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Beyond the Obvious: Art as a Way of Life.
In life, there are Artists and then there are people who ‘do’ art. The two are not the same.
I used to be a fan of Stargate in the days when ‘The Sci-Fi Channel’ wasn’t a ‘syfy’ joke and TV in general was still worth the effort to watch. One of the more interesting characters to come across the screen was Rodney McKay — the brilliant, neurotic, genius of a scientist behind much of the awkward humor written for the Stargate: Atlantis series. One of his more interesting character quirks was his professed deadly allergy to anything citrus. So if anyone wanted to rattle his fictional cage and put him in his place after he pontificated on his scientific acumen, they merely had to pull a lemon out of their pocket. Fun, right…?
Ultimately, it’s not important that you know a lot about the character or his place in the franchise canon. What is relevant here is that Rodney was an expert at playing piano before he committed to being a scientist, but his teachers told him he should stop playing for good. The reason given was that Rodney may have been highly proficient, in the technical sense, at playing the piano, but he demonstrated through his ability that he was incapable of getting the spiritual side of the craft and would, thus, never be a real musician.
