About Infinite/Crazy/Perfect/Good

Post 982: Infinite/Crazy/Perfect/Good

  It’s always been hard for me to talk about things I know for sure. Making light of things is easy, dissecting, questioning. We all have our natures and what we tend toward. Nothing weird about it. Some people fall to comfort when writing a newspaper column about all they’re sure of. Some make videos explaining the way things are with what they must believe is pinpoint precision and accuracy. They are sure. Or… they just don’t mind being wrong from time to time.

            This is a strange thing I’ve noticed over the years. Those who don’t mind being wrong will more than likely get ahead in life, because someone, perhaps many will think they’re right. The truth is, no matter who you are and what you do, you’re going to be wrong and right. Do your best and keep moving forward. Don’t look back. That’s what the winners are about.

            At least, I think so.

            I don’t come out and say I’m sure of much. To my friends and family, perhaps, but not for public consumption. I’m a dinosaur like that. Caught between two worlds. I live partially in the past, where you have your opinions and of course they matter but you’re not so presumptuous as to believe that anyone else would care.

            This was once the way. No longer. It is I who am out of date.

            And it’s also one of the reasons I write fiction and songs. There’s no technically correct method for going about these things.

            And yet. People skeptical about the real world tend to be skeptical about their fiction. It bleeds over. It can be a problem. It might be imagined that creative types are all about letting things fly, but that is not so in my case or in the case of many I know. We obsess with exactness. Pretty crazy, considering, like I said, this is no tangible goal.

            One can be driven to madness if you want something to be perfect when perfect does not exist. Stories are infinite. I was watching a documentary about chess, how people go mad from it because of all the possibilities and moves one might make. A game of chess can turn almost an infinite amount of ways, like your creative work. Yes, there are strategies, guidelines, but infinite or something close to it is the water in which we swim. No perfect right. No perfect wrong.

            But there is effective. There is good. There is bad. No honest assessor would say otherwise. And somewhere on the scale between perfect and good is where we should content ourselves. If contentment remains elusive, at least fleeting comfort. There’s all kinds of ways this has already been said. I’m just saying it another imperfect way. Cheers and see you after.