True Grit and Rocket Science

Today marks the day of the straw breaking the camel’s back. I never thought a day like this would come but today, I unfollowed the Simple Minds Facebook page because…it’s just too much. It is nothing like it was a decade ago. And I can’t stop groaning at every new post, every new self-congratulatory piece of grandstanding. I’ve had enough. 

Kerr would say in his recent past rhetoric how “special” it was to – let’s say… make a living as a “successful” artist and compare that to the chances of becoming an astronaut. It has always been a comparison that I felt was rather skewed from the get go. Coming from the same attitude as, when faced with criticism, he would counter it by saying “I don’t tell the pilot how to fly a plane.” No, you wouldn’t, because you can’t…because you don’t know how to. It has always been a ridiculous line of defence. All that “I got into music so no one could tell me what to do.” Erm, like say – a manager, or a record company boss, or a promoter? So, you produce music exactly as you want it to be? You have no one telling you where you’re playing, when and how often? You’ve no one telling you what songs they’d prefer you to play, otherwise they’re unlikely to organise shows for you? Sure! You keep telling yourself that, pal. 

Getting back to the whole astronaut comparison thing. 

I had to look into some statistics for this. Do you know how many astronauts NASA currently has? On their website they state that as of 2024, there are 47 active astronauts, 12 management astronauts and 332 former astronauts or payload specialists, including those who left NASA, and those who are deceased. Okay, that is just for NASA and doesn’t include Cosmonauts, or any qualified personnel from other countries with a space program such as China or India, but we can assume the figures would also be low in these countries too. A look at Wikipedia suggests that the number of astronauts that have flown to space (up to 2021) in total is 600. This figure includes commercial astronauts (ie: not government funded/trained personnel).

Now, as for music artists – this is a statistic I found in relation to the number of professional musicians on streaming platform Spotify. I Google searched the question “How many rock stars are there?” The statistic I’m about to quote appeared from a question posed on Reddit – “How many professional musicians are there in the world?” One person’s response said that in 2023 there were 11+ million artists on Spotify, with an estimate of 200,000 of those being professional artists, and of that 165,000 have a monthly listener count of 10,000 or above. So even if you just take ten percent of this figure and consider that percentage to be the most popular, recognisable figures in the music industry – that’s 16,500 world-renowned, “famous” and (at least moderately) wealthy musicians. Does that REALLY compare with the chances of becoming an astronaut? Really? 

Jim, you’re special – but you’re REALLY not THAT special, mate. And as you’re usually so very eager to point out, you’re not a musician. 

As for grit. What I believe is those with REAL grit not only possess it, they’re stoic with it. You know, stoicism? That ability to not be boastful or proud or flamboyant or any other number of things that fly in the face of having to tell people how “gritty” you are? How, “cut from a different cloth” and “unique and special” you are? That one. Hmmmm. Things that you perhaps would learn from reading, say, Siddhartha or Bhagavad Gita…things like that. 

Three weeks until Bellahouston Park! Oh, joy.