About Average
Post 12:
Does it ever seem like the world is asking you to be average? To throw out a “for instance,” take politics. Yeah, you get two big choices, but they are pretty generalized, like the people that are expert on average got together and decided that this is what we average people could stomach, all the way down to the proportions.
I could do this for days. Movies. Which films make the most money? Superheroes, of course. The Marvel Universe will own the actual Universe before it’s all over. Good for them. Seriously. But here’s what happens in an average Marvel movie, made for the average person’s entertainment. There’s a thing that will kill everybody on the planet, and then there’s a big fight at the end that gives some people a rush and tends to give me tired-head. Not a lot of variety when it comes down to it. Again, good for them. But the law of diminishing returns looms somewhere out there, and then—what? Seriously. Then what?
Then something else will be successful, and anybody who can will attempt to keep up, ape, mimic, whatever you want to call it. This is a perfectly logical capitalistic response, but if I’m honest, it gives me a creepy feeling in the back of my head. Like I’m being manipulated. Let’s be honest, we’re being manipulated. It’s not a nefarious thing. Just people trying to have fun doing their thing, while making insane amounts of money. I’m kind of in favor of this, so don’t ask me for a hard conclusion quite yet.
It’s not something brought up randomly. I’ve whiled away serious time trying to understand what the average person likes, who decides what’s average, and if I’m average. If I had a hard answer I wouldn’t keep it a secret. That would make me an average dick.
People have been critical of me in the past for overthinking this stuff, and they have a point. I kind of have to brush it off though, because I’m a musician and a writer and a goofball that pretty much just wants to find out how to entertain as many people as I can.
Or do I? Maybe I want to do “my thing,” audience be damned. Hope not. Even if this were possible, I’m not sure what value it has. People always talk about the artist that doesn’t care about what others think, and when they say that, I picture a douchebag with a smirk and weird hair. No! I declare that the goal is to make the average guy or gal happy. See how circular this is? I have to figure out what average is, and in doing that, I have to insult an entire section of people, then I have to feed them what they want.
Wait. None of that sounded cool. At all. Maybe I need weird hair. There has to be somewhere in the middle that makes sense. Oh no. I just realized that I’m inadvertently bringing up the concept of average to explain averages. To hell with it. I’m going to do something simple. There’s some astrophysics I’ve been meaning to get to.
See you after.
