I am fifty years old. Early in life I realized that I didn't understand anyone else and they clearly didn't understand me. In order to understand what was going on, I tried to learn everything about everything, reading voluminously on every subject imaginable. I soon focused on mainly history and science, although I also enjoyed learning about languages and the origins and changes of words (etymology). I also found myself fascinated by aircraft, ships and tanks, especially those of the World Wars of the 20th century.
The character of Manfred von Richthofen (the Red Baron) intrigued me as an archetype of the traits of loyalty and courage. I have studied much about the Red Baron's career and death. I even wrote a song about it that has a video on YouTube. Last year I was contacted by the author of one of my favorite books on this subject who found one of my pages about the Red Baron on the Internet. He liked it, and after some correspondence autographed a copy of his book to me.
Besides the Red Baron and the aircraft he flew, two more of my special interests include the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Midway in the Pacific Theater of World War II. I can talk for hours without repeating myself about minute trivia of the ships, aircraft and people involved, as well as describing the battles themselves.
For about the past thirty years I have also studied the subject of evolution intensely (yes, I wrote a song about that too), and I am astounded that so many Americans in particular are so badly misinformed about this subject as to deny that it happens. Seriously folks, this is just as crazy as if half the adult population were to insist the earth is flat in spite of all evidence to the contrary. It really is that obvious, which makes the existence of this so-called "controversy" even more incredible. I see well-meaning but badly misinformed idiots busily trying to legislate us back to the Dark Ages, and the scary thing is no matter how many times they are defeated by reason, truth and overwhelming physical evidence, they don't give up but keep coming up with new sneakier ways to force their ignorance onto everybody's schoolchildren.
I have encyclopedic knowledge of science and history in general, but the past few decades have spent more time on comparative mythology and non-dualistic philosophies including Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism. These studies have helped me cope with some of the frustrations of my existence more than my knowledge of history and science has. In the 1990s I studied much by Joseph Campbell, but didn't agree with many of his conclusions. He was a great storyteller though.
The past seven or eight years I have listened to many hours of talks given by the 20th century philosopher and "spiritual entertainer" Alan Watts. He was best known for explaining eastern philosophies to western audiences. He wrote many books, but I don't really enjoy reading his books nearly so much as I enjoy listening to him talk. He is a blast to listen to. I have about fifty hours of him talking on various subjects, and I have listened to many of these talks dozens or even hundreds of times.
I am also "The Bicycling Guitarist" in real life, not just on the internet. Usually I play only my own original songs, but for some reason the Beatles song Help! has fascinated me the past five or six years. When I set it to loop in a media player, I can play along to that song about three times every seven minutes, or about twenty-five times per hour. There's been more than once that I played along to it four hours straight through, no breaks, meaning I played that song on guitar one hundred times in a row. Sometimes I would play that song for hours every day for weeks and weeks, even months. Needless to say, my daughter and my housemate both hate that song! Just last week I found a new way to pick the lead riff George Harrison plays at the end of the intro and each chorus. Like them or not, the Beatles were one of the most popular rock bands of all time, and the Beatles themselves all liked this song. John considered it one of the only two songs he was proud of from his time with the Beatles (the other being Strawberry Fields).
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"When you ride over sharps, you get flats!"--The Bicycling Guitarist, May 13, 2008
Last edited by TheBicyclingGuitarist on 15 Apr 2011, 9:18 pm, edited 2 times in total.