Find Rabbit Holes
And fling yourself down them
Read time: 8 minutes
Say what you want about 2022 but you can’t convince me that this isn’t a special time to be alive. For most of recorded history if you wanted to know something your ability to find an answer was limited to whatever book you could find on the subject and that likely required a trip to your local library. If you go further back your only option was to ask the oldest person you knew and accept whatever answer they gave you. This gave rise (I assume) to many interactions like the one depicted below:
But that is not the era that we all live in today. Today, we have the culmination of human knowledge at our fingertips. Not only that, but we also have some sort of (mostly) functioning internet economy that compensates people for following their curiosity and summarizing their findings online. We have easier access to more information than any person who has ever lived before us, be they Kings, Popes, Sultans, Emperors, or any flavor of ruler you can imagine. With great power comes great responsibility so the question becomes what should we do with what have been given?
The mind is a poor thing to waste as is a stable internet connection. Whoever you are, wherever you are, if you’re reading this you have access to practically every piece of human knowledge or content ever created. This being the case you are selling yourself short if you don’t find something that pique your particular interest and run that interest all the way into the ground.
Running an interest into the ground means that when you find an actor you love, let yourself watch everything on their IMDB page. When you find an author who speaks to your soul, read everything they’ve ever written. When you have a question that you deeply need to be answered, Google it and learn everything there is to know about the subject. You have the collective human experience (mostly) at your disposal and it would be an absolute shame to waste it wondering idly instead of pursuing those items that pique your curiosity.
Why Rabbit Holes
When I talk about Rabbit Holes what I am encouraging is the development of a healthy obsession for a topic, idea, person, event, or any other “thing”. The journey into the deep begins with curiosity and if followed that little pigment of curiosity can bloom into a full-blown obsession (or if you like, Passion). While Google may be optimized for maximizing click-through rates for ads of multinational corporations we have the choice to use it for the discovery of new interests and as an educator for those we already have.
There is nothing I love more than listening to someone speak about something esoteric that I know nothing about. In a single conversation, I can learn about something I’ve maybe never heard of before and feed off of the enthusiasm that the other person is expelling from every pore. It’s those types of conversations that make a lot of otherwise banal social situations interesting. In fact, those conversations are often the most memorable parts of nights out or weekends away. If you’re not indulging in your curiosities for yourself at the very least do it for me.
Sell Me Your Passion (And I’ll Sell You Mine)
Talking to people about their obscure interests is some of the most joy I get out of conversation and I’d wager that I’m not alone. While of course there are memes depicting men out in public boring some poor girl to death I think in the right setting there is no more enthralling conversation. Obviously, you have to pick your spot but at a house party where you can’t find the right place to stand a saving grace can come in the form of a person who happens to have an interest in something completely new to you. I encourage this kind of interaction while also retaining some socially acceptable escape mechanisms if I’m stuck in a conversation like the one below.
So, in the spirit of authenticity, I want to walk you through three of my rabbit holes this year and explain to you why these were worth so much of my time this year.
My Rabbit Holes of 2022
Nicolas Cage Movies
National Treasure is one of the best movies made in the early 2000s and there is no point in trying to convince me otherwise. Since that movie came out I have been a die-hard supporter of everything Nicolas Cage has made, while not actually seeing many of the films. For further context, my roommates and I were gifted a pillow with a shirtless Nic Cage rising from a banana peel as a housewarming gift, and ever since then, Mr. Cage has served as our home’s unofficial mascot.
That being the case, my roommates and I went deep into his filmography this year after seeing his magnum opus, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. Whilst on our journey we were treated to some of the best corny late 90s and mid-2000s action movies and a deep appreciation for how far visual effects have come in the last 20 years. Con-Air is an all-time classic as is Face-Off. For a more recent vintage of Mr. Cage, I recommend Pig as a wonderful portrayal of a culinary icon who gives it all up to live in the woods chasing truffles.
The Nic Cage rabbit hole led to many enjoyable nights with my roommates and a deep appreciation for one of the most interesting men in Hollywood.
Pete Holme’s Podcast
I’ve gone in phases with podcast addictions but my deepest dive into any podcast came with “You Made It Weird” by Pete Holmes. There is no format by design and the conversations that he hosts usually run in excess of two hours. This would normally be far too long to hold my interest but because of the lack of format, he is able to have expansive conversations that are thoughtful, entertaining, deep, and vulnerable. It’s a pure expression that is not edited, cut, or rearranged at all for the sake of appearances. Some of the exchanges are even awkward but that is the price you pay for authenticity.
I listened to between 30 and 40 episodes this year alone and can confidently say that I haven’t found a more engaging and educational podcast in years of exploration. I won’t recommend this to everyone as many people will find his style too roundabout and his laugh annoying, but I learned a lot about myself and comedy from my fascination with Pete Holme’s work, much of which has bled into this blog and more generally how I structure my life.
David Foster Wallace’s Written Work
If you’ve talked to me in the past six months there is a good chance I dropped the fact that I read Infinite Jest this year. I promise that it’s not my attempt at a humble brag but rather me trying to squeeze every last drop of value out of a project that I spent five months of mental energy on. There are countless more eloquent pieces on what is so good about DFW’s writing so I’ll let you search those out yourself. The reason why I was motivated to read a 1300-page behemoth after reading two full-length essay compilations was that his writing is the perfect portrayal of the human experience.
His writing goes into excruciating detail in every facet of a story and makes it feel as if you’ve crawled into the head of one of his characters. I’ve never read anything as vivid as DFW and for that reason he has leaped to the top of my all-time favorite authors list. As an aspiring writer reading his work has made me want to quit more than a handful of times. Still, I labor, knowing that I (nor will anyone else) be able to top DFW’s syntax, vernacular (and creation of new language), and his ability to nail a perspective such that you feel like you are inhabiting the body of your fellow man (or woman).
I’d like to think that my exploration of DFW’s work has made me a better writer but I don’t know how true that is. What it has definitely done for me has made me deeply appreciate great writing and that is a gift I won’t soon give up.
Go Forth
So I encourage you, that thing that you just wondered about? Google it! Read the Wikipedia page and the first three articles. Then click on some related thought that pops into your head and learn more about that topic. Read all the books about a subject. Read everything by a specific writer. Watch all the movies featuring your favorite actor. Do the thing you are most interested in for as long as it possibly interests you. Then find a new thing and beat that one to death. Do it all so the next time we meet up you have something you can talk my ear off about. Most of all I encourage you to use technology to bring you more joy and information than your great-grandparents had the capacity to process.
I've fallen out of the podcast game ever since I stopped commuting to work. Curious to hear how you fit it into your lifestyle.