A morning passing

I am listening to Talk Talk, one of the later albums. I am thinking that it is incredible how they changed, that they walked through the door as a generic eighties pop band and walked back out as something deeper, richer, a soulful, ambient-tinged, jazzy monster. (Japan did the same, passing from slightly pretentious eighties pop to creators of ambient still lifes.) I am reading someone's blog (a sure sign that I'm bored and unmotivated for work today), astonishing myself with the depth of that person's vanity (so vain that they have convinced themselves that they are without vanity -- a feat even I, a slave to amour-propre, cannot quite manage). Most, if not all, who make a claim to selflessness will in time show themselves to be the souls of selfism. "I'm there for you" often translates into "I'm here for me", so much so that when I hear it or read it I am on my guard. Even banks and corporations say it: "We're here for you." I laugh at that. As if. "We're trying to make things better." No. You're trying to make more money. Still, the world would be unbearable if we were all honest 24/7. I want more of it but not all the time; it would wear us out. Little dishonesties oil the wheels.

***

An odd thing happened when I played Diplomacy a lot. I became suspicious and paranoid of people's motives. In Diplomacy, one tries to have get others to make a move to suit oneself by convincing the others that they will benefit from the move. I am a reasonable player, nothing special but not a novice. But I found that if I played it a lot, put a lot of energy into it, I started to think that everyone who emailed me was lying to me. Even now I'm strongly suspicious of others' motives. I try to see how they are manipulating me, what they are aiming at. Maybe I always was.

Anyway, I gave it up. Partly because I didn't enjoy feeling suspicious of everyone and everybody, and partly because I found the people who played it boring. They came in easily discerned types (although not all my opponents could quickly discern which was which) and reading someone's trying to deceive you in a dull way grows old very quickly. And, I have to say, to my shame, I only enjoyed winning. I didn't enjoy having to dig myself out of a pit. Mostly because people would play against their own interests because they were not willing to be flexible, and I could see the outcome many turns before the end. Feeling that you are going to spin out a game robotically isn't fun.

***

I am listening to the Orb's best of record. I don't listen to it too often. It's one of many records I have that are quite good. I can't imagine anything worse to be than quite good. If I do a thing, I want to be useless (as I am at painting and football, both of which I enjoy a lot) or brilliant. Being quite good nags at me. It says "why aren't you better? why don't you bother trying to become any better?" If you're useless, you can say "because it's too big a hill from here" (there is also the truth that I do not think I could become good at painting). My fear with poker is that I will become quite good. I am already better than useless (although not much better) and cannot go backward to just enjoying it. With writing, my problem is more that I fear others will think I am quite good. They would be wrong but that fear still does exist. It makes me not want to submit things that I feel are not as good as I could do. Because I think I could do brilliant, I feel that just quite good is not good enough. It's easy to see that I am going to struggle to find anything I can submit; because I can improve, I will always feel that what I've done is not the best I could do. It's also in the nature of the writer that you feel that the next thing will be better. New ideas will appeal more than the old, just because they are fresher.

Why would I feel this? I think it is because I am a natural-born winner. I don't want to be second. When I was a kid, I was top of my class. Or second. Or thereabouts. In most subjects, I excelled. I didn't mind that there were some that I didn't do well in (except that they dragged down my overall score). Had I been more ordinary in that particular aspect, I daresay I would have found it easier to be just good. I like to win though. I don't understand playing for fun, not trying. For me, the fun in a game lies partly in trying to win, competition. If you want to spoil a contest with me, tell me you are just having fun, not trying to win. Nothing turns me off faster.

posted by Dr Zen @ 9:49 am