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 is a bassist for The Rainkings and One Summer. By all rights, bassists should be dull, but he is a true, old-school rock and roll character. There is zero pretense to him. 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. Once, I saw him slip a twenty-pound note into the palm of an old school pal who was down on his luck. Not every town gets a local legend like that.
Rob is 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 sitting at his desk, swirling spilt coffee with his fingers, wearing an ambivalent smile. His only act of kindness towards me was proofreading my fanzine pieces, a task he completed in minutes despite my endless errors. We used to play golf until he got significantly better than me, at which point he abruptly quit and took up running. He still runs today, leaning forward with his mouth agape, looking like a man who has just crushed 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 fearing for our own futures. I still want to ask him to write a book. I am certain it would be beyond 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.
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