Smartest man in the room

When I was a kid I always thought I was pretty smart. This fondly held belief stemmed from several places, all of them destined to take firm root in my childish psyche.

Firstly, I think that during significant portions of my childhood, I was probably better educated (or at least better read) than children of my age. I spent most of my early years in bed after contracting juvenile idiopathic arthritis, and all I did was read. This meant that when I finally got back into school, I knew a whole lot about a whole lot of stuff. This contributed to a slightly inflated sense of my own intelligence, largely because being slightly smarter than a group of children is no great feat. Kids are idiots.

Secondly, I valued my social standing too much to hang around with the children who were noticeably intelligent. This meant that I could exist in a state of heady solipsism, never running into anybody who could challenge my intellectual mastery (except teachers, and they clearly did not count).

Thirdly and most importantly: my mum told me I was clever. All the time. And I believed her because, as previously mentioned, kids are idiots.

I don’t think this erroneous belief is limited to yours truly. I think a lot of people go through their early lives secretly knowing themselves to be the one smarty-pants in a world full of durr-heads (please forgive these technical terms).

Then you move out, go to uni, go to work, go and see a bit of the world, and it slowly dawns on you that perhaps you are not the towering mental colossus that you always thought you were. At first it’s a gradual process: people get consistently better grades than you or they mention books and films and people that are apparently important but of which you have limited knowledge. Then you find that more and more people seem immune to your charms and manipulations. You find yourself outsmarted by your boss, your lecturers, the postman. Finally you end up in a pub on a Thursday afternoon in the midst of a heated debate about globalization and you realise, with a flailing horror akin to loosing your grip on a ladder, that you don’t know a single thing about what they are talking about and furthermore, may not have had an original and/or interesting thought in your entire life.

It’s a rough moment. I pray, for your sake, that it occurs but once. The sad fact, however, is that you are probably destined to stumble through these moments a score of times in your life. In fact, fuck it, I take back my prayers, if it happens to me (me! A tupping genius!) then I bloody well hope it happens to you.

If you want the cake of shame to taste really awful you need a good few spoonfuls of arrogance in there first, and your own intellect is an easy thing to be arrogant about. Firstly it is the limit of your own consciousness, which makes it difficult to accurately map what lies beyond it. To paraphrase another famous idiot, it’s hard to know what you don’t know you don’t know. Secondly, knowledge is a tricky thing to define – what is important for someone else might not count for you and vica versa. It’s easy to dismiss what others know as useless or indulgent, and see your own way of thinking as vital and dynamic. Finally, it’s really, really hard to admit the plain truth – that quite a lot of people are much more intelligent that you are.

Actually, there is perhaps one more point: that a lot of people in your immediate vicinity seem to be idiots. I mean honestly, they’re everywhere. On the telly. In the newspapers. Writing the newspapers. Advising the most powerful man in the world. The most powerful man in the world. When the majority of the educated world hold themselves to be more intelligent that the President of the United States of America (who is, let us not forget, basically the king of the world; when the aliens arrive they aren’t going to be visiting Kevin Rudd first of all), then we might be forgiven for holding an inflated sense of our own mental acuity. OK, so they’ve got another one now and he seems quite bright, but the point still stands.

The problem is that you cannot measure your intelligence by comparing yourself to people noticeably thicker than you. It might be easy to feel clever in a room full of numpties, but you aren’t necessarily that smart of the general scale. If you play for a men’s football team, you cannot claim to be the best in the league if you only play against girls under-13’s squads.

This would normally be where I would try and draw the whole post together with a relatively positive, upbeat solution. Well, not this time, thicko. You’ll just have to accept the fact that quite a lot of people are quite a lot more cleverer than you, innit. And unfortunately, the only way to advance on the road to cerebral progress is to consistently interact with those people, even if it means getting your mental faculties rubbed in the metaphorical dirt every so often.

On the other hand, you could just hang around with your mum all day. Every mother tells her child that they are the sharpest knife in the drawer. But remember she’s only saying it because you are her kid, and if we’ve learned anything today it’s that (sing it with me folks!): kids are idiots.

Stuff to read

OH HAIY!!

Yup, another big break, another miserable fortnight without my humorous guidance and comment. But fear not, dear hearts, I have been busy in the interim. Firstly, there's an updated (and much changed) version of the Annulus story that I posted here ages ago. This one is a bit less sexy and quite a bit more... unpleasant. Secondly I have another short (2k ish) story, a sort of mythic conceptual... thingy. It's fluff, really, but you'll get through it in five minutes. It's called The Tale of Tan Lushan.

The real reason for my absence was an essay on surveillance as an ideological fantasy that took forever to write, but it's a pile of old wank and I certainly wont be boring you with that.

Normal service resumes as soon as the next personal disaster befalls me.

Return of the Mac

On New Year’s Eve – or more specifically early on New Year’s Morning – my friend Shortround and I were discussing a mutual interest, in one of those life affirming conversations where you both express your love for a shared person or thing, reaffirming both how good that thing is but also your friendship and what it is based on. It was a good talk, and it was about how much we both fucking love Annie Mac.

I doubt it’s necessary to go into detail as to our reasons. She plays good music, she plays good shows, she’s introduced me personally to a lot of really great tunes that I would not otherwise have heard (well, not me personally, obviously. Although that would be brilliant). It doesn’t hurt that she’s really fit and has a voice like a honey fondue.

We were, inevitably, pretty smashed. The night had been good to us. And, because I have a tendency to get over-sentimental when I’m high and also because I never know when to let go of a conversation thread, I began to imagine what I might say to her should I ever get the chance to meet her.

I’d probably tell her that I think she’s pwetty, but I think I’d save that until the end in case she immediately loses interest or has a bodyguard or a stun gun in her bag. Firstly I would say that even though we’ve never met, she’s done quite a bit for me, sorted me out with some really good times, and that I and all her other fans (and let me tell you, we are legion) really appreciate that.

Now, Annie Mac gets this all the time. I am not (shock horror) the first person to think of thanking a famous person for being in their lives. I am also not the first person to get over-sentimental just because I have a little crush on said famous person.

What I REALLY would have wanted to say was that listening to her has brought me closer with some other people I care about, Shortround in particular. I probably wouldn’t say that if he was there with me, because that’d be a bit embarrassing and might possibly lead her to believe we were a couple (which clearly would damage my, admittedly slim, chances with her and let me get this straight: I’d beat up Shortround to get with Annie Mac. Fact).

It’s a mushy sentiment, and one that, by that point in the night, I was well beyond expressing in such a coherent manner. If I had run into Annie Mac, I probably would have just given her a high five, and then maybe gone off to have a cry. And I doubt I’m going to get up on the radio and say it either – she almost certainly has people screening her calls for people that just want to gush over her.

The point is: that I like Annie Mac so much partly because my friends like her too. I love Metal Gear Solid because my little brother loves it, and can do all the voices. I like dubstep primarily because of the people I listen to it with. There are hundreds of books I cherish, but the icing on the cake is having a fulfilling, positive talk about one of them with someone I care about that likes it too.

Wanting to keep something to yourself is something we’re all guilty of. In times gone past I’ve been secretly disappointed when bands I like have become more popular, and I have to share them with other people. And with the New Year already under way I’ve come to a decision: that’s just the kind of elitist crap we can do without.

I think art is about sharing; I think I’ve said this before here. Although yes, I truly and sincerely believe that an artefact can communicate with an individual on a personal and private level, and that this is part of what art is and what it always should be, I would always want to turn to a friend and ask what they thought of it.

We didn’t get to see Annie Mac that night. We’d overstayed on one place and couldn’t get into the next place, and although we were disappointed, we knew there would always be next time. The main thing was- I’d gotten together with Shortround and half a dozen or so others, and we’d shared something for a bit. Now, January is a pretty crummy month, in my opinion. The weather stinks, and no one has any money. So, if you could do with a little flash to cheer you up, even only briefly, I would like to posit this: that there’s stuff to share, and people to share it with. There will always be someone out there who has shared an experience with you and would be willing to talk about it for a spell, even if it’s something as mundane as a book or a film or what you did on your New Year’s.

So at the risk of sounding trite, get out there and share a little; it’ll make you feel better.

Stay the fuck away from Annie Mac, though. She’s mine.