An Arrogant Idea

I was thinking yesterday about what levels of intelligence I like and dislike. I really like people who are as smart as I am. They are good people to know. They make good contributions, and they appreciate my good contributions. I am wary of people who are smarter than I am. They will call me on my bad contributions, and make enough good ones that there will be no opportunity for me to do so. That's as far as I go with that end of the spectrum.

As for people who fall below me in intelligence, I don't like any of them too much, but it takes some thought to decide which I like the least. It doesn't take very much, but it does take some. I think I like the stupidest people better. It strikes me that they are the least likely to be in any position to do a lot of harm. They are like swimmers too weak to get out where they might drown. I guess that's maybe not an apt comparison, but I'll never claim to be the absolute smartest.

Remember

I have undertaken the weighty enterprise of live performance a good number of times in my life, and have now found myself the leased aggrieved by the form most likely to frighten others: improv. Not having the security of a script which they can cling to is scary, I understand. I find it to be the most relaxed kind of acting I might try to do, for there are no specific expectations for me to meet, and more importantly, no lines for me to memorize. Any attempt to prepare is basically useless except to warm up. You have practices that more resemble athletic workouts than rehearsals, because there's nothing to rehearse yet. I love that. I get to act cool as a cucumber, and when people inquire about the show's chances and how I feel, I can just shrug and say "We'll see how it goes".

That's improv. Scripted performance is something else again, and maybe those who do it find my alarm as curious as I find theirs in what I consider my area. I described the act of working with a script as something like walking around while carrying an anchor. What is comforting to others is oppressive to me- something that will tug on me endlessly until it brings me down. Now, I don't call that a reasonable attitude, exactly. It's just the one I'm dealing with. It so happens that I'm embarking on a scripted show now. I have my anxieties about it, not the least of which being that concern about mastering my script and not permitting it to master me. It's not so much that I feel stifled by the idea of having to do a show in a certain way and not getting to change it up in any respect. I believe I could be perfectly content to do the same show each time out, and would not get bored. That's not an issue here anyway, as there will be just one performance unless I take it upon myself to try and grant my show additional life.

"Focus! Focus!"

I have made it clear, I would imagine, that one of my many faults is an inability to stay focused on a single thing. That was at the heart of my long absence from swimming. It touches on other areas of trouble as well. Before writing this, I was watching a DVD. The idea to write this post came while I was trying to follow the plot of the movie, and that effort was partly in vain as the post proceeded to largely write itself in my mind, which wandered from the leisurely activity at hand. Over and over, I cursed the invisible hand wresting control of my mind's tiller away from me, but to no avail. It was through only a Herculean effort that I was able to keep touch with mental terra firma and enjoy the movie.

I get the understanding more and more that I'm seen as something of a walking Wikipedia with a gift for vocabulary. It all comes from media such as the movie I just watched, or the book of poetry I'm currently reading. The people with whom I have this reputation would probably think that I effortlessly churn through such things as I do the oxygen in the air. I certainly go through them fast enough that they could be excused for being mistaken on that score. In truth, it's significantly harder for me than it is for some. It's that bugaboo of focus. As I sit down to watch a movie, I'm moored to the moment like a hot air balloon, but the ties are tenuous. In one moment, I'm right there with the movie. In the next moment, I'm aware of the movie, but also of an extraneous thought which may or may not have been sparked by the film. The moment after that, the ties have been severed, and I've already been taken miles away by air currents.

Building A Better Attention Span

In the most recent of my sketch comedy writing sessions, an apparent fault has appeared in my work. We have just gotten to sharing scripts based on the outlines shared previously. At that time, a number of tweaks promised to enhance my two projects. Those benefits look as if they will indeed be realized, but a problem looms nonetheless in the overly-long and loose nature of the scripts. As they say, brevity is the soul of wit, and my scripts are not as brief as they can be while still getting the job done (You can expect a post on that soon enough).

This had me thinking about attention spans. I don't reject the wisdom of confining myself to a script which yields two to three minutes of screen time in this case. They can be really good under those conditions- maybe as good as they can be under any conditions. I maintain that they could be as good and possibly even better if granted the space for a greater scope. This at least would be the case if the computer desk-bound entertainment seeker could be relied upon to pay attention for longer than three minutes. Why can't he (or at least why isn't he)?