Making music and developing my songwriting gifts is an act of love. It is hard to argue with the idea that geniuses like Mozart or timeless favorites like Madonna, Elton John, Eric Clapton and others were not gifted. But the nature versus nurture argument is both fascinating and, for the average person, irrelevant. Every time I’ve met an excellent performer in any discipline, all I’ve seen is a lifetime of hard, honest work.”
The fact is that I’ve seen endless people fail due to lack of honest work. And given those years or decades of work, I’ve seen few fail for lack of talent. The truth is that if “talent” exists, it seems to be the capacity for long, concentrated periods of tunnel-vision focus, combined with a unique capacity for digging to find truths most of us are reluctant to reveal.
As a dedicated musical artist, I can attest that I have sacrificed outside interests, relationships, and at times my wholeness, to focus on my divine obsession. I have come to learn that the primary gift of art is to be able to spend life in the act of creation.
To do that, you don’t need to be “the best”. All you need to do is to get into the top twenty percent in your field, and you’ll do just fine. If you love it, stick with it!!
[hmp_song id=’heart-song’]