Idiosyncrasies and Anonymity
Reflections on "The Winner is" from the Little Miss Sunshine Soundtrack
Artist Statement:
I came across this piece on Pandora several months ago, and I immediately fell in love with this piece. To date, I have listened to this piece 353 times. As I listened to this piece for this assignment, I realized that this song tells a story of pain, suffering, and eventual triumph, but that the story that is being told is also completely anonymous. We do not know who this story is about, or what story of struggle is being told. However, the story of struggle is universal to us as humans, so we can recognize a struggle when we see one. This piece made me realize how anonymous and universal human life is. No matter how many people we meet, how much fame we achieve, or how notable and noteworthy our actions may be, there will still be many millions of people on this planet who have never heard our name before. Everyday, as we travel between our school, work, and home, we see countless people that we know nothing about. We take these people at face value, we make snap judgments about them, and rarely do we consider the burdens that they made bear, or the things that make them a unique individual. The world is so much bigger than we are and is so much more complex than we will ever realize. We are very small compared to everything that is happening around us. When we consider how small we are in comparison to the world around us, and when we also consider the anonymity factor, we realize that our accomplishments do not really matter, no matter how important they might seem to us. I began to reflect personally, and to think about my idiosyncrasies, the things that most people do not know about me, no matter how trivial they are. These things do not matter to the whole world by any stretch of the imagination, but they matter to me, so I consider them to be very important. Some of these reflections were a little silly. Some were reflections on my favorite things or pastime. Some were a reflection on where I had been, and how those places had affected me. I thought about the experiences that I have been able to have, and how they have changed my perspective. And I thought about all the things in my past, and all the stresses and worries of everyday life that I would rather not discuss in detail, but that I carry with me every day. This is not a definitive list of my idiosyncrasies. We all have a story like this. We all have silly stories. stories of our roots, and stories that we would really rather not talk about. This is a universal part of human life. Every human being is far more complex than we would ever realize from face value. I started thinking then about how different our world would be if we were to be more open about our idiosyncrasies. What would happen if we would accept that we are small, and embraced it? What if we were to stop taking people at face value, and consider their idiosyncrasies, and the challenges that they face? What would our world and society look like?
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