How We Got So Lost

Content is king, but it’s the kind that wants to burn us all, and this pirate would love to know if there’s a Kingslayer handy.

Transcript

This pirate is going on a diet. Typically, that’s not a thing that would come out of his mouth. He’s precisely five-foot-four and 140 pounds, so diet is not exactly the first thing that would come to mind looking at him. And yet, this pirate is cutting out a lot of empty calories. They’re the empty calories of the mind.

A recent podcast with his friendly philosopher suggested that this pirate simply ‘change the channel.’ The friendly philosopher was right, but after a lot of thought, this pirate believes that the answer covers more than just the reality tv and superhero movies that were the subject of the discussion. This pirate started to think about the amount of time he spent looking down, as he discussed our last visit, and it’s not so much that this pirate needs to change the channel as much as it is he needs to kill his television.

Content is king, but it’s the kind that wants to burn us all, and this pirate would love to know if there’s a Kingslayer handy. More to the point, though, this pirate has realized that the channel is a zero-sum game. You cannot sail if you’re watching someone else sailing. You can’t create if you’re watching someone else create, and you cannot do something original if you’re being influenced by someone else’s originality. Humans are a lot like that sometimes; I ape, therefore I am.

This is one of the realizations that this pirate came to when reassessing his life. Sure, there are a million and one things this pirate can do creatively, but most of it sounds like something someone else is doing…but there’s one thing this pirate has done that is wholly his own. If you’ve listened to this pirate for a long time, you may pick up on what that is because I’m doing it right now. This pirate is a long-lost friend that’s reappeared. A tortured artist who has descended from the rafters to paint a new picture for all of us. Only this time, the edges have blurred. This pirate is he, and he is me, and we are all together.

And this pirate would like to know how we all got so lost.