I got rhythms, I got rhyme

Did you ever play those computer games back in the eighties – you know the text based adventure games that say:

YOU ENTER THE ROOM
THERE IS A KEY
>‘GO LEFT’
(YOU CAN NOT GO LEFT)
etc.
?

I did, briefly, in some computer room back in year 6, I remember the computer paper coming out with those even little holes punched in which I found quite appealing. I quite liked the games, but also found them infuriating. One thing it did introduce early in a fairly intuitive way to the impressionable mind of a 10 year old is the notion of ‘opportunity cost’ and also the idea of streams of events, things that you need to do now that will help you in a situation later. Keys from here for locks that may come later. Not needing to know the outcome now, but knowing that some things here done well or collected will be fortunate later in ways you might not even imagine.

I think I have absorbed something of that sensibility in how I interpret life and it’s choices.

Just recently went to this drawing course, it was borderline whether I’d go or not, I booked the annual leave but then went ‘oh, you know, maybe I have Things To Do that I should be doing instead, maybe I’ll take the leave and do life admin. Maybe it will be silly to do the course’. Maybe maybe. And then. All in a flurry, faxed my enrolment on the last possible day from Vietnam and got one of the last spaces in the only course with spaces still available (and loved it).

Then while at the course I browsed the notice boards, saw flyers for studio space. Ripped one off. Still had it in my pocket when I got home. Rang the guy. Chatted. Had to call him back on the weekend about times. Called him back, made a time. Went to see the studio space. Think I will now go ahead and sign a six month lease, and before I know it I have wandered out into a dreamscape, into a place I could never have got to by being sensible, and is only possible as the product of one choice and then the next in an environment where disbelief has been suspended temporarily. And so many of the good things that I’ve experienced thus far in my 31 years have come as a product of whim, of gut reaction, of rhyme over reason. Reason catches up. Reason nuts out the lists to make the things happen once the decision is already made. But reason alone makes for very boring decisions, don’t you think?

YOU ENTER THE ROOM.