Contrast

I posted a blog about a month ago about taking my 15 year old wife to see Taylor Swift (turns out she was 13 but with that make-up and those cloths, who would know?)

Last weekend we went to see Reba McEntire at the new Allen events center (first show there - the inside of the building wasn't quite finished).

I noticed a contrast that really had something to say about how the world has changed between the time I graduated high school and when my kids got out.

(I have to interupt this post and just say that Pandora (www.pandora.com) might just be one of the best things to happen on the Internet - EVER)

Reba showed up on stage in a black shirt and a pair of jeans. She had 5 band members, simple lighting, one spot light and no props on the stage. When she sang the songs, well, she sang the songs. It was like the CD but you got to see facial expressions and such. When she finished her set and left the stage - she (and all her band members) were wearing the same cloths and the stage was the same.

Taylor Swift was a completely different world. Hydrolics that lifted stages (and people). Multiple stages in different parts of the arena. Many costume changes, props that turned her stage into different movie sets to match the songs, lazer lights, colors and spotlights all over the place, tripple video screens that sometimes showed Taylor, sometimes showed scenes, sometimes had completely different people talking, dancing, singing along - whatever. Some songs had her in different cloths at the start of the song than she wore as she sang the last verse. There was even a period of time when they had the capacity for people in the audience to send text messages to the big screens over the stage. The target was to engage all the senses and overload them. The goal was to change things constantly in an effort to keep an A.D.D generation engaged.

They were two different worlds.

When I was in my early 20s I left the sleepy little town in Wyoming and "engaged" the big city. Since that time I've solved problems for the biggest corporations in the world. I've been called in when everyone else was out of ideas. I've lived thorugh the pressure of needing to be the guy to figure it out. I've been flown to all corners of the planet to jump start the next generation of computer solutions, reached my "lifetime elite" airline status by traveling over a million miles and literally worked on every contenent but Antarctica. I make my home in the biggest city in Texas and drive highways with 8 lanes.

Every now and then I drive back to Wyoming. Once I clear Wichita Kansas I literally leave the "Taylor Swift" world and re-enter the world of Reba McEntire. When I turn north and enter Wyoming, my cell phone has no bars and the FM radio stops working about the time I get to Chugwater. I can push the seek button and it will just fruitlessly search the dial for a signal finding nothing. Driving northwards there are two lanes on my side of the highway, a generous chunk of unused land in the middle and two lines going the other direction. There are times when there isn't another car to be seen to the horizon in either direction and it's rare to see a building during most of the drive.

It allows the senses to relax. It stops engaging every part of my brain. It's simple.

I used to think this kind of simple was worse. I was wrong.