In the talent vs. practice debate regarding mastery we have Malcolm Gladwell’s suggestion that it takes somewhere around 10,000 hours to achieve mastery (as well as the counter argument of that it may not require even half that much).
But putting that aside and waxing a little fanciful, I was recently thinking about the attribution of supernatural intervention/inspiration as the reason for talent. We all know the famous story of Robert Johnson making a deal with the devil at a crossroads in order to acquire his blues talent.
I was recently listening to an interview on the National Endowment for the Arts website with National Heritage Fellow Ledward Kaapana who tells a story of an uncle taught to play guitar in a dream over seven days.
“And my Uncle Fred, he told me this story about how he learned to play his guitar. He dreamt for about seven nights of how to play. In his dream, someone came into his dream and taught him how to play the guitar. This guy sat under the coconut tree. In his dream, he sees the guy on a coconut tree, but he couldn’t see the guy’s face. All he seen was everything was white with a red chest. You know the Hawaii style, they always had the red chest, and sitting there and teaching him.
And as he was getting ready to go to school, his dad used to make him home lunch to go to school then, and the dad could hear him playing in the room, his guitar. So on the seventh day when he told his dad, the dad gave him one slap. So in other words, he was not supposed to say anything, because after that, that dream was gone. Never had that dream. Then you know what he told me? My uncle told me, “If I didn’t tell my dad about this dream, I could have been playing with my eyelashes.” Because he plays with his nose. He plays with his toes. He plays over the guitar.”
I love stories like this just for the themes in common with other cultures. As I got to thinking about it, it seemed that these sort of stories are always about music. I couldn’t think of any stories about actors or dancers receiving supernatural inspiration. There are stories about people dancing unto death after wearing cursed boots or being bewitched by fairies, but no positive attributions. The only supernatural inspiration for visual artworks I can think of are fairly contemporary Twilight Zone type stories where things don’t end well either.
Music frequently associated with transcendent experiences. In fact, just last week at an artist Q&A an audience member asked if the three percussion masters we had performing ever felt a oneness with the divine while playing. Perhaps that is why there are these stories of talent and ability being conferred upon people.
Help me out. Am I forgetting any classic stories of supernatural inspiration in other arts disciplines?