There are so many flavors of, well, everything. There must be ten different kinds of Triscuits, for example. And don't get me wrong. I'm quite fond of a Triscuit. But the one that comes to mind is the original shredded wheat variety: slightly salt-infused, a bit of oil baked in to temper the dryness and add just a hint of nutty flavor.
But the word, Triscuit, means so many things now: fire-roasted, garden herb, rosemary and olive oil, and others I don't recall at the moment. It reminds me of a line from a song, "All the crazy you get from too much choice."
Hey, I really do appreciate expansive freedom in cracker choices, it's just that sometimes two options actually suffice and, in this case, choosing between a Triscuit and a Wheat Thin has always been enough for me.
It's not that I don't like choice. I do; and very much so, when it really counts. Take art and music: when it comes to variety, I can't get enough of either of these. Show me a sculpture formed from an ingenious blend of materials or play me a tune that defies today's audio pigeonholes, and I'm ecstatic. In fact, you'll restore my faith in the future of art and music, and clear my mind of crackers, all in one fell swoop.
Not long ago, I produced a drawing of a building (is it a barn? a house?) set in snow-covered woods. For a lark, I decided to apply a variety of filters to see how many moods I could create with that one drawing.
Were these variations of a single drawing necessary? No; but there was something soul-soothing in sampling these many moods, something connecting me with humanity. While Golden felt sun-drenched surreal, warming up the snowy scene, Midday reminded me of childhood and the scent of my grandmother's cherry pies beckoning on a lazy Sunday afternoon. It's the eerie end of October when I look at Haunted, and I'm just arriving gratefully home from a long day in Dusk.
As they say, variety is the spice of life. But in life, as with food, to best compliment the experience, you need to know three things: when, what, and how much. If I had my choice (and there's that word, again), I'd lift the music business curse that now audibly limits the spectrum of songs produced. I'd launch a cultural revival of visual art in all its many forms.
But let's hold the fire-roasted Triscuits, please.
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