Standard questions

Some things are just harder to explain to people than others. One of the challenges that we - Fred the mathematician and Fred the philologist - are often facing, is how to explain to people what 'doing current research' actually means. For it seems that many people genuinely believe that 'everything has already been done' in our areas. When it comes to swallowing strange objects (lamb bulbs, hairy spiders the size of a triple Whopper pizza burger, pointy objects in all sizes and shapes), walking on things that were not really meant to be walked upon (burning ropes, hot coals, hungry alligators, sidewalks in London's shopping streets during Christmas time) or doing plainly weird shit with your body (having coral implants in your forehead, eating nothing but raspberry yoghurt for 5 years, throwing yourself out of an airplane wearing nothing but a flashy jumpsuit), you do have a point: these things have all been done, either by a bunch of idiots making late-night television shows (there used to be a time 'Jackass' was nothing but a male donkey) or, more than often, by some random Asian guy. Most likely a five-year-old Chinese kid, who will still beat you blindfolded, balancing seven bowling balls on the head.

Anyway, doing research.

I usually compare this facet of our jobs with what artists are doing. Replace the free drugs and wild nights shagging groupies by slurping down liters of coffee and friendly winks from the cute librarian, replace festival grounds with 60,000 ecstatic youngsters by lecture halls housing a handful of old professors dozing off and young PhD students staring at our presentation like squirrels staring at coconuts ('What the hell is this?') and replace 'most popular download on iTunes' by a bunch of papers read by a select group of self-proclaimed connoisseurs, and there you have it: the perfect analogy.

That's right, we are artists. Because we create, hoping to be original, and basically depend on that thing called 'inspiration'. Which is a bit like a wet dream, if you'd ask me: every once in a while, it just happens. Out of nowhere. A lightning flash of materialized concentration. And surely, it helps if we read some related material or hear other people talk about it (just don't push the analogy beyond its boundaries, ok?), but in the end we can't control it. Well, there is of course a proverbial helping hand, but my experience is that this seldom leads to the same satisfactory feeling. Because true inspiration contains enough seeds for a few fruitful ideas, and reduces the rest of our time behind the desk to cleaning up the details.

The undersigned Fred did not have a fruitful day. Mark my words, 'doing current research' is more about the research than it is about the doing...

And how was your day today?