The Paradox Of Obsession

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I touched on this briefly in my last post but I'd like to explore it a little more.  In my obsession, I spent the last week going through Adam Lambert on the internet, spending ages trying to second-guess what he was going to do during disco week, reading other people's comments and predictions on various forums and blogs.

A number of comments that I've read have been to the effect that Adam can no longer jump over his own bar but needs to pole-vault over it, thus the last two performances have slightly disappointed some.  We've been looking at his performances through the lens of his previous performances which sets an almost impossible challenge.

If I hadn't been obsessed and continuously speculating and scrutinising Adam's performances, I might have just expected him to do a very good, high energy spin on a disco number and ended up gobsmacked.  But the fact that I had, means I tried to analyse how he was going to play the game, went through the multiple possibilities and came up with a shortlist of three options, loosely categorised as 'showman', 'slow' or 'miscellaneous'.  I'm guessing that many others including myself were hoping for 'miscellaneous', but the fact that he went for 'slow' means that in our minds we had already entertained that possibility, so it was 'predictable'.

I thought Kris's performance was very good.  However, if I were a Kris fan as much as an Adam fan, I would have thought about what he'd do, so that what he did this week was predictable.  He would never have done an upbeat disco number and so the choices for him were to either balladise it or do something with his guitar or piano.  But the fact is that I hadn't been following Kris so I was pleasantly surprised by it.  Do you see what I'm getting at?

Now here's the paradox.  Can you be a massively obsessed fan of Adam AND avoid speculating about what move he's going to make next?  And isn't it the case that the more you speculate, the likelier you are of being disappointed because you've thought about the outcomes so much that whatever he does won't surprise you enough?  If the answers here are 'no' and 'yes', then isn't it impossible for obsessed fans to be completely satisfied, only adding more pressure?

So to feed my Adam obsession, I'm going to have to starve it first by trying to go cold turkey this week, avoiding the temptation to read everything written about him and keeping him away from the microscope.  I think it's better if I don't even know the themes so I can watch him with an open mind, free of preconceived ideas.  Then I'll be able to appreciate him fully, and give him the praise he deserves, no 'buts'. 

Who's with me?