breadth and depth
Knowing a little about everything means you are interesting to most, in a bounded sense. And you’re never bored. Knowing a lot about a few things means you are very interesting to few people. But with those, you can interact with great depth. Intensity.
If you can master just one thing, you can become infinitely more interesting to not only those who care about that thing but to people who are otherwise uninitiated. True mastery means you can bring forth what others can only begin to appreciate the hints of. The ideas you can express grow strongly with such a foundation. So it is with understanding and appreciation. Most books describe very simple ideas that can be digested in a single line. But what ideas – and there are many – require story after story, or setup after setup to fully impress upon us their magnitude? I try to read books that require full reading. Unfortunate, because then you can’t easily skim. But so it is with Quality.
I was explaining to someone a single episode of a television show. And I realized that I could not fully appreciate the subtlety, and the true message at the very end of the episode without fully having experienced it. The full episode, with its character development, depiction, and narrative. The season, and in fact the entire show. That over years, the character would behave in one manner, and then in the final two minutes, after facing great strife, change their behavior. The magnitude is inexplicable, but hard to grasp.
Music lends itself to the same. I’ve found that after listening to the same song for years that one day I can start to hear the subtlety in the tone, the delicate composition that is made in the layers below the most prominent surface melodies and beats. That the more you listen to the same artist throughout their growth, the more you can appreciate their musical style developing, bits nurtured, the impact of bandmembers leaving and joining.
Today it seems like most people are preoccupied with finding the newest, consuming briefly – vegging out, if you will, on the music, and giving less depth and appreciation to masterpiece works. I of course do this as well in some respects. For me the purest listen is with the lights out, perhaps with beverage in hand, no distractions, no other disturbances. For certain albums, I’ll even put on blindfolds to deprive the self of distraction, focusing on the album. I know some friends once had listening parties, when an especially anticipated album would be released.
IDEO says they like “T-shaped” people. Well, most people have the head of the T. It’s easy, especially today, to like a little bit of everything. But what do you like a lot of? What do you do a lot of? That’s what sets you apart from everyone else.
