There's a concept I got from a roleplaying game years ago, one of many things I've learned from playing such games over the years, and it has always stuck with me.
The game was Vampire: The Masquerade, and when you create your character you get to select your characters abilities, which is divided into knowledges, talents and skills. This stuck me as very logical, and was something I had never really thought about before.
Knowledges are things you can learn from reading a book; purely academic skills like history, mathematics, or the sciences.
Skills represent things that you need to practice to become better at, things that require training the mind and body, combining learned technique and muscle memory. Things like carpentry, firearms accuracy, skiing, and other such activities.
Talents represent things that are, at least in part, based on innate aptitude, rather than training. This includes pretty much all of the various forms of artistic expression (painting, poetry, prose, singing, acting, and dancing,) as well as more intuitive activities such as psychoanalysis, gambling, or public speaking.
Now to be sure, all of these activities require practice to be as good as you can be. If you do not hone your art, you will never be able to live up to your potential, and someone who engages in such activities will benefit from both constant practice, as well as study and training, just like knowledges and skills.
But what separates a talent from a skill is that training and practice alone won't make you actually good at it. And this is the controversial aspect of this idea, and one that I've gotten into more than one heated argument over in the past (I'm usually not the one getting heated, but that's because I'm an asshole.)
There are many who contend that ANY person can learn ANY ability with enough training and practice. Those people are clearly very optimistic, and they make me sad.
I happen to be of the opposing viewpoint. I feel that there are some things that you are either born good at, or you are not. You can take all the training and practice in the world, but if you are not wired for that ability, that's it, you will never be great at it.
Take singing. You can go to voice coaches and practice every day, and you will certainly improve your voice over time. But that won't make you a great singer, on par with the great voices of our time. Debbie Gibson trained her voice to sing in her own, limited range. But that was it. She never made it as a true singer, she was a limited pop star. Before her we had Cher. She was a superstar in her own right, but she was always limited to her range, and never had a voice that would resonate through the ages (remember, she is the reason Autotune was invented.)
And then you have acting. It's easy to pick on Keanu Reeves here, but can anyone honestly say he's improved his craft over the years? He can still do Ted, but that's it. You can't just pull some random waitress off the street and teach her the secret method that makes her an amazing actress.
Perhaps the most telling example is songwriting. You can know all the notes, and learn all the symbols they use to translate them into sound, but nothing can teach you how to write great music. Any shlub can practice an instrument and learn to play like a virtuoso, but actually writing the music? That shit is sorcery.
But if we accept that there are talents, how do we determine what is and isn't a talent? My example above about any shlub becoming a virtuoso no doubt rankled a few of you (that would be the musicians in the audience.) You may say "hey, playing an instrument isn't just the mechanical placement of fingers or the practiced techniques of applying air, it takes soul, man!"
I'll have to take your word, hippies, because I've never learned to play an instrument. But I have had people ask me to teach them to write, and I absolutely cannot help you there. I cannot begin to tell you how ideas form in my head, they just do. I imagine that if I begged a talented songwriter to teach me how to turn individual notes into love, hate, and exhilaration, he or she would just look at me sadly like I was a dog who wanted to learn how to drive; neither of us has any hope of doing it, and we couldn't even understand the explanation of why not.
And what about public speaking? Lots of people claim that they can teach you to move crowds or become the world's greatest salesperson, and indeed, these enlightened individuals will share these secrets with you if you pay for their book/tapes/seminars. But then they brag about how many people have read/listened to/attended their product. If the secret was that easy, surely there must be legions of svengalis running around armed with this unstoppable advice.
And be careful ladies, there are plenty of guys out there giving seminars on how to pick up women. Surely none of you are safe once these sages of sexy teach hordes of men the secrets of forcing you to fall hopelessly in love with them. But maybe not.
Some things can't be taught. At least, not taught in such a way that will make you good at something if you don't have the basic abilities.
Beauty is the same way, if your skull is the right shape, your features will be appropriately symmetrical, and thus you will be good looking. If it is not, you can dress well and wear flawless makeup and look well put together, but not pretty. Sorry, she's born with it.
It's never Maybelline.
I'm sorry if this comes a big bringdown, but there are some things at which we will never get any better. But that doesn't mean we can't try. Maybe no one gets your stuff, man, and one day you will be appreciated. So keep it up!
I'm sorry if that did not sound like sincere encouragement. I've tried to get better at that for years, but...you know.
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