On 22/05/2012 10:44 AM, scott wrote:
>> Well, I've been playing keyboards since I was 9 years old. I mean, I'm
>> OK, but I'm still not fantastic at it...
>
> I've also been walking for 30 years, but I'd never win an olympic
> walking event.

Unrelated, but I saw a record-breaking moonwalk attempt. The... thing 
that won it was dressed exactly like Michael Jackson, and kept 
repeatedly grabbing itself and singing "we-heeeee!" in a bizarre 
high-pitched voice. And when they awarded it the new world record 
certificate, it wept and said "I did it for Michael".

True fact: Some people are really messed up.

> To become fantastic at something you need to practise
> properly. This means always pushing yourself to the next level as hard
> as you can and not just endlessly repeating what you are already good
> at. This is why you have a teacher or a coach to help you. And also why
> I suck at guitar and keyboard - I spend ages learning one song and then
> just play that endlessly, much to the annoyance of everybody else :-)

I'm not sure it /gets/ much more "next level" than Bach. ;-) But sure, I 
take your point.

Come to think of it, I'm trying to think of a talent I could even 
hypothetically possess which would actually impress anybody. It seems 
people are just hard to impress. "Oh, you can play violin? Sure, so can 
every orchestra I've ever seen. Big deal." "Oh, so you can dance? Big 
deal, Harry Judd learned how to do every dance there is in just 12 
weeks." "You can do maths? Yeah, so can every college teacher in the 
country." It's actually surprisingly difficult to come up with things 
that would impress the average person on the street...

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