Another Wedding, and Some Philosophizing

I just got back from another wedding. This one was for my good friend Ryan and his lovely bride Kelly. One of my friends remarked that once all of the single people get married off, we’ll have no reason to rendezvous from across the country to the same spot anymore. I hope that’s not true. Hopefully we’ll at least all be a lot richer than most of us are now, so jet-setting across the country for the weekend will be totally possible and fashionable.

For a blessed occasion (and this wedding was definitely the blessed kind, in an actual church) there certainly was a lot of gambling that transpired. Or at least poker playing for plastic chips. It probably depends on your religion to figure how God feels about simulated gambling with no actual money involved. I played more poker in a short amount of time than probably ever before. And I must say that the absence of any real money was very liberating. I think what I learned is that I’m very cheap, because before, even playing with a $2.00 buyin made me nervous about every chip. But with nothing at stake, I could try out different strategies and be a bit bolder. Gone was the awful feeling of losing actual money for no apparent reason other than voluntarily engaging in an activity for which I have no skill. I still wasn’t very good, but at least I think I got better. It helped that we are all intellectual nerds and somewhat systematically trying to learn from each hand. Normally I hate that kind of deconstruction of a fun activity, but in this case I really was trying to figure out how to play better, so it was welcome.

Speaking of deconstructing, I feel the same way about art. After being logical and systematic about my technical job all day, one of the best things about music or movies or plays or literature is that it can be full of mystery and intangibles that feel deeper than mere facts. Which is why I’m always a little bit surprised to find academics or those who fancy themselves academics trying to break down some work of art into little observable, identifiable pieces. It almost seems to me as if they’re trying to pretend that subjective art is objective and scientific. I’m glad I don’t believe that it’s possible, because it would be a shame.