Within each of us is a bit of Johnny Weir and a bit of Evan Lysacek. The Johnny in us wants to feel alive, look beautiful, be in touch with our senses, speak our minds, act on what inspires, push the envelope, and explore other cultures. The Evan in us wants to trust that those in power know best and to please them.
The Johnny in us questions, brainstorms, gets bored with repetition, and follows our own hearts. The Evan in us endures sensory deprivation, shuts up, takes orders, and works overtime for the report card/team/company.
There's a bit of Johnny and Evan within both Johnny and Evan to get the results they both get. Johnny hires Galina to reinforce his inner dominatrix. Evan reads Twyla Tharp's “The Creative Habit” to fan his dimmer inner creative spark. But the bottom line is that starting in our early infancy and amplified in our terrible twos and thereafter, our families, schools, churches, and bosses have more often been stifling the Johnny within us and promoting our inner Evan.
Kayso no wonder Evan gets the corporate sponsors, the PR machine, and bigger medals. But Johnny gets more posters and banners, more flowers and gifts, more mail, more twitter, more facebook posts/comments, more blogs, more hearts and minds, more and louder shrieks, and more and longer standing ovations. As evidenced by the blogs, Johnny even haunts more fans' dreams. Johnny plays a cheeky Mozart to Evan’s buttoned-down Salieri.
Naturally, the Evans of the world run Wall Street, the boardrooms, and the beltway. But, ironically, when the burghers become really successful and rich, often they finally do something about the gnaw of inner deprivation and want to collect Van Gogh paintings, volunteer/donate to the boards that fund Mozart festivals and build museums, etc. Being a patron of the arts is a vicarious sublimation, but at least it keeps them from totally buying up politicians, owning all the water systems, privatizing all the waterfronts, and doing even worse damage to the economy.
I don’t think that Johnny is Dionysian to Evan’s Apollonian. Both channel Dionysus and Apollo, but Johnny definitely wins the popularity contest among the Maenads.
There’s the nose-to-the-grindstone Evan in me, but there’s also the rebellious, stubborn, and cheeky Johnny within. My inner Evan gets me the good employee reviews, good user reviews (for my training/user manuals), and the next gig. The Johnny in me gets me writing/poetry awards but also gets me burned out or bored out of my mind or even fired on rare occasions. I have change jobs about every two or three years...about when the smell of the company carpeting becomes intolerable. Such is my crazy life.
Bottom line is that in rooting for (and voting for) Johnny, I’m keeping alive my own and everyone else’s inner Johnny. My poems are the singing canary in the corporate coal mine.
