Are you one
of the many who think that playing an instrument or singing (even in the
shower) is not your forte – that ‘Chopsticks’ and humming the doorbell are as
good as it gets for you?
As for
dancing, you do it in front of the TV when Ellen DeGeneres invites you to join
in -- as her sidekick. No threat there;
she can’t see you. Nor can anyone else -- once you’re inside a pitch black dance
hall, crammed with crazies wired to show the world they can hip hop, samba, crunch,
even belly flop right into the lap of an unsuspecting wall flower.
You can
still feel the pain when a humourless oaf known as ‘big foot’ decided you had
an enticing big toe, and stepped on it. Ouch! That pain still lingers -- even though it happened ten years ago!
Painting is
far more peaceful, but you opt for the kind that comes from a gallon because painting a room is no sweat-- well maybe a little -- if the ventilation is poor. (More about your painting stint in school soon follows).
Acting is
something you’ve considered. You’ll accept a role - as a rock. You’ve
considered taking photography at Algonquin
College, but that would
mean buying a camera and umpteen lenses.
Clearly,
you’re suffering from IMOOTS (I missed out on talent syndrome). Growing up, you
believed that talent was reserved for special people, given to them by God or
passed on through the genes. You claim talent eluded you from the get-go - that
you belong to the land of bureaucrats, business boys and bean counters, occupations not exactly brimming with
artistic zeal.
Sadly,
people who perceive themselves as talentless take it as an irrevocable fact -
confirmed since childhood. For example, your parents were told by your piano
teacher after a year of lessons (possibly longer, depending on how greedy the
teacher was) that they were wasting their hard earned money, that you had no
musicality at all. Of course she left out the part about yelling at you every
time you hit a wrong note. So your parents informed you in a rather blunt
manner: “No more piano lessons; your teacher says you have no talent.” Being a
trusting child, you believed them.
Dancing
lessons were out for you since your older sister already had that one wrapped
up in her pretty pink toe shoes tutu and leotard.
But wait! None of your siblings
had tackled theatre; things were looking up, until the first time you walked
out on stage and broke out in a nervous rash.
Painting percolated in your mind intermittently, but you were young and had no idea what to paint; your
mind drew a blank. Thank God for grade one art class. At least they gave you
some paints, and they told you what to draw, such as a dog, cat, house or the
person sitting next to you. But let’s be
honest: the lesson was really about how to tidy up after you finished your
finger painting. During one nifty brush
painting class in grade five, you recall the teacher coming around,
complimenting you on the dog you had just painted. Without warning, her happy
smile quickly turned into tight-lipped anger when you told her (without meaning
any harm) that the ‘dog’ was actually her face, and that the ‘snout’ was her
nose!
In my grade
seven class at Broadview
Avenue Public
School, we were making clay ashtrays, putting
them into the kiln after we had painted them. The teacher selected mine to show
the class. I was beaming. She then announced with great drama in her
voice: “This is how not to make an ashtray. I
was crushed and swore off art forever.
But, life
doesn't do ‘never’. Twenty years after the ashtray trauma, I discovered talent
is a trickster, and that the past can be your invisible stalker - if you let
it. You can be five years old or fifty when talent pops out. Surprise!
Since those
infamous days, I have made a series of handmade wooden books, shaped as trees,
snowflakes and the sun. I dared to illustrate them myself, even ink in my
poetry. All 200 of them were sold – the
first one having been purchased by the curator of Queens University
-- to my utter astonishment. The point is, no one told me to make such things or
not to. Their creative entry into this world was born from an intense desire to express
my love of nature in a tangible manner.
My desire
to create an educational board game all about colour and our universe resulted
in my creation of a colour wheel forming the tail of ‘Professor Peacock’. Kids
landed on colour squares, picked up a matching colour card and tried to answer
the question on the card. This game, titled ‘The Colour Jungle” demanded months
to create; it was a labour of love. I somehow had to get that idea realized,
and thus the game (never marketed) was born.
Eric
Hoffer, the great twentieth century philosopher, wrote: “We are told that
talent creates its own opportunities, but it sometimes seems that intense
desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.” So, a passion to express is the prime
provenance of talent.
All of us
have talent; what you do about it is key – how do you respond to it? Are you a
nay-sayer or a yeah-sayer? Luckily, as adults, we are free to explore the
myriad of talents hibernating inside us.
I never
predicted I would take up the banjo at the age of 49! Making three banjo CDs certainly came as a
shock to me and everyone who knew me as a piano gal. Talent is an unpredictable visitor. It’s
never too late to explore your ‘heart ideas’ through an art. Don’t give up when
talent turns from exhilaration to exasperation.
Gustave
Flaubert said: “Talent is a long patience; originality is an effort of will and
intense observation.” Many of us give up. I did several times, but I always
returned to the task at hand, and each time I did, I realized talent never
leaves you. You leave it. Life gets in the way; you get tired. Stanislavski, the pioneer of method acting
used to tell his students: “inspiration is a minute part of talent; the rest is
perspiration.”
I can
recall practising a really difficult bar of a Bach fugue. I realized I would
never get it right. I could rip up the page, bang endlessly on the ivories, or
walk away and wait until the desire to express that piece in its entirety
returned, and if it didn’t, so be it. I waited 5 months to revisit that bar; I
deeply wanted to play that piece,
and now I do. Desire gave me the will to overcome the technical challenges. You
see, it was not miraculous god-given talent that enabled me to master (to some
degree) that piece of music. It was motivation, a state of mind and the desire
to express it. Goethe said it best: “Talent finds its happiness in execution.”
Ross
Schorer, a former student of Arthur Lismer (Group of Seven), now a highly
sought-after art teacher believes everyone is an artist, but self doubt gets in
the way. “Many people are afraid of expressing their talent; they risk
rejection. It starts as a kid: a family member dismisses the painting you just
showed. I know everyone has talent; it can be coaxed out any time. My job is to
bring it out of burial. Once this talent is freed, the individual can paint.”
Talent
‘talks’ to you. Release it from hibernation.
