New Year's Eve
It was supposed to be a quiet night. Just me & the Tall Guy watching Serenity with our friend Eternal Damnation.
Then another friend called & asked what we were doing so we invited her over. And two more friends. And two more. So we ended up having a party.
The party didn't start off so well, though. A few days before I had recieved an email from a good friend asking if I thought that she was a talented writer and artist. That was it. Nothing else. The tone of the email bothered me--especially since it was written at 3-something in the morning. She has a lot of friends who go out of their way to tear her down and hurt her & I thought that had happened. I replied yes, but that she would never be a Picasso or Anne McCaffery and that it didn't matter because she had enough talent to find it fun and her friends and professors enjoyed her work also.
I still don't know what happened, but when she arrived at the party I asked how she was doing and what happened. She replied that she was glad to know how I felt and that she would never ask me the question again because she disagrees with my definition of talent. She believes that talent and skill are the same thing and that, barring physical or menal disability, everybody can reach the same level of acheivement if they only work hard enough at it.
Another woman who is the band director at one of our highly disadvantaged urban schools, chimed in that the level of possible acheivement is determined by the first 5 years of life. Which surprizes me because that would make her job futile. Her job is to take these kids who have the deck stacked against them (and from her stories, a lot of them are playing with a really, really shitty hand) and unlock their potential. And she does it. She takes these kids and inspires, trains, pushes and drags them to the point where they are quite possibly the best band in the area...even when compared to the very best funded programs around who have kids with every advantage offered to humans.
All people are not created equal. Even with the same opportunities and training, not everybody is going to achieve the same level of performance. Some people are smarter than others. Some people are stronger, faster, have perfect pitch, can see the world more clearly or differently. Some people have stories that attack them and won't let go until they've been written down. Some people have characters speak to them in their heads (not voices, people....characters). Some people can memorize huge amounts of text and scientific names.
Hell--it's physiological. They've established differences in the muscle types of long-distance runners and sprinters. This is not to say that people with the long-distance muscles can't sprint, but it does mean that they are at a disadvantage and no matter how hard they work they will never beat somebody with the sprinter muscles who works just as hard.
People need to find what they're good at...and what they like to do...and work at it as hard as they want to acheive the desired level of success. I love music. But I have limitations. I have a great singing voice, but I cannot separate parts. I don't hear the music that way. I spent a year as a music major...working and struggling and having my self-esteem shit on...before I figured it out. Does this mean that I can't sing? Does it mean that I'm useless in a choir? No. I'm a valuable member of most choirs, but I will never...I repeat, NEVER, be a professional. I do not have the level of talent that it would take to get me there.
My friend who started this whole conversation would say that I just don't want it badly enough. Perhaps this is true, but there are things that I am talented at...that don't take so much work that it feels like I'm beating my head against the wall to make the smallest improvement. I chose to spend my time focusing on those things. This is what I mean by talent. Talent does exist. Talent is not the same as skill. There are artists in every field and craftsmen in every field.
After about 20 minutes of this conversation in which nobody's mind was changed--and I'd love to have people weigh in on this subject--E.D. offered to flash the room to disrupt the negative energy. That was when Tall Guy and I started to wrangle our children into their beds and everybody else settled in to actually watch Serenity.
Eternal Damnation has done a great job of recapping the rest of the night, so wander over to read about the fun part.
Then another friend called & asked what we were doing so we invited her over. And two more friends. And two more. So we ended up having a party.
The party didn't start off so well, though. A few days before I had recieved an email from a good friend asking if I thought that she was a talented writer and artist. That was it. Nothing else. The tone of the email bothered me--especially since it was written at 3-something in the morning. She has a lot of friends who go out of their way to tear her down and hurt her & I thought that had happened. I replied yes, but that she would never be a Picasso or Anne McCaffery and that it didn't matter because she had enough talent to find it fun and her friends and professors enjoyed her work also.
I still don't know what happened, but when she arrived at the party I asked how she was doing and what happened. She replied that she was glad to know how I felt and that she would never ask me the question again because she disagrees with my definition of talent. She believes that talent and skill are the same thing and that, barring physical or menal disability, everybody can reach the same level of acheivement if they only work hard enough at it.
Another woman who is the band director at one of our highly disadvantaged urban schools, chimed in that the level of possible acheivement is determined by the first 5 years of life. Which surprizes me because that would make her job futile. Her job is to take these kids who have the deck stacked against them (and from her stories, a lot of them are playing with a really, really shitty hand) and unlock their potential. And she does it. She takes these kids and inspires, trains, pushes and drags them to the point where they are quite possibly the best band in the area...even when compared to the very best funded programs around who have kids with every advantage offered to humans.
All people are not created equal. Even with the same opportunities and training, not everybody is going to achieve the same level of performance. Some people are smarter than others. Some people are stronger, faster, have perfect pitch, can see the world more clearly or differently. Some people have stories that attack them and won't let go until they've been written down. Some people have characters speak to them in their heads (not voices, people....characters). Some people can memorize huge amounts of text and scientific names.
Hell--it's physiological. They've established differences in the muscle types of long-distance runners and sprinters. This is not to say that people with the long-distance muscles can't sprint, but it does mean that they are at a disadvantage and no matter how hard they work they will never beat somebody with the sprinter muscles who works just as hard.
People need to find what they're good at...and what they like to do...and work at it as hard as they want to acheive the desired level of success. I love music. But I have limitations. I have a great singing voice, but I cannot separate parts. I don't hear the music that way. I spent a year as a music major...working and struggling and having my self-esteem shit on...before I figured it out. Does this mean that I can't sing? Does it mean that I'm useless in a choir? No. I'm a valuable member of most choirs, but I will never...I repeat, NEVER, be a professional. I do not have the level of talent that it would take to get me there.
My friend who started this whole conversation would say that I just don't want it badly enough. Perhaps this is true, but there are things that I am talented at...that don't take so much work that it feels like I'm beating my head against the wall to make the smallest improvement. I chose to spend my time focusing on those things. This is what I mean by talent. Talent does exist. Talent is not the same as skill. There are artists in every field and craftsmen in every field.
After about 20 minutes of this conversation in which nobody's mind was changed--and I'd love to have people weigh in on this subject--E.D. offered to flash the room to disrupt the negative energy. That was when Tall Guy and I started to wrangle our children into their beds and everybody else settled in to actually watch Serenity.
Eternal Damnation has done a great job of recapping the rest of the night, so wander over to read about the fun part.
posted by clahnamom at 16:05
3 Comments:
I'm with you on this one honey. Two people could have started learning the piano at the same time, have the exact same training on the exact same piece of music, but one will make the music seem alive while the other will just play it, because one has the talent and the other only has the knowledge.
And god almighty, I shoulda just flashed the room.
If that is her definition of talent, why even ask the question? If it's all a result of hard work, only she knows how hard she's worked.
Regardless, it's a question that I've found to be largely irrelevant. Not that I don't believe in "talent," but why would I bother asking anyone else if I'm talented? There is no external indicator of "talent" that is uniquely distinguishable from "hard work" and "motivation." Writing in particular is a place where people who are especially tenacious can achieve what the field deems to be "success" (gads, I'm getting tired of apologetic quotes...) while people who have more innate "talent" (sigh...) never see any of their works in print because they balk at rejection.
I had a longer response to this. I'm going to blog it later today, I think, when I can babble more freely and have had a little more time to reflect. Because I see where she's coming from, but it's also very clear if you pull two random books off the shelf at your local bookstore that some people are simply better writers than others, and you can't always make the attribution that one worked harder to account for the difference in quality.
I am also in agreement with you. I have a great ear for piano and I can sing well also but I don't have great skill in either.
Talent: endowment: natural abilities or qualities.
Skill: an ability that has been acquired by training.
And please, there are many many people out there who have talent with no skill (hense short lived careers with no staying power, and many people with talent who never recognize their potential.
I am very skilled at office management, I have trained and studied and can audit HR files and balance budgets with the best of them, but I have no innate mathmatical talent. My co-worker on the other hand has a natural talent for numbers, it comes to her without effort. She can find the detailed formula for tax calculation in seconds flat, and if you ask her a direct mathmatical question it takes her no effort to develop a detailed answer. She cannot however come up with an easy answer to what color looks best on her walls or what the best layout for a newsletter page is to catch someones attention. My effortless endevours happen center on the artistic, I can conceptualize very easily, but when it comes to detail-orientation, I have to work at it. Co-worker has a hard time with concept but is great with detail.
That's a concrete example of the difference between skill and talent.
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