The problem with being widely read or its parallel in other genres (music, film, etc.) is that you will always give the impression of not knowing much. Because you know "a little about everything", as opposed to most people, who know a lot about a few specific things.
I can talk to someone about country and classical and hip-hop and glam metal and 20s dance bands and 30s blues and 40s pop music and 50s folk music and 60s garage rock and 70s punk and 80s indie pop and 90s alt-rock and musical movements from various parts of Africa and the history and traditions of calypso and indigenous music from the US to Australia and traditional vocal music from Italy and Bulgaria and the rise of European and Asian artists covering translated versions of American bands' tunes starting in the mid-20th century and so on...
...but only a little bit of each of these things. So if I meet anyone who's an expert in any one of them, they'll presumably want to talk about the thing they're an expert in. And me being an obliging sort, I'll go "lovely, of course we can talk about that!" and we'll talk about it, and naturally they'll come across as far more informed about that specific thing than I am. Because they ARE far more informed about it.
And of course I could go "OK you know way more than me about, say, contemporary country music – but do you know anything about [everything else I listed above]? No? HA, see, I know more than you!"
But there's no reason to do that. I'm not insecure and I don't enjoy showing off and it's both rude and pointless to bandy one's knowledge about like that, especially when you already know that it means discussing topics your conversational partner has no interest in.
Luckily that's not a problem for me, because I'm not generally the type of person who feels a craving to display their knowledge, but it is odd to realize that to the majority of music fans I will meet, I will come across as "not very informed about music", when really I probably know more about music than most folks I talk to.
But with music, as with so many things, I am voracious and insatiable, and being informed on only one specific niche of music is not enough to satisfy me – I feel compelled to learn about EVERYTHING! And life is short, so there's only so much you can know about everything.
I have made my decision – it's breadth, not depth; the ability to draw comparisons between very different things and examine topics both diachronically and synchronically (to borrow the terminology from linguistics for a moment), where a "real expert" would typically choose one of the two, and where your common "rabid fan" would choose neither one and would merely focus very intensely on one topic within a limited time period – and I'm happy with it. But sometimes my particular situation gives me a wry sort of amusement. You can't be a dedicated jack-of-all-trades without having the capability to accept that you will seem ignorant to almost everyone you meet.
dailybridgerton
2087
prguitarman
stormborns
blakekathryn
snowghoul
pixelskylines
