There are three things I’ve promised myself to do while unemployed charting my way towards self-employment. The first is concerned with said employment, and it’s probably the least interesting.

The other two things are joined endeavors: To read Don Quixote and to watch a full season of American Idol. These items are to be concurrent and not simultaneous. This sounds like a kind of contrived postmodern pairing, comparing high and low culture. The purpose is not to examine one in the light of the other, to draw comparisons between the Idol quest for fame and the man of La Mancha’s quest for chivalric legend.* No, it’s not about that.

Having invoked the analogy in my denial of it, here’s what this is about: Doing one thing I’ve attempted before (reading Quixote) and one thing I’ve never wanted to do before (watching Idol). And it’s about becoming involved in two long narratives, both occasionally daunting but full of their own brand of joy.

-Kent

 

* I am reminded of the Borges story ‘Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote’ in which Menard decries works that are ‘good for nothing but occasioning a plebeian delight in anachronism or (worse yet) captivating us with the elementary notion that all times and places are the same, or are different.’