[HN Gopher] The Banality of Genius: Notes on Peter Jackson's Get...
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The Banality of Genius: Notes on Peter Jackson's Get Back
Author : kkwteh
Score : 86 points
Date : 2022-01-28 10:56 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ianleslie.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ianleslie.substack.com)
| verisimi wrote:
| There are surely intelligent and capable people, but I tend to
| think the term 'genius' is used when there is a branding exercise
| being undertaken.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > using a show to perform songs from the album they just made is
| what ANY NORMAL BAND WOULD DO. But no. John and Paul get together
| before Christmas and decide they have to create a whole album's
| worth of new songs,
|
| That kind of struck me. I save all my presentations, so I can use
| them again. But I never do, I always gotta make a new one.
| gumby wrote:
| I'm actually not a huge fan of the Beatles* but wow, I really
| enjoyed this essay.
|
| * I think it's because they are simply _so good_ (an the sense
| explained in this essay) that I just heard them too much over the
| last 50+ years and they have become as much a universal cultural
| cliche as, say, Shakespeare. I have certainly listened to them a
| lot, with pleasure, but not so much in the past couple of
| decades.
| WalterBright wrote:
| One can get tired of hearing any song, no matter how good,
| after listening to it too many times.
|
| This fatigue cannot be cured by decades of not hearing it.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| > they have become as much a universal cultural cliche
|
| Same thing happened to me when I first listened to U2's Joshua
| Tree and Fleetwood Mac's Rumours. The first halves just sound
| like Greatest Hits records. But nope, they're just so
| ubiquitous that I've already heard half the album through
| cultural osmosis.
| js2 wrote:
| Bono doesn't think he's a very good singer.
|
| https://www.vulture.com/2022/01/bono-embarrassed-by-u2.html
| sockpuppet69 wrote:
| AutumnCurtain wrote:
| Ironic nickname, then ("Bono Vox" being the original form)
| WalterBright wrote:
| I find it implausible that 4 school chums from Liverpool turned
| out to be musical geniuses. It's much more plausible that they
| were reasonably smart, really loved music, and worked very hard
| learning to play. Once one learns to play well, moving into
| composition is a natural step.
|
| It's unsurprising that the Beatles' music they created as a group
| was better than what they did afterwards (much better). After
| all, if you're John Lennon, who is going to tell you your latest
| song sux, and btw, here's an improvement to it? Nobody but a
| fellow Beatle.
| cammikebrown wrote:
| So why aren't there a bunch of bands like the Beatles? Are you
| saying nobody worked as hard as them? They were only together
| less than a decade.
| grujicd wrote:
| If you ever played in a band, even if it's a middle-aged-friends-
| with-minimal-talent one, you'll enjoy Get Back immensely. It
| looks so real. Even if you weren't in a band, but in some other
| kind of a team of peers, you'll enjoy how group dynamics plays
| out. I still didn't manage to watch part 3, but first two are
| pure gold.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Part 3 is the payoff!! You've got to watch the rooftop concert.
| tomcam wrote:
| There's just nothing like getting into a groove when you're in
| a band.
| tomcam wrote:
| Beatles fan since 1963 here. Easily the best thing I've ever read
| about them. All the mind-reading, which I generally hate in
| profiles like this, is pretty well justified by context. For
| anyone creative, Peter Jackson's "Get Back" can be both
| heartening and devastating: the former because it reminds you
| that a lot of creativity is sweat equity, and the latter because
| holy shit, they just had it like no one else.
| klelatti wrote:
| If you enjoyed this then there is a good chance you will also
| enjoy Ian Leslie's '64 Reasons to Celebrate Paul McCartney', one
| of my favourite reads of 2020.
|
| https://ianleslie.substack.com/p/64-reasons-to-celebrate-pau...
| aidepast wrote:
| They were blue-collar artists. They just tried. They did not wait
| for ideal conditions. Solomon in Ecclesiastes 11 preaches such
| wisdom. They planted seeds without bothering to check the
| weather. Some of their seeds sprouted anyway, while those who
| waited for perfect weather, never planted at all, and grew
| nothing.
|
| "Genius" is just practice, and deliberate at that. You don't see
| it. It's not some dramatic characteristic that you see in Paul
| McCartney, or whoever; No, John Nash was not intensely examining
| numbers and equations as they were dramatically floating around
| him like in "A Beautiful Mind". He did exactly what you do, only
| without the neuroticism; without the time-wasting; without the
| rumination.
|
| Just plant the damned seeds. See what happens. Stop wasting your
| time ruminating. Imagine if Bach, or Da Vinci, Palestrina, Van
| Gogh, or Von Neumann decided to wait, and wait, until everything
| was just right, before they begin their studies/work. Nobody
| today would recognize those names. You would not be able to
| listen to Missa Papae Marcelli. It would just not exist. These
| people would be called "workaholics" today, an incredibly
| unfortunate term. Bach wrote over 1,000 pieces in his career. Van
| Gogh has over 900 paintings in less than 10 years.
|
| As far as I can see at this point, "geniuses" are simply people
| who do not waste their time. Q3/Q4 of the Eisenhower Matrix is
| another planet to them. They live on the "Important" row, and
| they utilize that time.
|
| To tie this into the HN community - think of the people who "want
| to learn to program" and yet they spend all of their time
| ruminating on which book to read, or language to learn, et
| cetera.
| klelatti wrote:
| It's a necessary but not sufficient condition. Not everyone who
| works as hard as the Beatles achieves what they did.
| nickff wrote:
| > _" Not everyone who works as hard as the Beatles achieves
| what they did."_
|
| Definitely true that they had a remarkable result, but I
| don't know of anyone who actually works/worked that hard and
| 'failed' (by any reasonable definition). Most people tend to
| dramatically overstate their persistence and work ethic.
| aidepast wrote:
| It's a small club. Yes, luck is always involved, and you are
| not in control. Luck hits you. When the lightning strikes,
| you're either ready or you are not. The problem is that most
| people seem to behave in an exact opposite manner. They waste
| their life, waiting for luck to swoop them off of their feet.
| This is definitely wrong. You prepare yourself for when these
| opportunities decide to reveal themselves.
|
| It's like saying "I'm not going to begin to exercise and
| attract a partner until I meet them first" - a recipe for
| failure. You must become the attractive person, and then,
| when they happen to enter your life, you attract them.
|
| I apologize. I'm riffing.
| klelatti wrote:
| Please don't apologise - very well put and I agree
| completely.
|
| The fact that the work is necessary is what most people
| overlook. I just worry a little that if we expect too much
| then that itself can be a barrier to sustainably putting
| the effort in.
|
| It's OK to work hard and achieve a modest amount. We should
| take pleasure in what we do achieve.
| [deleted]
| champagnois wrote:
| I agree with you. This is a big part of my current philosophy
| of life. Do and read and learn.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I recall a fellow employee said he wanted to get into
| programming, and what should he do? I suggested he pick up the
| manual, read it, and start programming.
|
| Needless to say, he did nothing of the sort, and the world
| passed him by.
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