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| They even look like clever kids, don't they? |
I recently discovered a band called the Beths, and I really like them. Artsy smart-pop from New Zealand. Highly recommended. The single off their most recent album is called "Expert in a Dying Field". It's ostensibly about how it blows that, by the time you figure out the outlines of a relationship, it's on its last legs...and there you are, being highly knowledgeable about something that no longer exists. Rings true.
Don't even get me started on the old saw about "experience is the best teacher"...bullshit. Experience is a shit teacher that only teaches when it's too late to benefit from learning. "I hope you enjoyed the exam on the quadratic equation yesterday. Today we're going to learn the quadratic equation. Just think how motivated you'll be to learn, now that you've failed an important exam!"
So it's a great song. But as I listened to it for the sixty-third time, as I'm prone to binging when I really dig something, I realized that it hit a little differently for me. Sure, I'm always willing to preach about the unfairness of experience and all that, but it applied to me in a whole 'nother way. I was doing some session prep for the family D&D game, and I was really proud of what I had together: good characters, original situations, and inventive twists. Proud. Then I realized that I'm an expert in a field that isn't dying, not by any stretch, but a field that has almost no impact on anything that matters.
I had notecards and back-stories and detailed histories. I had regional economies. Flora and fauna. All invented from my pointy little head. But for what? For a game. For fleeting entertainment that'll fade from my players' minds in a week or two.
Felt a little pointless. And a little bitter, to be so damned good at something so ultimately silly.
Like Sturgill Simpson says, I wake up every day, gonna be the best clock-maker on Mars.
