Thursday, November 4, 2010

The good jack

My mother always said, and society reiterated, "it is undesirable to be a jack of all trades, but a king of none." While I do not dispute the inherent desirability of being a king of one occupation/hobby/whatever it may be, I do seem to have a bit of a problem, accepting the undesirability of being a jackk of all trades. Indeed I believe that not only is it desirable, it is in fact a necessity in becoming the king of one, should you so desire. How else can you tell whether you like that one thing more than the others when you have no idea, or at least a working knowledge of the others? Would you in earnestness be doing justice to your so chosen occupation by not knowing what lies beyond the fence?

This seems to have hit me out of the blue, however some deliberation in the course of writing this has led me to believe that it does not stem from career uncertainty as one is want to presume in someone my age, it actually is on account of a more daily affair. I'll tell you a truth or at least what society would have me believe is a truth, I Ayush Mohan do not possess enough in depth knowledge on any one subject to provide an authoritative argument for or against it. I say society, please pardon me I mean only those closest to me although my haters too hold this opinion. It was such today that one person really close to me indicated this albeit indirectly, perhaps it is me reading too much into it however I felt it and thus also felt the need to deliberate on it.

On the point of music, no doubt some might even call me tone deaf, but trust me as much as you would like to believe it, my lack of affinity for one genre/band/artist/period or whatever myriad boundaries you may draw is NOT a decoy for hiding my ignorance on the subject. It is just the plain and simple truth, I DO appreciate and like music across all genres periods and artists, and refuse to conform to those stupid lines drawn in the minds of the truly naive, I proudly proclaim here I AM a jack of all music (not meaning to say I've heard all but I have heard a fairly broad spectrum) and I am supremely proud of it. Really world, I do believe I shall be able to at least defend my likes and strong dislikes in the subject, what I won't be able to do however is say I like all music of one particular classification simply because it belongs to it, nor will I be able to go into the niceties of music, I am not an expert and never professed to be, but I will be able to hold my own.

On the point of literature and thinkers or schools of thought, I admit I have not read all and thus will not make a compelling argument from all points of view on all matters under the sun, I will however be able to tell you about what I know of what I've read, here too I am a jack and proud of it. Being a jack here has at least enabled me to remain open to other viewpoints much more than what I can say of my individually distinguished and honestly rather puritan colleagues. 

I could go on listing things here, it would be redundant suffice to say however I am a rather prolific jack being not really picky in what I develop an interest in and msot definitely not judging others for their interests or passions, however at one particular hater I would as an example of the unpleasantness of judging like to point out that "peace" ceased to be an acceptable form of ending a conversation without any relation to peace in any form, back in the 60s a time you aspire to no doubt however a time you most definitely do not belong to despite your musical loyalties and tastes, and really whiling your youth in pubs is NOT going to put you in that period. See, judging isn't very nice and glass houses are places we all live in.

Moral of the story: Be open boys and girls, trust me it feels good :)

(hate the abruptness but this pain in my chest is now getting too much to ignore :) )

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