One of the things I’ve noticed about people in the arts field – writers, painters, architects, etc – is that they are unconventional thinkers so that although they are people who obviously operate vertically, they are also observers, in an almost horizontal manner, of mankind. An example of this is that I have noticed that often completely engrossed in some creative project, I will suddenly be caught by a completely extraneous thought that has no relation to my project. Most of these wanderings are usually brief but I will often find myself left with the “how come” question still nagging me. (I may have gone down this road before, but new “how come” examples keep popping up.)
I watch television a lot (sports, Charlie Rose, Bill Maher, HBO documentaries) and some of the commercials are in that “how come” category. Rolex, for example, has a series of ads with the tag line asserting that their watches “don’t simply tell time; they tell history.” Given that Rolex is a very