Facts Versus Romance, You Go And Call Yourself The Boss, But We're Not Robots, Inside A Grid

--"Science vs. Romance", Rilo Kiley

I like watching baseball. I have never played baseball as an organized sport. Hell, I was never even that good at it when I played it at P.E. or lunch. Yet it's plain to see that one statement has no bearing on the other. I don't need to be good at baseball to enjoy watching it. That axiom is very similar to the old rumor that Shakespeare was a horrible actor. It also brings to mind Mitch Hedberg's famous joke about being asked to write when some Hollywood people found out he was a talented comic. His response was that you don't ask a great chef if he can form. Just because you can do something well, doesn't mean you can do something related to it well also.

That's always bothered me how people assume when you're knowledgeable about a subject it means you're good at executing. To me that's like saying that if someone is a great astronomer they'd be a good astronaut. It took me a long time to realize that pertaining to most subjects I'm a much better critic/researcher than someone who actually doer. I'd rather read up on topics that interest me than rush right out to do them. I would be the first one to tell you that my accomplishments tend to be more intellectual than physical ownership.

This has led to the strange phenomena that I'm afraid most of us experience where I tend to identify with a concept from a distance than up close. Take the Red Sox for instance; I feel like they're my team though I haven't played a day for them. I feel every loss and win more completely than any fan should. It kills me that I live so goddamn far away from them as well as the fact that I'm constantly having to explain my enamoration of them. I don't claim to have discovered them, but I do feel like that I'm one of the only people in California who loves them as much as a true Bostonian might. Therein lies the problem. I tend to get territorial when it comes to them or anything else I favorite. I take it personally when people criticize them and, yes, I probably take too much pride in their accomplishments, as if they're my accomplishments as well by proximity.

Also, on the flip side, I get very antsy when it comes to truly losing myself in an object that somebody else recommended to me. To me it feels like they "own" it or that they "discovered" it, and are only letting me borrow it. In the end it'll never be mine due to the illogical notion that I can't every truly like something that somebody liked before me. It's used; it's secondhand. More to the point it can't ever be mine when somebody else got to it first. I can't tell you how much it kills me that Rilo Kiley was suggested to me by my ex-friend. There they are, my favorite band, and I have to reconcile the fact that somebody I knew had to point them out to me. It terrifies me that, but for the most passing of comments, I might have never known of their existence at all. Life would have been so wonderful if I could truthfully say that they were a band that I stumbled upon independently and was wise enough to recognize that absolute talent they had.

Now, however, all I can see is how slightly tainted my respect for them is, having originated from somebody whose opinion I don't even consider competent any more.

I don't know--sometimes I believe my prerogative for wanting to be as unique as possible leads me to over-think whether or not I like a thing. It shouldn't matter to me how many other people like something I like. It shouldn't matter to me how many other people got to experience it first. It shouldn't matter how long something has been around in relation to how long I've known about it.

But it does.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers