Because it’s tough to delineate commentary in a quote post on tumblr, I wanted to chime in with an additional post to share some of my thoughts on John Mayer’s entry…
To be honest, I didn’t like John Mayer’s music until Continuum came out; when I got into that CD, my initial disdain for “another scraggly-haired, mid-twenties guitar playing white guy” was sidelined enough for me to go back and listen to some of his older stuff and have at least some appreciation for it. I think he’s an incredible guitar player, and he’s probably in the top five list of celebrities I’d want to be friends with.
Why?
- I play guitar (badly), and one of my guitars is a John Mayer Stratocaster because I dig his sound, and the guitar has a different “style” than most normal Strats.
- He’s got a great dry sense of humor.
- He seems like an intelligent guy. When anyone interviews him or tries to catch him off guard, it always seems like he’s intentional with what he says, even to the point where he’s just entertaining himself with a witty comment that no one else gets … In that interview he mentions that he tried to “avoid the cliche.”
- He’s made a tutorial about “how to make girls cry.”
His Post
The bigger a celebrity, the larger his/her audience. Most celebrities choose not to engage much with the public outside of their grounds for celebrity, so it’s refreshing to get direct insight from a person. I guess I’m partial to that kind of transparency given what I do for a living, but I’ve also seen how that transparency can be communicated poorly, so I especially appreciate when it is done well.
While his post is heavy on the profound “life-changing experience” high, I think its context and the perspective redeem some of the cheesiest of thoughts (like “And when it’s all over, whether at the end of this fabulous career or of this life, which I hope takes place at the same time, I should look back and say that I had it good and I made the most of it while I was able. And so should you.”).
My favorite quote from the post:
“This is about the girl in her bedroom who poses in front of the camera she’s awkwardly holding in her outstretched hand. She’ll take a hundred photos until coming up with one she’s happy with, which inevitably looks nothing like her, and after she’s done poring over images of herself, will post one on her myspace page and then write something like ” I don’t give a f*ck what you think about me.”
It seems like a lot of people live their lives from the outside looking in. I don’t know what to make of that quite yet because I’m certainly not innocent of that practice, but I’m certainly interested in trying to flesh out what that means for society (in both the “real” and “virtual” senses).
