Your 'talent' vs. the Universe

One the biggest excuses I hear from people about why they don’t create or are unhappy about their work is that they’re not ‘talented,’ or at least not as talented as that other guy. They will never be as good as Leonardo or Beethoven or Dickens, or even as good as their friend Bob who’s really good, you know?

Okay, let’s take this apart.

First of all, ‘talent’ has nothing to do with it. Of course some people are really really good at MAKING THE THING THAT IS NOT; there’s no way to argue against that when the world is full of evidence to support it. But ‘talent’ is not the motivating force. It’s not what makes Beethoven compose, nor you write your poetry.

For whatever reason, we as a species are inveterate “mark makers.” You can see it in the hand prints in the cave art at the top of this post. People forget that these cave drawings are on walls that are in pitch-black darkness; our ancestors had to grind up colored rocks and then transport that powder and bear grease and a torch of some kind into the cave to make those marks. If that doesn’t convince you that MAKING THE THING THAT IS NOT is born into us, nothing will. (See also...)

There is a hippie-woo philosophy out there that says that the Universe is sentient in some way, and that everything that is exists to allow the Universe to see itself, to understand itself. Humans go even further: we MAKE THE THING THAT IS NOT to add to that universal self-knowledge.

The thing is that humans are self-aware enough to recognize that our art is a reflection of ourselves as well, both of the artist and of the species as a whole. You don’t have to google far to find this sentiment: “Art informs who we are as human beings,” etc., and this is not just artists trying to justify their grant money; it’s true.

Circling back to my main point here: It’s easy to be discouraged if your work doesn’t measure up to the best we can see around us. I love my William Blake’s Inn, but I am under no illusions that it is anywhere as good as anything Beethoven or Mahler ever wrote. So what am I to do as I face yet another blank measure of piano waltzes?

Here’s what I do: rather than despair because I cannot produce Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection,” I am grateful that someone other than I was able to make that mark as an offering to the universe. Because Gustav Mahler had the ‘talent’ to make that mark, I am off the hook. The universe is not expecting me to produce “Resurrection” or King Lear or Water-Lilies or even my neighbor’s book of bad poetry. The universe expects from me only what I can give it, and I have to presume that it’s happy to receive it.

So, ‘talent’? Pfft. Who needs it? Just make your mark.