Kindling Knack 4/15/09

Genius is the talent for discovering what cannot be taught or learned.

Immanuel Kant
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Hi. Government got your money?
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Einstein once said he wasn't a genius but that he was just very curious. I don't know but I guess curiosity is behind all endeavors that transcend what people seem to know. It has been said that education begins the moment you leave school. That's when you start to find out some of your teachers knew what they were talking about, some of them knew some of the time and others never did know. Leaving school and going out into the real world requires shedding a lot of skins.

In my own career I have seen young people come into professional theatre fresh from some drama department or school of the arts with the stupidest ideas as to what acting is all about and what actually goes on in a professional theatre. It's painful to see them struggle to let go of what their favorite professor taught them to do. But letting go of useless training is essential to finding one's way in any important endeavor.

There are theories, there are practices and then there are discoveries. Theories are like rule books, written or compiled by somebody along the way. They generally say that if you put this with that then the other thing is going to happen. Some of these rules are good, others are not. One has to decide for oneself. And that's where the practice comes in.

I know actors who act by the numbers, as the saying goes, who think they know how any given scene should be played based on similar scenes of the past. If they have a love scene they will perform a generic love scene with no love in it, a rule book love scene. No risks taken, nothing learned.

Then how do discoveries come about? By asking questions. By curiosity. By saying "I wonder what would happen if I tried attaching a flat piece of wood to the bottom of the ship with a handle on it. Maybe I can steer it that way and I wouldn't have keep moving the sails back and forth by hand."

In short, geniuses are curious people who put the rule books aside, imagine, think things through, try them out and keep trying until they work.

Maybe you qualify as a genius but don't know it yet.

DB
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Have another one on me.
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