was yes. And the story goes that he said, in that moment, I fell in love with the artist. And so that story to me, being a huge Beatles fan and Lennon fan, just really set such a tone about why that was so powerful to him. And it's so powerful to me too. And as I write in the book that yes really is a catalyst towards opportunity and adventure and learning and trying and progressing down that track of life.

Jim Allan: Yeah. So when I read that at the beginning of the book, we'd already spoken and set up this interview and I said to myself, Hey, wait a minute. She said yes to me too. So do you say yes to everything and everybody?

Catherine Harrison: No, I don't.

Jim Allan: You just said no, so. Right.

Catherine Harrison: There you go. So you know what? That's really interesting. I do tend to fall on the yes side. Right. Before I say no. It's easy to say no to everything. It's easy to say no. I'm an activator by nature. I'm an insatiably curious person by nature. And I think that leans towards yes, which is oh, interesting. However, I have also learned again with age and wisdom that the yeses have to be aligned with my values and what I really want to do and achieve. And so I'm very quick to a no if those alignments aren't there.

Jim Allan: So here's a quote from your book. Some of the most life changing and direction changing events have happened in my life simply by saying yes to an opportunity. And that triggered a cascade of experiences that helped shape my life. So yes, is a is a command mantra.

Catherine Harrison: Yeah. Yeah.

Jim Allan: And you've done some meditation in your life and things like that.

Catherine Harrison: Sure. Yeah. And I would also say no.

Jim Allan: It's very striking that it's at at the beginning of the book. It's sort of right at the beginning of the book.

Catherine Harrison: Right. Right. I think I think so. Yes is for sure an open door towards various events. Right. It's like, you know, the why in the fork in the road. So but so could no be. If we think about it retrospectively, we can always go back and say, I said yes. And then this happened and this happened and this happened. If I had said no, those following things wouldn't have happened. But we don't know what would have happened with the no. Who knows? Right. But yes, many of the opportunities that I have had to grow as a person, whether it through travel or through my artistic pursuits or through my professional pursuits have happened because I thought, yeah, let's just see. I can always say no later. Why not? Why not? Exactly.

Jim Allan: So on page 101 is the only specific mention of age you make in the book. I think this was now this was in a reference to a discussion of sexism in the workplace. But quote, the older I get, the less tolerant I am of bullshit from individuals, institutions, systems, but also myself.

Catherine Harrison: Yes. So I've I've always had a strong BS radar. I think my tolerance for putting up with it was greater when I was younger for a variety of reasons, you know, culturally, financially. And as I get older and I'm in a different age and stage, that tolerance, as I mentioned, wanes even even more so. So I am very explicitly interested in authenticity, in honesty, in values based behaviors, and so you can't have BS if those things are in place.

Jim Allan:Yeah.

Catherine Harrison: And so my my tolerance towards those are far less than they used to be.

Jim Allan: Now we haven't talked about it exactly in this way, but these days you operate as a business consultant, like communications and that sort of thing within a. So explain that what you do to me.

Catherine Harrison:  So I do a few different things. Purple Voodoo is a consulting agency that I have run for nine, eight, nine years now. And our primary focus is around performance and behavior change explicitly towards human centered leadership and human centered practices within organizations. And so yeah, sometimes that looks like helping them communicate better. You mentioned communications. We do a lot of work around human centered leadership development. We do a lot of work about how do the humans in an organization work as effectively together? How do you leverage the whole human being in your organization individually and collectively? So I work as a consultant, as a coach, as an advisor, as a mentor, as a guide with organizations or individuals who reach out looking for support in those areas.

Jim Allan: Now in your book, it's quite clear that you love music and you love playing music. If you could go back and receive a break or two, would you have preferred to become a full-time professional musician?

Catherine Harrison: Yeah, hard to say.

Jim Allan: You talk about it a lot.

Catherine Harrison: Short answer would be yes. So I still consider myself, I'm not a full-time anything, but I still consider myself very actively in the music world. I still write, I still record, I still perform. And so it's not something that I parked and, you know, wistfully look back on. However, that's a fork in the road. That's one thing that if things were different, primarily me, it would have been super cool to have had that opportunity to pursue it. I didn't have the self-confidence, quite frankly, Jim, to even think about pursuing that when I was younger. First of all, I didn't really start even playing and writing and singing until I was in my 20s. And at that time, I had already started a career. And so it seemed that I would have to give up one to get the other. But yeah, I mean, that's one thing I look back and go that would have been cool, you know? And then, you know, we circle back around ageism. This is a beautiful connective tissue here because I am a songwriter, performer, recording artist. I'm 55. It's very interesting that people aren't coming up to me saying, hey, you've got some new stuff. Like, we want to promote this because really it's like, yeah, we got to promote the young folks. No, the older folks get promoted when they they're the legacy favorite. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Classic rock. Yeah.

Jim Allan: So you're a Beatle fan.

Catherine Harrison: I sure am.

Jim Allan: As am I. Did you watch Get Back?

Catherine Harrison: I did. I was going to.

Jim Allan: That was one of my questions.

Catherine Harrison: We can do a whole podcast just about that.

Jim Allan: I was trying to get someone I know to, he was against it and I was for, you know, how can he be against Get Back? I was going to ask you about that, but this is what I learned from your book.

Catherine Harrison: We'll have to do another one.

Jim Allan: This is what I learned from your book. You and Paul McCartney have something in common, even though you're a John Lennon fan.

Catherine Harrison: Oh, no, I'm an All of Them fan.

Jim Allan: Do you know what you and Paul McCartney have in common? You wrote it in the book. You don't even realize it.

Catherine Harrison: I wrote it in the book and I don't even realize it.

Jim Allan: The bass player quit and you were forced to pick up the bass and learn and to play it as was Paul.

Catherine Harrison: That's right. Oh my goodness, Jim, thank you for that gift.

Jim Allan: That's the main thing I got.

Catherine Harrison: That's going to be my new handle forever. Did you know that Paul and I are basically the same person?

Jim Allan: Are you left handed?

Catherine Harrison: No, unfortunately no.

Jim Allan: And the hair is different.

Catherine Harrison: I do have a great picture of me playing that, not that Hoffner, but a Hoffner, same vintage that he played. A friend of mine had one of those and I was just like a kid with a pony. I was like, oh my goodness.

Jim Allan: So if Paul went on tour, would you, I saw him in 1989. He was 47.

Catherine Harrison: He's brilliant.

Jim Allan: Would you go, would you, if he was, he's going on tour. I don't think he's coming around here, but would you go see him?

Catherine Harrison: Absolutely.

Jim Allan: Good answer. Cause I thought if you said no, I would have said why because is he too old? Is that, is that why? No.

Catherine Harrison: And in fact, I haven't seen him, but I have many friends who have in whenever the last time he was here, which was probably only five or six years ago, maybe seven years ago. So in his seventies and they've said, the guy's just nailing it. He's in, he's incredible.

Jim Allan: In ‘89, I saw him at Sky Dome and, and you know, you think he's old because he's older than me, but, and it was, it was unbelievable cause they, and they sound, he sounded great. And I, I don't know if I want to see him anymore, to be honest, because his voice is just, he can't be, he was such a good singer. Such a great singer. Did you see that McCartney one, two, three?

Catherine Harrison: Yes. Oh, wasn't that fantastic?

Jim Allan: I am a, you've met a bigger fan, a Beatle fan. There's an endless appetite for, there's, there's like 20 or 30 podcasts just about the Beatles and kind of obsessing about 1969 in particular, because of the get back thing. So what did you think of get back?

Catherine Harrison: I loved it.

Jim Allan:What did you like about it?

Catherine Harrison: As a songwriter, anytime I get to see people writing songs, particularly collaboratively together, love it. Beatles, get out of here. Come on. Amazing. Also, I mean, I'm a huge Beatles fan. So being able to see them as human beings, playing, creating, just living in this very sort of confined space, which is what they were doing, right? We'd have this four weeks whatever we have to write these songs, prepared to do this thing wherever we're going to do it. Who knows? To me, that was just such a gift. I thought that Peter Jackson did an incredible job. I can't imagine, you know, whatever hundreds and hundreds of hours to distill it into those. I just thought it was, I just want to run it in the background in my house all the time and just have them chatting. I heard this sort of like you're just hanging out.

Jim Allan: So true or false? Would you have written this book when you were 26?

Catherine Harrison: No.

Jim Allan: You couldn't have?

Catherine Harrison: No. Because it's kind of, the books, it's about your entire life. As you say, at some point, it's a non-linear retelling of certain parts of your life. To date. Hopefully my life goes on for a little longer. Volume two to come.

Jim Allan: Maybe there'll be more colors and more notes.

Catherine Harrison: I wrote it in a way that it would be accessible for people to read in a relatively short period of time, right? First of all, it's structured in a way that you can read it, set it down. You don't have to read it in order. You can pick it up, whatever. But also, if you sat down, you could probably read it in an hour and a half.

Jim Allan: So I was reading this in a Starbucks with my headphones and I started listening to Jeff Buckley.

Catherine Harrison: Oh, you're kidding.

Jim Allan: But I knew who Jeff Buckley was. That's a different thing. I knew who Jeff Buckley was.

Catherine Harrison: So have you listened to Grace, the whole record?

Jim Allan:Yeah. Well, you said, listen to it three times. So I just did. I'm hypnotized now by you. So I just, yes. I mean, it's in the in the background. I have nothing but time.

Catherine Harrison: So it's beautiful. It's beautiful. And I, as you read, I saw him live before I the first experience of him and his band. It was live, not a record that I then knew the songs and went to see them live. So imagine like all of those songs really so diverse and just so amazingly executed. Just coming at you live. It was just fantastic.

Jim Allan: Tell me about Over the Bridge because it kind of brings different things together, right?

Catherine Harrison: Yeah. So Over the Bridge is a nonprofit organization that helps people in the music industry come together and find community mostly through peer support when they're having mental health or addiction recovery challenges. And I met Ace, who was the founder and leader of Over the Bridge a number of years ago through mutual friends in New York City. And so I reached out just to provide at being both in business and in the music industry. Reached out just to provide support, strategic advisory, whatever I could do to help them out. And then a year and a bit ago there was a changing of the guard and I became the chair of the board there. And so we continue to try to cultivate awareness around the stigma, around mental health and addiction at large, but certainly specifically in the music industry and how difficult it is in general. And certainly how difficult it has been through the pandemic for people in the music industry. Not just musicians, but people behind the stage, front of stage, all the crew, bus drivers, caterers. The fact that many musicians supplement their income by working in bars and restaurants. Hey, they were all closed too. So there was a real additive stress and pressure on folks. And one of the toughest things to do is to reach out and connect. And one of the most important things that you can do to support your mental health and or addiction recovery. If that's something that you're struggling with is to find and be part of a community who really understands. And so that's what we do. Two years is a long time for everyone at this point.

Jim Allan: So I mean, you see it in every walk of life.

Catherine Harrison: So absolutely.

Jim Allan:So you do a lot of things. You're consultant, you're author, musician. You help out musicians with mental health issues. I mean, you're out there. Is that the formula to being successful or happy in the latter parts of a career? It's like you're diversified. It's like, is it like investing? You just spread yourself out and does that make any sense?

Catherine Harrison: It makes a ton of sense. It makes sense for me and it works for me. And I think the important thing, Jim, is for everyone to figure out what works best for him or her, which is that, yeah, for me, diversification in my life works best. I don't thrive in a rigidly fixed environment or rigidly fixed role. I don't like to define myself by one or the other. As you may recall in the book, I think I wrote this. I found it difficult when I was in the corporate world to just be the corporate type and not be authentically my artistic musician self. Likewise, in the musician world, I found it difficult that I had to pretend I wasn't, you know, a strategic organizational expert, that being this corporate person was also, you know, there's a lot of bias, you know, us versus them. So for me, I find it, I find it necessary for me to follow the thread of interest or curiosity. And because I am multifaceted, although I believe everyone is multifaceted, I like to ensure that I invest some time and energy in all of those things that are meaningful to me. Again, it goes back to values and it goes back to the fact that until I got to this age and stage, I wasn't always really clear about what those things were and why or how, you know, I needed to spend time nurturing them. Also, I'm at a different stage where, you know, thankfully, my son is doing great. He's an adult now. So I'm not in the throes of raising kids. And that comes with a whole bunch of different dynamics and pressures. But I think it requires everyone to find out what works best for them because what works for me won't necessarily work for others. But I do like being involved in a lot of stuff. And I get more involved because I say yes, usually.

Jim Allan: So, Catherine, thank you.

Catherine Harrison: Thank you, Jim.

Jim Allan: Great book. I do recommend it to people. So thank you. But thanks for coming.

Catherine Harrison: Thank you. I'm glad I said yes. Here we are.

Jim Allan: It works out. Yeah. This is good.

Catherine Harrison: That's awesome. Thanks, Jim.

Jim Allan: Thank you.