Sans Fig Leaf
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"A spark of…"
3 May, 2007
I'll never be a great musician.
I've been a musician. I used to play a lot of instruments. I played trumpet, trombone, and occassionally sax in my school's jazz band. I played bassoon in the orchestra. I played euphonium in the marching band. In the symphonic band I usually played bassoon or euphonium, but at various times they had me play clarinet, bass clarinet, oboe, contrabass clarinet, French horn, tuba, coronet, and even flute. In the early days I played a bit of viola. I sang baritone in the men's ensemble, and tenor in the large choir (when I was singing in several groups, I was one whole note short of a four-octave range).
I could plunk out a melody or simple chords and arppeggios on a piano, I could strum chords on a guitar, I knew my way around a few different types of synthesizer (back in the day when you practically had to be an electrical engineer to run one), multi-synch tape decks, and many other types of sound equipment. I took some music theory in college. I composed music before I took theory. I've composed more music since--even tried to write a musical. I directed a small ensemble. I did a bit of music teaching.
I occassionally got solos. I got good marks at a couple of competitions. The ensemble performed some good concerts. I wasn't bad. I was generally better than average.
But I wasn't great.
I had always been pretty good at sight-reading. I had been even better at memorizing. I could learn a piece of music so fast, that I would get bored during the rehearsals, and started learning the other parts. When performance time came around, I could play any number of parts from memory, often all the way through.
When I got to college, I found out that wasn't such a rare talent. At least half the people who were serious about music did it, many of them much faster than I could. Again, I was better than average, but not great.
For a while I thought it was the "Jack of all trades, master of none" syndrome. I had spread myself too thin. So I narrowed my focus, put all my effort into just one instrument.
I didn't become great.
I next thought that it was lack of discipline. I hadn't practiced enough. Or maybe it was timing--if I had put all my efforts into a single instrument at an earlier age, while my brain was still growing or something, then maybe I could have achieved greatness.
The most frustrating part was that I understood the theory and the practice well enough that I could teach it. Yet I couldn't do it as well as I wanted.
I had tons of substance, but no flash.
Everyone knows that all flash and no substance is a bad thing. What most folks never quite realize is that all substance and no flash is just as bad.
I'm not saying that you have to have a knack for razzle-dazzle and a flare of showmanship to be a great musician (as some people will attest, I can do showmanship like you wouldn't believe). No, by flash in this instance I'm talking about the spark of musicality--the sizzle of rhythm and tonality and the indescribable something that percolates over in the right-brain (or deep in the soul, depending on how you see the world).
A person without that spark, no matter how much they study, how often they practice, how proficient they become in the mechanics of producing music, will never be a great musicion. It's like having the firewood and kindling perfectly arranged in the fireplace on a freezing cold night, but absolutely no way to strike a spark.
Music isn't the only creative art that works that way. There's all sorts of things about writing that can be taught. You can learn the mechanics of grammar. You can study the practice and theory of plotting, characterization, and pacing. You can become fluent in themes, moods, emotional arcs, dramatic tension, comic relieve, building conflict to a gripping climax, then fading into a statisfying denouement.
It can be taught. But if the person doesn't have the storytelling spark, no matter how proficient they become at all those things, their stories are never going to be great.
Unfortunately, too many people think that it's about mind-blowing ideas, or deep meanings, or profound revelations, or superlative language. Some people go on and on at great lengths about their deep, impenetrable epiphanies. They talk about profundities and the constant struggle for perfection--the neverending pursuit of the unobtainable.
As if any of that has anything to do with story telling. Or art of any kind.
It's not about the profundities. Art (of any kind) shouldn't be a grueling ordeal to be endured. Which isn't to say that I don't appreciate a well-done but challenging story, or play, or painting. But there is a difference between a challenge and plain torture.
That's something I wish more people understood.
--Duke Ellington
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