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kateThanks to amethystfirefly for pointing me at 750words. She has positive things to say about it, and just from what I checked out, it seems pretty nifty, and I certainly need the motivation. Unfortunately my computer froze up after I wrote my 750 words yesterday, and I didn't get credit for them. :(
But that's not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about innovators and culminators and how they relate to Malcolm Gladwell's article about precocious geniuses and late bloomers.
The article talks about Picasso and Cezanne, which is unfortunate, because I know as much about art as I do about African bee farming. Which is to say, nothing. He also discusses two authors, Foer, the author who wrote Everything is Illuminated at age 19, and Fountain, who wrote Brief Encounters with Che Guevara fifteen years after he started writing (in his late twenties).
The conclusion Gladwell draws is that the precocious geniuses - Picasso and Foer - peak at an early age because they have a firm idea in mind, or basically, they're not looking for anything - they're just doing. Cezanne and Fountain, they took a while to ferment because they were searching. Researching. Generally trying to find something that they don't quite know what it was.
I have to translate this to musical terms because that's where my experience lies. The first two people who come to mind are Mozart (1756-1791) and Beethoven (1770-1827). I was taught in one of my Music History classes about culminators and innovators. It's a concept that's stuck with me over time (thank you, Music History prof that I can't remember now). Culminators (like Mozart) are people who reach the pinnacle of an era, or style, or idea. Mozart's music seems like it came straight from god's mouth to Mozart's ear. In my humble opinion, I think that's because his mind was simply set up to sift through and collate all the music of the time period, find what was best, and then make it even better. He could, upon hearing a work, immediately play it back - embellishing it to make it better or even to the point of making it farcical. He had an ability to pick out faults and correct them. He was able to synthesize everything about the classical era and in turn make some of the best music in the history of mankind. (Not my thing, Mozart, but I can recognize his genius.)
Beethoven, on the other hand, struggled his whole life with music. He too managed to write some good, solid classical music. Almost immediately, though, he decided this wasn't good enough and went another way. That way lead to one of the breakthrough works of his output - the Sixth Symphony, the Pastorale, which many believe is the first truly programmatic orchestral work. But his best works? His greatest works? Happened after he could no longer hear other people's music and was stuck in his own head. His Ninth Symphony. The Missa Solemnis. The Late Quartets. These are the foundation of the Romantic era. Beethoven, besides being an innovator, was a late bloomer.
There is some difference in technique as well. Mozart (like Foer), simply sat down and wrote things out that were already playing in his brain like angelic choruses. Beethoven worked and reworked and fiddled with everything he wrote (like Cezanne). No piece by Beethoven was ever really complete - it could, at any time, be transformed into something else, from a simple transposition of instruments to being the basis for the theme of a movement of his next symphony.
Overlaying Gladwell's theory of precociousness vs. late blooming on Mozart and Beethoven, they fit it perfectly. Mozart wrote all his amazing work before the age of 40 (which he never reached). Beethoven wrote lots of good stuff, but his best works were made in his fifties. Precociousness seems to go away after a point; young geniuses seem to burn bright and then fade, or burn out. Late bloomers go on and on, always searching for the next way to make their work that much better.
I work in the world of science, and there may not be a direct correlation (all scientists are late bloomers of a sort - it's rare to be doing independent research before age 30), but there is a quirk that I find interesting. There are culminators and innovators in science, too - people who meticulously research current theories until they are utterly proven or disproven, following a line of research as far as it can go. Then there are people that seem to think sideways, who fly in the face of the research that's out there. When one of those scientists hits on something that works, they're hailed as a genius for thinking outside the box. An innovator. But that person has done their time, just like the one that followed up every avenue of an already popular theory. They just stopped to say, 'but what if we didn't do it this way?' or 'but what if we tried this other thing?'
This actually rings true even in office settings. I've always been one to find the most direct route to the end result. What that means, when you're doing paperwork, is understanding how everything works, and then synthesizing a procedure that streamlines the work and yet makes sure you hit all the important notes. I worked in a bank, for a while, doing Cash Transaction Reports (CTRs). If you deposit over $10,000 in cash to a bank, they are required to report it to the government, and the CTR is that report. Every day, those reports are collected and the information verified and shipped off to the government (on special magnetic tape!). When I learned how to do this, I asked a lot of questions. (I do this any time I learn something new - I want to know the whole process, so I can avoid the redundant bits.) So, when I got a feel for things, I made my own system and started doing the work that way. Within two months, I was doing half the work of the entire department - that's how much faster my system was. The boss noticed, and did an independent audit of my work, and it turned out that not only was I faster, I was more accurate than the rest of the department. That's when I was called on to train the rest of the people to do things my way.
This happens to me in every job I've ever been in. When I worked in the ER, they tapped me to redesign the charge system. I did. We immediately had a 100% uptick in revenue because of one simple change: we made everyone chart as they go. Docs and nurses were leaving charts for days on end, and forgetting billable procedures.
So anyway, this has all been a ramble about how what I know fits with Gladwell's article and what it means for me. As a writer, it gives me a great amount of hope – especially this line: … sometimes genius is anything but rarefied; sometimes it’s just the thing that emerges after twenty years of working at your kitchen table. As long as I keep searching and trying to get better, I have hope that I'll eventually make something worthwhile. Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…
amethystfirefly for pointing me at 750words. She has positive things to say about it, and just from what I checked out, it seems pretty nifty, and I certainly need the motivation. Unfortunately my computer froze up after I wrote my 750 words yesterday, and I didn't get credit for them. :(But that's not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about innovators and culminators and how they relate to Malcolm Gladwell's article about precocious geniuses and late bloomers.
The article talks about Picasso and Cezanne, which is unfortunate, because I know as much about art as I do about African bee farming. Which is to say, nothing. He also discusses two authors, Foer, the author who wrote Everything is Illuminated at age 19, and Fountain, who wrote Brief Encounters with Che Guevara fifteen years after he started writing (in his late twenties).
The conclusion Gladwell draws is that the precocious geniuses - Picasso and Foer - peak at an early age because they have a firm idea in mind, or basically, they're not looking for anything - they're just doing. Cezanne and Fountain, they took a while to ferment because they were searching. Researching. Generally trying to find something that they don't quite know what it was.
I have to translate this to musical terms because that's where my experience lies. The first two people who come to mind are Mozart (1756-1791) and Beethoven (1770-1827). I was taught in one of my Music History classes about culminators and innovators. It's a concept that's stuck with me over time (thank you, Music History prof that I can't remember now). Culminators (like Mozart) are people who reach the pinnacle of an era, or style, or idea. Mozart's music seems like it came straight from god's mouth to Mozart's ear. In my humble opinion, I think that's because his mind was simply set up to sift through and collate all the music of the time period, find what was best, and then make it even better. He could, upon hearing a work, immediately play it back - embellishing it to make it better or even to the point of making it farcical. He had an ability to pick out faults and correct them. He was able to synthesize everything about the classical era and in turn make some of the best music in the history of mankind. (Not my thing, Mozart, but I can recognize his genius.)
Beethoven, on the other hand, struggled his whole life with music. He too managed to write some good, solid classical music. Almost immediately, though, he decided this wasn't good enough and went another way. That way lead to one of the breakthrough works of his output - the Sixth Symphony, the Pastorale, which many believe is the first truly programmatic orchestral work. But his best works? His greatest works? Happened after he could no longer hear other people's music and was stuck in his own head. His Ninth Symphony. The Missa Solemnis. The Late Quartets. These are the foundation of the Romantic era. Beethoven, besides being an innovator, was a late bloomer.
There is some difference in technique as well. Mozart (like Foer), simply sat down and wrote things out that were already playing in his brain like angelic choruses. Beethoven worked and reworked and fiddled with everything he wrote (like Cezanne). No piece by Beethoven was ever really complete - it could, at any time, be transformed into something else, from a simple transposition of instruments to being the basis for the theme of a movement of his next symphony.
Overlaying Gladwell's theory of precociousness vs. late blooming on Mozart and Beethoven, they fit it perfectly. Mozart wrote all his amazing work before the age of 40 (which he never reached). Beethoven wrote lots of good stuff, but his best works were made in his fifties. Precociousness seems to go away after a point; young geniuses seem to burn bright and then fade, or burn out. Late bloomers go on and on, always searching for the next way to make their work that much better.
I work in the world of science, and there may not be a direct correlation (all scientists are late bloomers of a sort - it's rare to be doing independent research before age 30), but there is a quirk that I find interesting. There are culminators and innovators in science, too - people who meticulously research current theories until they are utterly proven or disproven, following a line of research as far as it can go. Then there are people that seem to think sideways, who fly in the face of the research that's out there. When one of those scientists hits on something that works, they're hailed as a genius for thinking outside the box. An innovator. But that person has done their time, just like the one that followed up every avenue of an already popular theory. They just stopped to say, 'but what if we didn't do it this way?' or 'but what if we tried this other thing?'
This actually rings true even in office settings. I've always been one to find the most direct route to the end result. What that means, when you're doing paperwork, is understanding how everything works, and then synthesizing a procedure that streamlines the work and yet makes sure you hit all the important notes. I worked in a bank, for a while, doing Cash Transaction Reports (CTRs). If you deposit over $10,000 in cash to a bank, they are required to report it to the government, and the CTR is that report. Every day, those reports are collected and the information verified and shipped off to the government (on special magnetic tape!). When I learned how to do this, I asked a lot of questions. (I do this any time I learn something new - I want to know the whole process, so I can avoid the redundant bits.) So, when I got a feel for things, I made my own system and started doing the work that way. Within two months, I was doing half the work of the entire department - that's how much faster my system was. The boss noticed, and did an independent audit of my work, and it turned out that not only was I faster, I was more accurate than the rest of the department. That's when I was called on to train the rest of the people to do things my way.
This happens to me in every job I've ever been in. When I worked in the ER, they tapped me to redesign the charge system. I did. We immediately had a 100% uptick in revenue because of one simple change: we made everyone chart as they go. Docs and nurses were leaving charts for days on end, and forgetting billable procedures.
So anyway, this has all been a ramble about how what I know fits with Gladwell's article and what it means for me. As a writer, it gives me a great amount of hope – especially this line: … sometimes genius is anything but rarefied; sometimes it’s just the thing that emerges after twenty years of working at your kitchen table. As long as I keep searching and trying to get better, I have hope that I'll eventually make something worthwhile. Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…
For easy organization later:
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on 4/29/10 03:04 pm (UTC)no subject
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on 4/29/10 03:29 pm (UTC)no subject
on 4/29/10 03:56 pm (UTC)no subject
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on 4/29/10 04:15 pm (UTC)no subject
on 4/29/10 04:33 pm (UTC)no subject
on 4/29/10 04:36 pm (UTC)And I vote for the big bang, omg!
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on 4/29/10 04:13 pm (UTC)no subject
on 4/29/10 04:21 pm (UTC)no subject
on 4/29/10 04:33 pm (UTC)I squeed too when he got Rodney's stuff to work in Enemy at the Gate! I love that the two of them work better together as a team, that Radek has the exact qualities that Rodney needs and vice versa. It still makes me sad, because I think most people do think of Rodney as a genius, and not Radek.
That actually makes me want to do research on genius and what's considered genius and what's just scary smart. I think it has to do with that innovation thing - I know that for TAG programs, they look for unique ways of solving problems rather than just being able to do so.
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on 4/29/10 04:43 pm (UTC)I don't think they ever tell us exactly what kind of scientist Radek is, but I tend to default to engineering of some kind because of the way he bounces off Rodney, who we know is an astrophysicist. I feel that a lot of Rodney's non-essential work is probably theoretical, while Radek's is probably practical, which lends itself to a different kind of genius. He's not necessarily an 'A-ha!' kind of genius, but more of the long-term, never happy with the status-quo kind of genius.
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on 4/29/10 05:23 pm (UTC)I still don't, btw, but I do agree with you that he is. <3
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on 4/29/10 05:35 pm (UTC)no subject
on 4/29/10 05:42 pm (UTC)I think you're a genius.
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on 4/29/10 03:58 pm (UTC)Not to contradict anything in this post or this articl, of course! I just was reminded of that. I'll try to find that talk in my links maybe. :)
What you say about your capacity for synthesis and optimization is amazing! I feel like I have a good grasp of things and I like to understand the hows and whys and streamline processes as well, but I don't think I am actually /that/ good at it. At least, I'm usually very good at synthesizing things for my own benefit and thoughts and practice, but not often in a ... transmissible way.
Your skills are very precious! :)
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on 4/29/10 04:12 pm (UTC)I do agree about the 10,000 hour rule - and I bet if you took Fountain (and probably Cezanne) he'd fit it perfectly. Mozart certainly does (and Gladwell references him in Outliers). Beethoven, though, is trickier: he had definitely put in his hours by the time he was a teenager, and he was producing mature, masterful works by his twenties. But he wasn't satisfied to continue producing those sorts of works - he wanted to move to something new, different. I mean, there's the 10,000 hours spent mastering the craft, and then there's the thing that sparks something new and original. No amount of time provides that, as far as I can tell.
:D I wish I could find a way to become one of those optimization consultants. I'm super good at that stuff, but I wouldn't know how to draw customers... maybe I should look into that. HRM.
And thank you, my dear! It's lovely to hear that one's skills are precious. <3
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on 4/29/10 10:10 pm (UTC)You could do worse than to start by looking at these guys and then their competitors...
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on 4/29/10 11:39 pm (UTC)no subject
on 4/29/10 05:01 pm (UTC)no subject
on 4/29/10 05:25 pm (UTC)no subject
on 4/29/10 05:43 pm (UTC)I think what always happens to me at the bookstore is this paralysis about trying to choose between Gladwell's books. And then I go and buy something else. And then I can't figure out why his books aren't on my shelf, because I remember standing in the bookstore holding them.
I THINK I SHALL REMEDY THIS PROBLEM FORTHWITH.
And I'm on my 3rd Gladwell New Yorker article, having abandoned my task of clearing the desk in favour of reading.
It was probably 2 years ago that I heard him speak?
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on 4/29/10 06:03 pm (UTC)Hrm, 2 years ago... likely he was talking about genius, then? It would have been before Outliers came out...
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on 4/29/10 06:10 pm (UTC)I'll definitely consider reading them in order - thank you for the suggestion!
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on 4/29/10 06:31 pm (UTC)I hope you enjoy! :D
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on 4/29/10 10:12 pm (UTC)Can I ask for more details? So curious!
I like Gladwell's work too. :-)
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on 4/29/10 11:52 pm (UTC)no subject
on 4/29/10 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
on 4/29/10 07:07 pm (UTC)no subject
on 4/29/10 07:20 pm (UTC)no subject
on 4/29/10 11:31 pm (UTC)no subject
on 4/29/10 11:43 pm (UTC)I'm looking forward to writing with no strings; I often consider writing to require actual output, to be working toward a goal. Having to write every day without having a content requirement is going to be quite freeing, I think.
Thanks again for pointing me at this! I'm very excited!
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on 4/30/10 01:00 am (UTC)It is. So much more than I ever expected!