Echo Beach Tide Pools

A Passion For Asteroids!
By Keith Alan Johnson
02-12-2000

I loved Asteroids! The simple black and white screen created a magic unlike any pinball game ever could. I had the ability to maneuver the little wedge shaped spaceship with simple rapid taps on a couple of buttons. I could evade destruction from astronomical forces. I could fight back by firing a little stream of dots that would pulverize massive stone into photonic dust. Imagination and a few simple buttons gave me power with merely the drop of a quarter.
I would spend hours ...okay, a large chunk of an hour... playing that game almost every chance I got. I would fall asleep with the game playing behind my eyelids. A white outline of a wedge shape spaceship would flit through my mind, shooting and pulverizing white stone outlines. I played my best while I was falling asleep. I could correct a mistake instantly and win every time. While I never played the game as well awake as I did asleep, I did get better every time I played. No one could knock my high scores off. I was unbeatable. I lived and breathed the game.

There is a lesson for life here. "Don't waste your time and money on video games." Okay, so there are two lessons. I'm talking about the other one, a lesson of a passion for a dream. It's the same passion that athletes have for their sports. They will practice every chance they get. They will focus their every thought on their passion. I've heard Olympic skiers talk of visualizing the course, running through each curve in their minds, actually running the course in their heads. Pole-vaulters or broad jumpers will focus on the jump even before they make their run at the bar. Ice skaters go through their routines in their minds before ever stepping on the ice. A lot of them dream their sports as well, going through the motions as they fall asleep.

A professional musician will practice every chance he gets. He will learn his music. He will live and breathe his art. He will dream it or play a tune in his mind. It will be so intense that he will actually hear the tune in his head. Beethoven was deaf in his later years. He had no choice but to complete his symphonies in his mind before he wrote them down. It's the same for a painter or a sculptor. The work will often be complete in their heads before they lay a hand to the medium. A writer may know exactly where his story is going before the first word hits the page. Leonardo da Vinci said he did his best thinking just before falling asleep.

I've heard, and I've been told, that you need to have a passion to accomplish your dreams. Before the passion can become intense enough to invade your dreams you have to become intense enough to learn the tools of the trade. Otherwise your mind won't have anything to play with.

Lately I've been drawing almost every night. This is something I've dreamed about for twenty years. I've cleared a space and I've set up a table. I've pulled all of my tools together and I've started to work with them. I may dream of Michael Angelo or Leonardo while I'm drawing the equivalent stick figures. That's okay though. I'm seeking a passion. Fortunately I have an advantage, and oddly enough I've harkened back to an old vice to find it. I know what the passion I'm looking for feels like. I remember a passion for Asteroids.

...I also remember all that coin that I could have spent on art supplies.

02-12-2000
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