Humbled by my heroes

Last night, at the end of a very long day, I found I had a couple of hours left before a reasonable bedtime and no strength to do anything productive anymore, and I decided to do something I rarely find time for these days: listen to music. I checked my "to do list" and found the late David Bowie's last album "Blackstar" on top of it.

When the last song finished, I just sat back on my chair, put the headphones down and felt the familiar hole opening in the middle of my chest and myself plummeting down through it. What was that? How could it be so strange and so good at the same time, so groundbreaking? Which planet was this guy from anyway?

I've had the same feeling with every single one of the musicians I admire, and not exclusively because of their originality, after all, there's nothing (or very little) new under the sun, and I find myself not specially intent on breaking boundaries. Extraordinary craftsmanship is enough to make me feel microscopic.

To give a few examples, in the field of lyrics there's Leonard Cohen (between the peanuts and the cage) or Ani Difranco (figure it all out with the mathematics of regret) with their ability to use accessible language to express very complicated and specific concepts, with the result of paralysing my brain for a second, and once regained it's functionality, finding myself overjoyed at the human connection that I feel. It's overwhelming and beautiful. That's exactly the effect I want to have on people.

There's also the singing, with David Coverdale's perfectly executed walks down the scale in very fast and very short steps, drawing playful intervals that no one has come up with before (Soldier of Fortune), or Dave Mustaine's nasty biting on his words, which come out charged with such attitude that they almost hurt as they make their way from your ears to your brain (In my darkest hour).

I could get lost in this detailed explanations of other people's genius, but that would be a futile exercise, as you probably have your own perception of genius and most likely it is different to mine. What this post is about is the effect that genius can have on a poor mortal like myself. Sometimes the effect is crushing, it makes you feel like never in a million years will you ever come up with anything half that good, you little worthless worm, you might as well jump through the windows right there and then... You get the picture.

And then you realize... well, there's only a few of them in the world anyway, the extraterrestrials, hard luck I wasn't born one but, hey! I do have a tiny bit of talent that I can put to work too, and with the help of the muses, I can actually make stuff that other people seem to like as well. So, yeah, maybe you won't be taking on the world any time soon, but maybe you can make the space-time continuum ripple some around you. That's also cool.

So, if you ever feel those ripples around you, kindly lend me an ear... maybe there's a connection to be found.