Sunday, September 27, 2020

[iegaisob] the Devil went down to Georgia, and won

the Devil goes down to Georgia and challenges Johnny to a fiddle-playing duel.  some possibilities of what might happen, more realistic than the Charlie Daniels song:

  1. Johnny is a hot-headed fool and accepts.  the Devil then destroys Johnny in competition, utilizing all kinds of violin-playing techniques not accessible to humans: sprouting extra arms and bows, sprouting more fingers, and forcing the violin to vibrate in arbitrary ways through telekinesis, for example, sounding notes far below the violin's range.  these could be depicted with visual and sound effects.  what other impossible violin techniques, perhaps more subtle, could the devil do?
  2. Johnny is skilled enough to know to decline.  only when you get good do you know how bad you are.  there are entire universes of possible improvement that you never even dream exist while you are bad, but once you are good, you know how much further you have yet to go (and can presume a supernatural challenger has already gone).
  3. Johnny knows he will likely lose but accepts anyway.  once you've become among the best in the world, it can be lonely at the top, and Johnny seeks stimulation, challenges, ideas of where to go next.  inspired by anecdotes from top chess players who say that what they enjoy about chess is playing against other top human chess players, but those opportunities are few and far between.

scenario also depicted in the movie Crossroads.

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