Ruling House of Writing, real or imagined

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

RECIDIVA

I dont have your husband's gift. My son-in-law does, and he's a marvel to watch.

I cannot do the magic; but I'm confident most of us can be taught to do 95% of what they do. I was.

I mean, at the end of my apprenticeship I was competent to make pretty nearly anything, but I couldnt make everything. And I knew one, maybe, two people who could. They knew the magic.

A good instructor can teach you to be competent.

 

[Recidiva]

RECIDIVA

I dont have your husband's gift. My son-in-law does, and he's a marvel to watch.

I cannot do the magic; but I'm confident most of us can be taught to do 95% of what they do. I was.

I mean, at the end of my apprenticeship I was competent to make pretty nearly anything, but I couldnt make everything. And I knew one, maybe, two people who could. They knew the magic.

A good instructor can teach you to be competent.

Yes, I think competence isn't where I like to be, which is another failing as I have too many things that are effortless for me.

Take singing. I'm good at it, so good that learning other instruments makes my experience of music less fun, less effortless, than singing. I played French Horn and I was good, really good, but it was never the same magic as singing.

The job I have now plays completely into my strengths. I am a medical editor, that means I'm listening to people speak all day. I'm good at picking up people's patterns of communication, and I'm good at vocabulary, and I have extraordinary hearing, so I hear things in reality three rooms away, where people are sure I shouldn't be able to. That results in some interesting social situations, but it makes my job effortless and almost magic.

I guess I'm too used to magic and miracles and I'm sadly disappointed by the things that don't qualify, though I try.

I aspire to competent in some fields, it's better than resting on my laurels, dusty as they are.

I will not be a Jane of all Trades, but I'll be a Jane who gives it a go, although I occasionally grumble about it being hard.

 

[Brute_Force]

When the magic comes, there's nothing like it.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

RECIDIVA

I relate to your extraordinary hearing because I process visual information uncommonly well. I'm at the top of the pile in terms of visual-spatial relationships. I suck at many things, but this is not one of them. I know I see things most people have no idea exist. I'm speaking of patterns and relationships

I can look at an exploded view of something and re-assemble it in my head.

 

[Recidiva]

RECIDIVA

I relate to your extraordinary hearing because I process visual information uncommonly well. I'm at the top of the pile in terms of visual-spatial relationships. I suck at many things, but this is not one of them. I know I see things most people have no idea exist. I'm speaking of patterns and relationships

I can look at an exploded view of something and re-assemble it in my head.

Yes, in my case, I imagine my brain has self-organized into assigning huge amounts of space to verbal, emotional and sense data other than sight. Sight is the sense I trust the least. I also have a true affinity for patterns. Mine tend to be those of the emotional or behavioral variety. And that I can't teach to anyone.

There are certain things, like sense of direction or sense of humor, that can't be taught.

When I see genius in writing, I see how people have easily, effortlessly solved a problem I have with putting words on paper to reflect reality or fantasy.

It's that leap, that recognition of talent beyond my own, skill and ability beyond my own.

I can make this leap in some limited areas, and I can't show my work.

James Gleick wrote something about this in "Genius" about Richard Feynman and I wish I could recall the quote, but I can't find it, and I don't have the book. Google has failed me. The essence is something like: "Genius is that which arrives at a destination you didn't think was possible by means that can't be explained." Genius, in essence, can't show its work, can only show the results. Often a true genius can't prove how they arrived, or even take anybody with them, if the travel and arrival mechanisms can't be comprehended.

However I've mangled that quote, the hallmark of genius is expressed for me in those things that can't be taught, but have to be known by some means not available to me, and then translated into something I can understand.

 

[ms.read]

i completely understand.

The vehicle is partly your intuition, partly something else mixed with strong absorption and understnding skill.

 

[Recidiva]

i completely understand.

The vehicle is partly your intuition, partly something else mixed with strong absorption and understnding skill.

Good list.

It's like underpants gnomes.

Step 1. Collect underpants.
Step 2.
Step 3. Profit

My list gets more defined and I do identify some more of the "partly something else" elements and I might get better at mixing them.

I'm still missing list items.

 

[Oblimo]

However I've mangled that quote, the hallmark of genius is expressed for me in those things that can't be taught, but have to be known by some means not available to me, and then translated into something I can understand.

I bet it helps to fill your head with things you want to think about, though, and see what you can put together. My favorite anecdotal stroke of genius was Georg Cantor's--it's actually terrific to me.

Georg Cantor was an eccentric polymath. He liked to talk walks and think about stuff, mostly math. One day he was walking across a bridge, thought about its shape, and a super-simple proof to one of mathematics' most complex puzzles just clicked in his head. By the time he'd crossed the bridge, he had the whole of Cantor's theorem, proving that while there is an infinity of counting numbers (positive integers), there are infinitely more real numbers than than counting numbers; that there are different sizes of infinity.

That's genius.

 

[Recidiva]

I bet it helps to fill your head with things you want to think about, though, and see what you can put together. My favorite anecdotal stroke of genius was Georg Cantor's--it's actually terrific to me.

Georg Cantor was an eccentric polymath. He liked to talk walks and think about stuff, mostly math. One day he was walking across a bridge, thought about its shape, and a super-simple proof to one of mathematics' most complex puzzles just clicked in his head. By the time he'd crossed the bridge, he had the whole of Cantor's theorem, proving that while there is an infinity of counting numbers (positive integers), there are infinitely more real numbers than than counting numbers; that there are different sizes of infinity.

That's genius.

For me generally that happens when I puzzle over a certain concept. If I obsess over the nature of jealousy or guilt or hatred, I'll usually be able to grasp if I don't have a working definition of the mechanics of the emotion.

As a result of my definitions of these things, my working emotional universe is very different from other people's emotional universe.

Complicated emotional equations for me are my challenge, and I enjoy breaking them down into their variables and solving them.