Does talent ever make you laugh for joy? That happens to me sometimes. Occasionally I'll be listening to music, for example, and I'll get this big, silly grin on my face. This morning I was listening to John Popper play the harmonica and the sensation overcame me. It started as a smile and then built until I had to laugh. "Damn he's good," I said. Does that ever happen to you?
Real skill in drawing or painting can affect me in the same way. I like many different styles of art, but I'm most impressed and moved by skilled realism. When I see a painting or drawing with such detail that it could be a photograph, it makes me smile. How can people be so talented?
Writing can do the same thing, though it's a little more subtle. Sometimes it's a turn of phrase or wording that's so perfectly descriptive. Sometimes it's a metaphor that perfectly captures a quality of it's subject. Sometimes it's humor or beauty. Clarity in writing can be moving, when a thing says exactly and only what it means to say.
Someone once told me that you have to be able to understand something at some level before you can enjoy it. "That's why," he said, "people who really know music can appreciate more complicated arrangements that most people do not enjoy." This makes me wonder, can you only be impressed by someone better than you, or can you appreciate the talent of people less talented than yourself? Can you appreciate the absolute value of a thing, or only its relative value? I don't know, but I suspect this is one of those areas where people vary. Some people see absolute value and some people see relative value. I'm somewhere in the middle.
Hello, friends. How are you today?
Later. Love.
