Sometimes, the most interesting lessons I’ve learned have come from the oddest situations. Like the time I boarded a bus to leave Caracas, where I was taking an IELTS test, back home. It was already way past sunset and the evening was setting it when we were on the road, and a movie starts playing.

“The Devil Wears Prada”. Bummer. A movie about clothes. Or fashion, whatever. Would have taken any godforsaken Van Damme movie over this. But anyway, there were no smartphones back then so the inability to rage tweet was one of the reasons I just payed attention to the movie.

Turns out, TDWP was an amusing first watch, and upon numerous rewatches it’s safe to say I consider it in my top 20 movies of all time. So many things stand out, and I know I’ve mentioned them at the same time, but right now I want to focus on just one scene which lasts barely one minute, and happens during a promo filming in outdoors NYC.

More precisely, the background music. It was Alanis Morrissette singing a rather catchy techno-inspired song. Maybe too techno for her own style. Much, much later I found out that it was a cover of a Seal song recorded in 1990, “Crazy”.

I’ve mentioned this other times, but to keep my bearings in terms of who I am (at least what I’ve discovered so far), and where I’m heading, I keep a ‘life soundtrack’, a compilation of a number of songs that I relate deeply to. I have never released the full list, but some of my most fervent viewers might have had glimpses of the songs that compose the list, since I’ve dropped names here and there, buried deep in hours long live streams.

Well, very recently, “Crazy” was added to my very personal compilation. I could have added the Seal original, but the Morissette cover grew up so much on me that I decided to keep this one. Even so, I dug a bit to know what were Seal’s inspirations for the song, and it’s uncanny how more than three decades separates us from that moment, and still how can we relate to his thoughts.

First, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. That’s where “and through a fractal on a breaking wall” comes from. The student uprising in Tiananmen Square “See yellow people walking through my head, one of them’s got a gun to shoot the other one”. The rapidly changing global scene, including the brutal economic shifts. We had left the vanilla 80s and entering a different territory. Maybe that’s why Grunge music became mainstream in the early 90’s as well.

One line from that song is particularly poignant:
“In a sky full of people, only some want to fly, isn’t that crazy?”

As in, ‘sky’ is the massive abundance that surrounds us right now. That is one of the problems of terminal doomerism: if you pay too much attention to the news, wether on the TV or on Twitter, doesn’t matter, you become far too cynical to realize that we’re living the best era of humanity.

I won’t judge those who are in this sky and don’t want to fly. I’ve been there myself. But if we are allowed to, if we have the means to, we should go for it. Not that it would be easy by any means, but it’s worth it.

I’m getting too abstract. So let’s go back to the lyrics, and the main motif of the song:
“We’re never gonna survive, unless we get a little crazy”.

So, how do we define ‘crazy’ In first place? I’d say that is anyone that thinks differently. But differently from who or what?

That’s the thing. If you see a man talking to rocks, giving them names and lecturing them on Plato and Aristotle, you’d say that the guy is loony. But it essence he’s just thinking different from us. We don’t think rocks can hear or understand what we say. And we’re definitely a majority.

So being crazy, in its most basic form, would be thinking differently than the majority. The difference is the outcome. If you talk to rocks, you’re crazy. If you say that space and time are relative and part of the same concept… you’ll be called crazy, at least for a while, until you prove them wrong. Just ask Einstein. Well, not literally, because the guy is dead. But you get what I mean.

I think what Seal wanted to say is that, despite all the insane stuff happening in the world, remaining optimistic was an act of defiance. Of being crazy in a sea of cynicism. Of thinking differently, believing that things were going to turn out OK, if not great, in the long run. And they have. Now we have Twitter to shitpost!

I used to think that you could completely disconnect from the world. Not pay attention to the news. Not get dragged into the mud of chaotic pessimism. But that’s impossible, if not downright irresponsible. We are constantly making decisions, and those decisions depend on our circumstances. We cannot exert critical thinking without enough ingredients, and our reality is part of it. Whether you get your news from the TV or social media (I still would recommend the latter, though)

You might be familiar with the quote ‘be in the world, but not of the world’. I took me years to understand and actually live through this. We are not of this world. We are made of stars. We’re a spark of perpetual energy, a perpetual flame if you will. We were born into this world to learn lessons. To experience emotions. To thrive and grow together.

Paradoxically, we need to be a little crazy to avoid getting entangled with the insanity of the world. Curious. Like fighting fire with fire, I guess? Remaining crazy saves us from falling into a cynical depression? Could be.

In the meantime, stay crazy with the firm belief that things are going to be OK… if not great. I, for one, will keep at it.

Much Love and Bliss,

Jesús.

The Body Language Guy