Funny old thing, life.\u00a0 You hear a lot about “natural” talent, or “raw” talent.\u00a0 We then spend quite a bit of time talking about how that’s really a misnomer, or really just an expression people use to explain a level of talent that they, themselves, can’t quite imagine.\u00a0 That “natural” talent is nearly always the product of untold hours of practice, of blood, sweat, tears, and brutal effort.<\/p>\n
There’s a famous story about a Japanese painter, in the days of the samurai, whose name I no longer recall.\u00a0 He was asked one day by a wealthy patron to paint a landscape with certain elements that the patron wanted.\u00a0 The painter sat down with the man and talked about what he felt the painting should evoke, what elements should be highlighted, everything he could ask to find out what the patron really wanted.\u00a0 He then told the man to come back one year to the day.\u00a0 The wealthy man was a bit put out, but understood that this was a famous painter, after all.<\/p>\n
The year was long, and the moon took its time waxing and waning, but 12 months later on that same day the patron came back to the painter’s studio and inquired about the work he had commissioned.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Oh yes, you.\u00a0 One moment.”\u00a0 The painter grabbed a fresh, clean scroll, unrolled it and began.\u00a0 In moments, the landscape of the patron’s dreams came to life before his eyes.\u00a0 The process took no more than 30 minutes, and seemed like seconds to the amazed man.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Wait for about 20 minutes for it to dry,” said the painter, and turned back to his other work.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I must ask,” started the man, “this is a masterpiece, and everything I dreamed of – but why did you make me wait the year before you created this miracle before my eyes?”<\/p>\n
“Ah.\u00a0 Come with me,” said the old painter, and led him into a back room.\u00a0 And there the patron saw 364 drafts of his painting, the first only an evoking image, the last nearly the same as his own, and he got it.<\/p>\n
Me, I get it, but I’m convinced that’s not ALL of it.\u00a0 How do you get to Carnegie Hall?\u00a0 Sure, practice, practice, practice, but I maintain that you don’t just build that practice on a dream, or a desire, or even a burning need.\u00a0 There has to be a flip side to that coin \u2013 you have to be building on a base of talent that you just HAVE.\u00a0 Experience and knowledge and passion and practice, practice, practice are required for the very good to move to great, but if they’re not built on a foundation of “raw” talent, I think we seldom see that move, from very good to “great.”<\/p>\n
I bring this up, of course, because I’ve had a couple of instances poke me in the eye recently, and I think it’s worth noting.\u00a0 As parents, part of our job is to notice and nurture those areas where you see a shiny bit glinting off the sunlight of our children’s lives (a la Looking for Bobby Fisher, for example).\u00a0 My friend J_ noted to me a while ago that her daughter is drawing things.\u00a0 She’s been doing this for a while, and now she’s in her serious teens and posting her art on DeviantArt.\u00a0 J_’s comment to me was, “She has whatever it is that you have to be born with to be an artist.\u00a0 The rest is up to her and luck.”\u00a0 I’ve seen her daughter’s work; I assure you, this young lady is an artist.\u00a0 Making a living at it, of course, is another story.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I was talking recently to a friend who\u2019d asked me to review her new book \u2013 a hell of an achievement on any level.\u00a0 What I told her was that I read it looking for two things \u2013 second, is it a good story that will capture the reader and make them want to read more, want to buy the book, want to tell their friends; but first \u2013 is the author a writer?\u00a0 Period.\u00a0 I\u2019m looking for a quintessence, a je ne se qua, that quality of having \u201cit\u201d that you often can\u2019t define except by its lack.\u00a0 I was happy to be able to tell my friend that she had it; she is a writer.\u00a0\u00a0 Whatever it is that you have to be born with, she has it.\u00a0 Again, making a living at it, of course, is another story.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Reigning Queen of Pink, Grand Duchess of Fluff, Lord High Protector of Barbies, and Baroness of the Hummingbirds is not always noted, to be quite honest, for her deep insight and intellect.\u00a0 I do not wish to imply that she’s not bright – she is – but her topmost muscle is not always the one that gets the most exercise, shall we say.<\/p>\n
Yeah.\u00a0 Until you play, of all things, Scrabble with her.\u00a0 The girls and I played tonight.\u00a0 Don’t get me wrong – I won.\u00a0 Of course I won, I’m over 40 years old and I have, if you\u2019ll excuse me, an 85,000 word vocabulary.\u00a0 I’m also experienced, conniving, and ruthless.\u00a0 And yes, I helped her.\u00a0 But I didn’t help her nearly as much as she thinks I did.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I came in a close second, only because I went out first and left her holding a “J” that she couldn’t dump.\u00a0 Once she has a vocabulary to match, she’s going to be brutally good at this game.\u00a0 She’s walked in on my on-line games, looked at my letter block, and said, “Oh, you can spell thus-and-such word” \u00a0\u2013 and left me gobsmacked.\u00a0 She was right, and I hadn’t seen it, and it was a six-letter word out of the seven letters I had in front of me.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So when it comes to the nature versus nurture debate, I’m firmly on both sides.\u00a0 Knowing all the words is nurture, just like learning to play the piano or learning to drive a golf ball all the way down the fairway.\u00a0 Knowing how to organize a mess of symbols into multiple recognizable orders of words, knowing that these<\/strong> notes will sound better if I play those<\/strong> notes first, knowing how to drive a golf ball straight<\/span> down a fairway \u2013 you either can, or you can’t.\u00a0 And if you can’t, no amount of practice, practice, practice in the world will make you Tiger Woods, or Mozart, or da Vinci.\u00a0<\/p>\n Raw talent.\u00a0 It can’t be learned, and it can’t be taught.\u00a0 Now, are there Scrabble scholarships?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Raw talent. You hear a lot about “natural” talent, or “raw” talent. It can’t be learned, and it can’t be taught. When it comes to the nature versus nurture debate, I’m firmly on both sides. I\u2019m looking for a quintessence, a je ne se qua, that quality of having \u201cit\u201d that you often can\u2019t define except by its lack. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[61,40,10],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=843"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":845,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843\/revisions\/845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}