Hello Friends,
Sometimes I wish I wasn't so impressionable.
The other week I watched Jerry McGuire with Paige. There is one scene where Tom Cruise casually does handstand pushups against a wall. I thought to myself, "If Tom Cruise can do it, I can do it."
There is only one place in my apartment where I can do handstand pushups. The handstand location is a confined space between my refrigerator and my backdoor. Everywhere else I run the risk of either knocking Jared's art off the wall or creating foot prints in our living room.
I learned two things from doing handstand push-ups:
- I can do a few pushups before my arms give out. It's a good feeling.
- The realization that my arms are about to give out while upside-down in a confined space is a bad feeling.
- Falling in a confined space while upside-down is a worse feeling.
My point is, just because Tom Cruise can do something, doesn't mean you should.
It also doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.
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I had been struggling all day to write how interesting it is that some systems are more durable than others. I stole this concept from Nassim Taleb’s book “Anti-Fragile.” Some organizations and social constructs seem to go on forever; they are solid. Other systems fall by the wayside – quickly forgotten. I wanted to explore this concept of long lasting systems within the framework of my visit to my fraternity this weekend. I wanted this to be a persuasive essay, and I wanted it to be good. There was potential to make this a very interesting piece. I know this because Jared told me so.
I couldn't do it.
I would write a few sentences and cringe. "That sounds too faux poetic," I would grumble. I followed this up with, "Andrew, you are pretentious and you don't actually know what faux means." So, I did what most successful writers do: gave up.
Sometimes I wish writing came as naturally to me as talking does. I can talk endlessly about everything and anything. I used to be jealous of people in college who complained about having to edit a paper down to the page maximum. I never had that problem in my entire life.
I've changed my attitude. Though it’s not easy, writing makes me think. Writing makes me say what I think more carefully. People forget conversations. Ideas in conversations die with people who speak them. Ideas written down have the potential to live on.
I guess that's why some systems, such as the written word, have continued for so many thousands of years.
Perhaps not being comfortable with writing how interesting long lasting systems are is an indication that it would have been a boring essay. Who knows?
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In my mind there are two different kinds of movies: Movies that my dad likes, movies that my Uncle Tommy likes. Anything else probably isn't worth watching.
Both my dad and his brother, Tommy, are big movie fans. My dad, I would say, is more of a traditionalist. His favorite movie is Get Shorty starring John Travolta. Other examples of "Dad movies" include: anything that stars Tom Cruise, Classic Musicals, the Die Hard series, and so on.
Uncle Tommy is a bit more artsy. Though he also likes the classics, he leans towards less traditional movies. They include: Wes Anderson films, and that one Australian indie film that I couldn't understand a word of where everybody died.
You should see the movie “Birdman” as soon as possible. I wasn’t planning on seeing it, but Paige said we should go see it. It's an Uncle Tommy film starring Michael Keaton. It's about a washed up actor who is trying to revitalize his career by doing theater.
The movie is incredibly well done. The acting is killer -- it is a movie about acting after all. The filmography has a very stream of conscious feel to it by the way the camera bounces from character.
It's weird and smart and fun, which happen to be three of my favorite things.
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I hope you enjoyed this blog! If you want to talk, reach out to me at Kidman007@gmail.com. I like you. Life is short (but actually not that short). So let's catch up. We could talk about music or ideas or ideas in music.
If you have any constructive criticism, such as "why don't you ever have a point in the things you write" or “this post was too long and boring”, please let me know. I -- like you -- am working on getting better every day.