Past times

Sunday afternoon I went to a dance performance in a small town outside of Toulouse. It was an "international" dance festival (they had one small troupe from Burkina Faso) and a good mix of ballet, jazz, and modern. I felt out of practice watching new choreography, but I had a very good time. My last year of college I took some dance history/choreography classes and since we had to go to student and faculty concerts and write reviews, I developed my dance-appreciation sense (which has since been dulled considerably).

Dance is one of my favorite things to participate in and watch, a past-time, if you will, and B and I got into an interesting discussion about past-times tonight.

The video game channel NoLife was interviewing a guy tonight who has become a pro at a musical game involving a modified keyboard consisting of colored round buttons that are pressed according to the game. If you press the buttons at the right time, you complete the instrumentations of the song in the game. When you mess up, it's as though the musicians have messed up.

I enjoy playing the Wii and my little Tetris/Lumines/Picross games so I'm not here to say don't ever play video games, but the guy they interviewed has spent several months perfecting his technique so he can play the hardest levels of the game. He can press multiple buttons at a time in all kinds of complicated combinations.

"He spent all that time learning to play buttons when he could have learned to play the piano!" I said.

"That's not the point. He likes to play the game as a past time and he practices just like you like to knit and some people knit really complicated things," B responded. For B, what you do in your free time is a waste of time (though fun), no matter what you do.

"You spend time reading blogs, that's just as much a waste of time as that guy perfecting pressing buttons. It's just what you do to pass the time."

But I wonder. I like to think that I partake in activities with some kind of result. I knit to make clothing; I play the flute and piano to make music; I dance to keep in shape and hopefully to make art; and I blog to share my experiences and to learn from others. What can I say about reading though? I read because I love to and because I think it's an important part of the culture and stimulates my brain, but what result is there beyond my own pleasure?

Are there hobbies with intrinsic value and others without?

Are our little interests, when in comes down to it, just a way to pass the time and a "waste" of time? An hour spent reading a book on the couch the same as an hour playing a video game?

I think my biggest problem with the musical game pro is that what he has spent so long learning isn't applicable anywhere else (besides other games). There is no value of his knowledge in other domains; no cross-over of pertinence. Perhaps that's where I think reading and playing music are "better": what you learn in one can be applied to another.

B would say I'm just discounting the world of video gamers and ignoring the fact that for many it's just a way to meet other people who like the same thing. Gaming conventions and internet forums dedicated to the genre are the equivalent of book clubs and sewing circles B tells me. I say there's nothing to show for all the efforts put into finishing a video game, but B would say I'm wrong. There are competitions and rankings and a developed community of gamers. In his mind, soccer is just as pointless and meaningless, but no one criticizes that, so why should we criticize video games?

Am I closed-minded to criticize complete absorption in a video game? Or is this blog just as much a waste of time as learning the ultimate combo? Maybe it's just a question of perception: I think I have concrete results from reading or blogging or dancing, and so I feel like they are important and not a waste of time. Those who spend time playing games also take something away from the experience, or else they wouldn't dedicate as much time.