[HN Gopher] The Banality of Genius: Notes on Peter Jackson's Get... ___________________________________________________________________ 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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-01-28 23:00 UTC)