>> Clearly I'm going to have to figure out how to get my hands on
>> professional tuition...
>
> Private lessons might be the best way to go.  Not sure what pricing is
> like now, but a lot of professional musicians do offer private lessons
> (you could also look for University music students who give private
> lessons - often times those will be less expensive and the instruction
> will be good enough to get you going).

I'll see what I can find.

>> I enjoy doing it. And then the day after, my fingers hate me... ;-)
>
> That sounds about right for the first 6 months or so.

Just like playing the guitar, or probably any other stringed instrument.

>> It must be fantastic to actually be good at something. I can't imagine
>> what that's like...
>
> Actually, you don't have to imagine it.  You're good at some stuff - and
> nobody is good at everything.
>
> You seem to have a good grasp on maths, programming, playing the pipe
> organ (as you said, there's something you play on it that's "wicked hard"
> - so clearly you don't /suck/ at it), writing, and dancing.  And that's
> just from what I've seen you post here about and blog about.

Well, there's being "good at" something, and then there's being "great 
at" something.

I can play the Widor toccata - just not very well. I can write computer 
programs, but according to Warp and Darren I suck at that. I'm competing 
in a national dance competition, but I don't exactly expect to be 
bringing home any medals. The list goes on. Basically there's a whole 
range of things that I'm vaguely good at, but nothing that's really 
going to /impress/ anybody.

It's a pity really, because impressing people seems to be what I'm 
hard-wired to want to do...

> It's certainly a truism that the more you know about something, the more
> you realize you don't know everything about it.

I know, right? So you go to a dance class, and you learn the Waltz. And 
there are, like, 3 steps in it, and nobody can do it. At all. And 
eventually, after a few months, you get to the point where you can do 
those 3 steps. And you think "hey, I can Waltz!"

And over time, you come to realise that, actually, to Waltz /properly/, 
you're supposed to stand a certain way, hold your arm a certain way, 
step in a certain way, sway a certain way, and basically that thing 
you're doing is NOTHING LIKE how a Waltz is actually supposed to look. 
You can't Waltz, you SUCK at the Waltz! :-/

It seems that everything is like that. When I was a kid, I used to write 
computer programs in BASIC, and I thought that made me a programmer. 
Then you have people tell you "hey, global variables are evil" and "GOTO 
is evil" and "your code is completely non-maintainable" and basically 
you realise that you're doing it HORRIBLY WRONG.

It seems in every sphere, the more you learn, the more you realise that 
there's so much stuff you don't know that it seems impossible that you 
could ever learn it all. You haven't even STARTED!

Truly, the greatest knowledge is in knowing that you know NOTHING.

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