Things I Can't Understand

Since “John writing about stuff he likes” is basically all there is to this blog, I think I’ve made my interests and disinterests pretty clear by this point. Anyone who’s read most of my posts could probably guess that my five favorite things are (in no particular order): religion, Legos, running, the color green, and English-language written narratives. I guess that makes my five least favorite things theological apathy*, Megablocks, weight-lifting, the color red. I’m not exactly sure what the opposite of English-language written narratives would be, though. Some kind of bizarre silent French film would probably be the most accurate answer but, in terms of what I actually hate most, it would probably be STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). It’s not that I hate what STEM does, obviously I’m happy writing on a computer and not getting polio and all the other things that logical problem-solving has done for humanity. I just really can’t understand how anyone would ever be interested in that stuff. That seems harsh, especially coming from a student at a liberal arts college. But I’ve never been able to feel for people who get excited by the sight of numbers and greek letters on a white board. And at Grinnell there are a disproportionately high number of people like that.

We all have things like that, don’t we, interests where the appeal just doesn’t make any sense? Every time I’m near a road with my younger brother, at some point he’ll gasp, turn, point at some completely ordinary car and say something like, “Look! A Ford Jeep BMW Heffalump WRXABC!” He’s even got this idea to take out all the seats in our family’s minivan and put the engine in the center of the car because “it would just be so cool!” Same with me and Bionicles, I don’t expect an average bystander to understand why I think it’s essential to differentiate between Makuta Teridax as the calculating psychopath he turned out to be and Makuta as the sympathetic villain he was originally conceived as. But there are certain things where it seems like it should matter more. Every day I’m surrounded by people who have dedicated their lives to pure math and pure science and pure computer wizardry, many of whom talk about how English “isn’t really their thing,” and I can’t help but wonder why.

Is it something to do with the rush of solving a problem that seemed impossible when you set out? Sure, maybe, but is it really worth all that frustration to exhale and take a moment of satisfaction before moving on to the next problem? Maybe it’s less the the science and math itself, but the implications of what it does? Yeah, but there are people who honestly get excited to take calculus class. Where’s the thrill in punching numbers into a calculator to solve a problem without a real-world equivalent? Sometimes I think that none of these people really like it, that they just know it’s where the money is, so they pretend to themselves that it’s their passion while secretly working on their novels at night. But, really, most of the time I admit that I have no idea.

There’s something tempting in the sort of exclusivity. Ever since I’ve declared an English major I haven’t exactly been shy about letting people know. Usually it comes with some self-deprecating quip about how I’ll be living with twelve roommates for the next decade, but I really don’t mind the persona of a starving artist. Back in elementary school kids got super defensive of their Hogwarts house, then in middle school it shifted to Camp Half-Blood cabin. Different name, same game, since in college people get tribal about their college majors.

And maybe that’s not entirely a bad thing. I mean, you can’t do everything, and I was sick enough of math and science in high school to want to be done with it forever. But, under the thrill of making myself a loud and proud English major, there’s always been this feeling that I’m missing out, that while I’m reading and writing eight hours a day, some people out there are making real change and I’m wasting my shot to be a part of it, or even understand it. Of course, sit me down with a math textbook and that feeling will dry up quick, but show me the result of some incredible science project and it’ll come back, no question.

I think the answer is that these different interests aren’t as different as we make them out to be. I always wrote off music as one of those things I’m just not good at. Sure, I like listening to it, but I never had the technical skill to excel at piano or the sharp ear to be a discerning critic. But, three years ago, I was in the attic of this great all-purpose shop in Detroit which housed the music studio for a grammy award-winning artist and my grandfather’s art studio. It was Christmas time, so the place was full of shoppers, and crowds huddled in the music studio. Some people came forward to jam on the array of instruments available to anyone talented enough to join in. The music was rough and unfinished, not the quality of anything you’d hear published, but there was something incredible in all these strangers fitting their talents together so naturally, and so isolating about having no idea how they were doing it. So instead of listening, I bummed around the empty, drafty art studio, examining the pencil lines and brushstrokes on my grandfather’s paintings, another thing I could always appreciate but never imitate or understand. Then this kid, about my age, came out to talk to me. He was a musician and music editor, he’d even designed some tracks for a Korean band he’d met online and regularly preformed at local venues. Then he asked me what I did, and I talked about the literary magazine I edited for, and eventually the conversation fell into a strange balance between the two interests. He admitted he didn’t know much about writing, and it was clear enough I knew nothing about music, but we talked about how there were so many people in the field, struggling and publishing online and forming these odd little communities and learning from each other, and it all came in a way that made writing and music fit neatly up against each other**. It was almost like what was happening in the studio: random people off the street, fitting their skills together and making something new.

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*Distinctly different from atheism. I think that atheism is crushingly depressing, but it makes some pretty compelling points and is vital for any broad discussion of religion.

** I ended up copy-editing a zine he published (turns out he’s a lot better at writing than he let on, so there wasn’t much for me to do). If you want to check it out, here it is.