Painting a Rap Lyric

Or rapping a portrait, whatever your preference.

Howdy! It’s Joey, back with more Fun Fact Friyay. Today’s fact is both historical and forward-looking.

Eminem and Pablo Picasso were alive at the same time.

Picasso on display at New York City’s MoMA. Wally Gobetz

The human mind is funny in a lot of ways. Getting into all of them is well outside the purview of a single Fun Fact Friyay, so this edition is just about the spectacle of losing our sense of time and when certain events took place.

There are all kinds of deep scientific explanations for forgetting things or disassociating from our sense of history.

Unsurprisingly, things you actually experienced can resonate more strongly in that head of yours. For example, I can recall an absurd amount of sporting events I’ve been to, like when Wisconsin defeated Texas A&M-Corpus Christi in Chicago during the first round of the 2007 NCAA Tournament.

Do I remember this game because it was exciting that the Islanders, a very heavy underdog, jumped out to an early 10-0 lead against Wisconsin? Is it because I attended the game with my dad, who has been consistently supportive of my basketball enthusiasm throughout my life? Were the self-described degenerate gamblers behind me more entertaining than the final minute of the game, when they simply needed Texas A&M-Corpus Christi to make one more basket so they could cover the spread?

(Texas A&M-Corpus Christi did not make that basket. The gamblers were devastated.)

I recall that game more vividly because of all of those details. My weird knack for obscure basketball games notwithstanding, that’s generally how most memories work. We remember what happened, or at least the gist of it, but we can’t always remember when it happened, or some of the more supporting plot points.

This is especially true for things and/or people that had their moment before we were born. Unless you happened to memorize the entire list of U.S. presidents for a quiz in second grade, you probably couldn’t name when Benjamin Harrison, our last bearded president, was in office.

“Sometime in the 1800s,” you might guess. And you’d be correct! But he was a lot closer to the 1900s than the 1700s, serving as president from 1889 to 1893.

That less certain sense of history is why it’s always intrigued me to compare people who have overlapped in life, even though they seem to be from completely different eras.

Pablo Picasso was born in 1881—before ol’ Benny Harrison was president. Meanwhile, a classmate teased me for not knowing all the words to Eminem’s “My Name Is” when it came out in 1999. Yet these two people were alive at the same time.

Marshall Mathers, better known as Eminem, was born on October 17, 1972. Pablo Picasso died half a year later, in April 8, 1973.

So, no, they did not do any collaborations, but that still feels like two timelines that would not cross at all.

They’re not the only ones, of course. Let’s look at a few others:

• Adele was born on May 5, 1988, briefly sharing the world with Salvador Dalí, who died on January 23, 1989.

• Anne Frank, Martin Luther King Jr., and Barbara Walters were all born in 1929.

• Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876. He died in 1922, about seven months after Betty White was born.

• Wyatt Earp was in the shootout at the OK Corral in 1881 and lived until January 13, 1929, shortly after a young Dick Van Dyke had turned three years old. (Dick Van Dyke is currently 100 and thriving, if you’re scoring at home.)

• My book is alive at the same time as Moo Deng.

All of these overlapping lives is a good reminder to show some grace to the people around you. You never know whose path you might be crossing!