BEATS OF LOVE
185. I'm Free by The Who
MY COMEDY career died the day I tried to live-stream my brain.
I used to get laughs from accidental, blurted out thoughts. But then I watched Peep Show, got arrogant, and started over sharing on purpose. Turns out my "unfiltered genius" was actually just tedious. The town of Shaw has only ever produced two real geniuses: ET and Rob.
ET played bass for the unsung heroes of the local scene, The Rainkings and One Summer. Conventional wisdom says bass players should be dull, but he breaks the mould; a genuine, old-school rock and roll character who nearly steered Bingo Jesus to mainstream success. There is zero pretense to him either. Whether he is enjoying a liquid lunch or cranking the stereo at 3:00 am, he doesn't try to be eccentric. He just does strange as a matter of course. He’s got a massive heart, too; I once watched him slip a twenty-pound note into the palm of an old schoolmate down on his luck. Not every town gets a local legend like that.
Then there is Rob, a complex enigma. He read literature at Keble College, Oxford, before somehow winding up in the same warehouse where I worked. I was instantly drawn to him the day I saw him at his desk, swirling spilled coffee with his finger, wearing a perfectly ambivalent smile. His sole act of kindness toward me was proofreading my fanzine submissions, a task he dispatched in minutes, gracefully erasing my endless errors. We used to play golf together until he became significantly better than me, at which point he abruptly quit the game and took up running. He still runs today, leaning heavily forward with his mouth agape, looking like a man who has just punished his body for twenty miles.
Now, the two of us sit in the same care home on Sundays. Half-smiling, half-drowning, we watch our loved ones slowly fade away, undoubtedly harbouring quiet fears about our own futures. I still want to ask him to write a book. I am certain it would be nothing short of brilliant.
Looking back, my biggest mistake wasn't trying to live-stream my brain; it was believing that brilliance had to be performed. True genius, like ET’s effortless rock and roll heart or Rob’s sharp, enigmatic mind, doesn’t need a digital stage or an intentional spotlight. It simply exists in the quiet, unscripted moments of life.
