The Middle

January 18th, 2008Blog0 comments

American Idol is back on. I’ve never watched it before, but I think I’ll start watching it now to see what’s up.

Dave said something interesting about the show: We’re watching for the brilliant performers and the mediocre performers. It’s the average performers that wear down the judges. Brilliant performers are great to watch; mediocre performers are great to watch for a different reason. It’s the people in the middle, and the statistically huge size of that population, that wears down the judges so much.

The middle is what tires them out — averageness, and so much of it, is difficult to bear.

The thing is, everyone makes a journey through the middle from mediocre to greatness in whatever they do. In every story there is a trip through the middle — Jesus walking through the desert trying to decide what to do. The Training Montage. You need to work to become great. Brevity often requires a massive compression of that period in storytelling, but in real life the middle is the longest part.

The problem is that most people stop in the middle. It reminds me of this scene in The Sopranos where Jackie Aprile Jr. is hiding from a hit in the Boonton projects; he’s playing chess with a little girl and she starts winning halfway through. Frustrated, he smashes the pieces on the board. “You should’ve played that through,” her father says, “That’s the only way you’re ever gonna learn.” You’ve gotta get through the middle to learn how to play the end game. Don’t stop. The middle cannot be the end.