What is Talent?

When I was thirteen years old, I had the privilege of attending an arts camp called Interlochen Center for the Arts in Northern Michigan. It was one of the most transformative experiences of my youth. My parents grew up in Detroit and heard about it all their lives -- this magical place up north. And since they had this "talented" kid who loved to draw, they submitted one of my artworks and presented me with their acceptance as a birthday present.

This is me back then, wearing the uniform with a sheen of sweat on my brow from the summer heat.

I was a bit apprehensive before I got there. What I wasn't prepared for was coming face to face with "talent". Second graders practicing piano concertos. Violinists with bruises under their jaw from daily hours of practicing, sixth-grade opera singers, lithe ballet dancers spending six hours a day in rehearsal. Soo much talent.

Interlochen is named after the town in Switzerland because it is also in between two of the ten thousand lakes in the state. Interspersed amongst the woods are tiny practice cabins. Everywhere I walked I could hear pieces of concertos, sonatas, and symphonies. It was intoxicating. Even though I was an art major, I decided to take up piano.

Oh, how I sucked at first. What was this impossible thing?

I was always called "talented" as a kid. But while the piano was my crush, it was playing very hard to get. The same measure over and over again. Separate, together, slow then slower. Learning even the simplest Bach Invention required such attention to detail, keeping my hands curved as if I was holding a tennis, how to move my wrists whether a legato, or staccato.

I recorded the path where I used to hear the sounds that lured me into spending countless hours wrestling the glorious beast that is a piano forte.

After a few years, a started to sound decent. A few years later I upgraded to good, never great, but always practicing. (Image: eight years later. Never great but always trying.)

I never stopped trying to achieve the illusion of effortlessness, to make it appear as if the notes just dripped off my fingers, as if I were casually tossing some magnificent lace cloth into the wind.

And that is when I learned the truth.

Talent is an illusion.

We work really hard at it. Sure, some are more uninhibited than others at whatever medium they choose, but we all have an aesthetic DNA in us and whether or not we want to work to let it out, is up to us.

I uploaded what it sounded like to walk through the woods to the practice cabins here for you to listen.

Enjoy!