Historically I have been pretty good at trivia, or maybe even excellent. But I have found that as I have gotten older, less of what I know is generally relevant. So I am increasingly less good. Thirty years ago I could tell you who wrote the lovely song "Lalena", and it might have been a mildly impressive trivia moment for me. I can still answer it now, but I simply won't be asked it.
It's not coming up.
For general trivia, notable chunks of what I know has moved on from mildly obscure to of no general interest whatsoever.
Sometimes when I go up to shelve I'll find myself scrolling through short youtube reels for a bit, you know, like tik toks, and there is a recurring one where some guy who does man on the street quizzes, where he doubles the money for each identification of increasingly more difficult songs. Curiously I watch these without sound, only subtitles of the conversation, and my only impossibly, unintentional clue will be an intensely, insensibly pixilated view of the album cover that is shown for the song playing. But the amazing part for me is some random musical genius will answer question after question of people I have barely heard of, and would rarely be able to answer correctly. The Thermals? The Used? Against Me? I have no idea. These people on the street are bloody savants! But then as the challenge money rises into the hundreds of dollars, an album cover will come up on the screen, represented by about eight squares of different colors and I'll just be confused. "That's Music From the Big Pink" I'll mutter, surprised I can recognize it from so little. And hearing any song from it would be the most comically easy song identification in the world to me!
But it's not for these people gunning for the big money. "I give up." They say after not even very long. This, this one is the one that is too ridiculously hard!
And they are only slightly disappointed when they are told how they failed.
They know every Tame Impala song by heart, but they didn't know The Band?
Perhaps as we age we slowly begin to enter into a kind of backwards world...
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