An unnamed teenage ability

Ok, when I was a teenager I had a thing for Neil Diamond. [Waits for the laughter to subside before continuing.] There is a sort of fanaticism, a sort of compulsion, a radical attraction that you only experience as a teenager.  It’s short lived, by the time you’re in your twenties it’s faded, by the time you’re thirty it’s just a memory, and by the time you’re forty it’s a youthful folly that you can’t really explain. For my cousin it was Elvis, for my mother it was Rock Hudson, for you it was someone else.  But for me it was Neil Diamond, he could do no wrong, in my mind he was perfect. When his album Primitive came out in 1984 I cried myself to sleep because it was obvious in that album he had lost his rather fragile voice and adapted his songwriting to suit his new diminished vocal abilities.  And I still loved him.  Why? Because I was a child and in my mind he was perfect.

What is that? Where does that come from? What is that ability to worship we have when we are very young and why do we lose it over time? I would have had words with anyone who questioned his unquestionable talent, or found fault in his flawless character.  What ability did my brain posses then to completely deceive itself, and why do I lack that same ability now?  Today, of course, I question his very questionable talent and I fault his very faulty character. But where did that unreasonable fanaticism go? How did that overwhelming talent for blind adoration simply dissolve into air? It was real, of that I am certain, and it was mine. 

Think of the hoards of teenage fans trampling each other for a glimpse of the airplane that brought the Beatles to America. The unexplainable phenomenon of teen idols like Bieber and David Cassidy, they are not talented people, they are a product of this unnamed ability of the teenage brain.  And their careers often fade in the time it takes our brains to lose that same ability.   Teen idols owe their stardom to a talent our brains possess for a very short time: the power of voluntary self delusion culminating in blind adoration.  It’s a condition that generates billions of dollars in profits every year, it launches questionable talents into stardom every decade.  Shouldn’t it have a name? Shouldn’t music executives be able to measure it? Chart it on a graph? Determine how much it’s worth each year?

And there is one more aspect of this unnamed ability that should be widely discussed and is not:  is it a good thing or a bad thing?

What name would you give it?