when diplomacy fails
Jan. 23rd, 2006 04:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
"You've been tellin' me you're a genius since you were 17, and all the time I've known you I still don't know what you mean"--old Steely Dan song
There's a certain kind of insightful person who fascinates me--someone who seems to "get" and intuit everything, but never makes the choices that go with insight. Not every choice is a "bad" choice, of course--sometimes entirely good choices prove to have worked out poorly. Yet there's this elusive quality to the way some of the brightest people handle some of the most important choices.
They talk a lot about the coyote trickster. But what of the perpetually tricked genius? Perhaps an animal would be in order there, too. Sometimes, diplomacy fails, and one finds oneself merely negotiating with people who are far cleverer than one could ever be. They leave, truce declared, and plunge down the edifice. You hear of their choices across the decades--genius, sadly, at work. Cleverness leads them there. But is cleverness rewarded? Is that squeal on Autumn nights the shriek of the genius self-tricked rabbit?
When Diplomacy Fails
There's a certain kind of insightful person who fascinates me--someone who seems to "get" and intuit everything, but never makes the choices that go with insight. Not every choice is a "bad" choice, of course--sometimes entirely good choices prove to have worked out poorly. Yet there's this elusive quality to the way some of the brightest people handle some of the most important choices.
They talk a lot about the coyote trickster. But what of the perpetually tricked genius? Perhaps an animal would be in order there, too. Sometimes, diplomacy fails, and one finds oneself merely negotiating with people who are far cleverer than one could ever be. They leave, truce declared, and plunge down the edifice. You hear of their choices across the decades--genius, sadly, at work. Cleverness leads them there. But is cleverness rewarded? Is that squeal on Autumn nights the shriek of the genius self-tricked rabbit?
When Diplomacy Fails
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Date: 2006-01-24 02:24 am (UTC)I suddenly think of http://www.makingfiends.com/ Here, we meet an (evil) genius, Vendetta, and Charlotte. Is Charlotte stupid, as one of her classmates intones? (Second season, i think) Yet how do we measure the final results: here is the creative (evil) genius Vendetta, perpetually yowling in failure, and here is Charlotte -- ultimate Polyanna? Creative songbird?
Could it be, in cleverness and genius, some of us are tied to specific outcomes, expect our efforts and decisions to turn out just so? And we can't bear it when it doesn't turn out that way, and it becomes failure?
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Date: 2006-01-24 04:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-24 02:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-24 04:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-24 04:38 am (UTC)I just love that line, one of my all-time favorites in any Steely Dan song---and I know almost every song they ever recorded. It's a typical Donald Fagen put-down. And, it's from the song "Reelin' In The Years".
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Date: 2006-01-24 04:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-24 04:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-24 04:48 am (UTC)Yeah, it's a good one. I've been listening to the album "Countdown To Ecstasy" quite a bit recently. That, if memory serves correctly, was their 2nd album.
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Date: 2006-01-24 05:02 am (UTC)My favorite Steely Dan song is probably "Any Major Dude", but "Reelin" is also great, almost every song on Aja and I take it back, because "Time out of Mind" is my favorite.
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Date: 2006-01-26 05:47 pm (UTC)You could be right, maybe it was Katy Lied. Any any rate, both "Any Major Dude" and "Time Out Of Mind" are great songs. I've had numerous conversations about Aja, and the consensus amongst my friends is that it is their most perfect album---every damn note is right on the mark. A jazz musician friend of mine says its more like a suite, that the songs all fit together as one large work.
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Date: 2006-01-24 04:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-24 05:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-24 05:02 am (UTC)