Eneh Akpan Writes: talent

Showing posts with label talent. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Is Intuition A Synonym For Talent?

In an article I wrote and posted on my blog (this blog), I gave the impression that talent and intuition were two of a pair. It served its purpose in the context I applied it and it's probably okay to use it in that sense on an informal basis or in spoken language. This post isn't really about setting records straight if anything, I think it leans more towards drawing a line between these two human qualities for the purpose of understanding and education. Is intuition a synonym for talent? Either way you look at it we're still going to come out on a side that shows why sometimes, one can't quite exist without the other.

First of course, comes the definitions.

Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without inference or the use of reason.^[1] The word intuition comes from Latin verb intueri which is usually translated as to look inside or to contemplate. —Wikipedia

Another dictionary calls it Instinctive knowing; immediate apprehension.

Talent means the skill that someone has quite naturally to do something that is hard. Someone who has talent is able to do something without trying hard.

There is intuition and there is talent and the definitions above try to distinguish one from the other and yet, inadvertently create a subtle connection between the two subjects.

A persistent attitude is necessary in gaining mastery in both areas. One has to be mildly obsessed while engaging his/her talent to become something of an expert and even so before he is able to max the moments of instant total cognition. These two are abilities and while being consistently intuitive can be called a talent, it appears that intuition of itself though an ability does not interpret as talent.

Let's say you possess a skill to get at immediate apprehension naturally probably, of something you had no chance in hell of knowing you might be accused of possessing intuitive talent. It comes easy enough without much effort on your part. Talent remains talent and suffice it to say that not all special or natural abilities lean heavily on intuition (though being intuitive might help get the job done better). Having a burst of intuition once every hundred years is not talent. Such individual is probably better off considered lucky.

Keep your pen bleeding!

Akpan

Sunday, February 16, 2014

Science Fiction: Vehicle of Change

Long before I knew what the genre was called, an unalloyed sense of something deeper than awe always accompanied my views of any science fiction flick. The reason is not far-fetched cause the plot of a science fiction film 'looks like something that could happen' (advanced readers would call that plausible but my shoestring inventory couldn't afford such words at the time).

It is close to impossible reading or watching a movie or literature of the science fiction persuasion and not feeling the weight of urgency press down your pair of shoulders. No other genre drags you to the edge of your seat and sets your mind reeling off into forbidden places (were you to voice these in the dark ages, you’d be laughed out of court) that might be the future of the race of man. Science fiction is the one branch of literature that accepts the inevitability of change. Without the initial assumption that there will be change, there is no such thing as science fiction.*

Courtesy: guardian.co.uk

Once upon a memory, a post I had authored averred predictions were staples of the science fiction genre and a commenter on Reddit almost bit my head off for it. Obviously, it meant a lot to him (or her) that Sci-Fi and predictions be on bad terms. Well, here I am with a typically wholesome head and I still stand by that declaration. To boot, although I do believe a science fiction story shouldn't portray something that is going to happen, before it can be important, I do not totally agree science fiction can survive and thrive as a genre that suggests change without forays into the predictive. Besides, a good deal of the world's inventive genius has been the upshot of this invention-triggering genre. Films, books and art presented in a form that all but screams in your face; this could happen anytime soon even though much of what is portrayed may seem off-the-wall.

Individuals who have been inspired by science fiction run into hundreds, thousands by extension. People who read science fiction come, in time, to know that things will be different.* Beneath all the rise of the machines and alien invasion is a tour-de-force genre which appeals fiercely to the imaginative genius within us all. Science fiction tunes us up and opens up our hearts to perceive why things need to be different. Why techniques will change, why cultures will evolve and what we must prepare our minds to accept as inevitable. It is the preview of both the immediate future and the distant.

Science fiction foresees the different and alerts its fans to stretch the wings of intuitiveness and get hold of a spontaneous stimulation of sorts. It prepares the minds of people for technological advancements and real engineers and scientists are challenged to get productive. This is the function of science fiction; to incite a need—a deep-seated craving for the over-the-top—a desire to seek out unusual and out-of-the-way technique of finding answers to many of life’s problems. A need for change.

Keep your pen bleeding!

Akpan

*Asimov, The influence of Science Fiction

Thursday, February 6, 2014

What Sir Taught Me About Talent

Back when I was a child (to coin a phrase and a swell one too if I may add), I would lock myself up in my room, turn my back to the world, set the muse to work and, explore all the depths of my creativity. There were times I skipped meals and just got lost in my muse creating lyrics. A feeling of nostalgia often accompanies my recall of those early days of trying and failing and you can readily associate if your childhood hobby morphed into a lifelong career.

Sir (if you have read my post “On Identity,” you know I called my father, “Sir”) was well aware of my obsession—how could he not, I spent more time writing than I did doing anything else. I recall one uneventful evening, that’s one day which has evolved into one of the most memorable of my entire life. An unusual hush garbed the entire household. The way I remember it I suppose my sibs were out playing soccer on some stubbed patch of undeveloped lot.

My improvised desk flaunted a clutter of school notebooks. I was buried in the pages of an exercise book flanking the heap when Sir invaded the privacy of my room.

“I haven’t seen you do too much song writing, lately,” He said, his fatherly aura eclipsing my tiny frame.

The smile, which abruptly, lit up my face, came uninvited and uninhibited because I felt I just had my legs pulled.

Don't get me wrong, though. Sir was a big fan-he loved me and loved what I did.

“Seriously.” He eyed me the way fathers do when they're trying to make you pay attention. “You've not been writing those lyrics of yours like you used to.”

Sir went on to tell me something that rearranged my overall psyche and triggered a new sense of purpose within.

1. Your Talent is ‘Who’ You Are

You can't discover the inner self and not find your talent. Towing the same line, you can't straddle your talent and not know who you really are.

“That’s one reason sloths can’t discover who they really are,” Sir said.

If someone has talent, they still have to work very hard if they want to be very good at something. Some people become quite good at something even if they do not have much talent, but if they are willing to work very hard at the skill. Some people “waste their talent” (they have talent but do not work hard at it, they do not “use their talent”). — Wikipedia

"Inspiration exists but it has to find us working." Picasso

2. Your Talent Ought to Define Your Career

This line rather blows its own trumpet. Nevertheless, that's not the situation much of the time. With unemployment and underemployment running the game and as we all know, a man's gotta eat, sometimes, we defer.
Fact remains you can't be waist deep in your talent and still be, metaphorically speaking, out of a job.

Once you find something you love to do, do more of it. You will improve your skills and refine your technique this way. WikiHow

You should consider making a career of it and help change the world with something only you could rightly show off.

3. Your Talent is No. 1 Priority

Here's what Sir said to me, "Education was invented so gifted people could learn from like-minded folks who have through drill perfected their craft." (I can name a few of my high school teachers who signed up for the job because they ran out of options, though.) "People get an education to polish raw talent. The intent wasn't to get a qualification you can't defend for beans so you can apply for a fine job that pays handsomely."

You should nurture your talent by finding a teacher, even if it's just somebody else with more experience at something who can give you advice. WikiHow

“Thomas Edison (electricity), Benjamin Banneker (clock), Garret Morgan (traffic light), Henry Ford (automobile), and Alexander Graham Bell (telephone) had 8th to 12th grade education.

Bill Gates (Microsoft), Ted Turner (CNN), Bill Lear (Lear Jet), Soichiro Honda (Honda cars), and Howard Hughes (Hughes aircraft) never earned a college degree.

These geniuses had average IQ but made the world a better place by using their intuition.” — The New York Times

That's my idea of a well-rounded education. As Sir said, “In a difficult situation where your talent is pitched against 'formal' education, choose your talent.” Put differently, do it in a heartbeat. No questions asked (to coin a phrase).

Keep your pen bleeding!

Akpan

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Peculiarity

Courtesy: kommentz.com

Peculiarity:

It means you’re invested

And everybody detests your grit.

You are too unpredictable for anyone to place

And you transcend the space of elemental ugliness

Still reaching upward in a state of grace.

There’s a unique loveliness,

You feel it as much as you hoard it.

It makes it impossible for the world to rape

The individual aroused within.

Finally, you found the spot where you belong;

Soulful cries pierce the air with wordless opus.

You view the world thro invented perspective,

As one solitary profound genius of initiative.

Yet, you also achieved haunting loneliness;

For every triumph, there is a sacrifice.

It’s the clause wrapped up with the sheaves of harvest:

Standing apart, taking a stand has its bitter price.

Akpan

Saturday, October 16, 2010

It's Electric. Boogie. Wooogie

Talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity. We use it.

Maya Angelou.

If we wanted to take some time to study the phenomenon of the electric current before we fed our household gadgets with its magical juices, we just might never get around to using it.

For some of us based in Lagos, Nigeria or any parts of planet earth, where power supply brings you the worst kind of drama-where power's on the other side of erratic, any research in that quarter is absolutely forbidden. Take as example, a fellow trapped in a relative environment takes his chances, he tries to understand the flow of current, the technicality behind the stuff. He works himself to a rust researching and researching.

The odds are 99 to 1.

Several years after our guy is six feet under, he'll still be wishing the lights had stayed on 'just a few moments longer'.

'Just a little longer'. Could regret evoke a richer melancholy streak? I doubt it.

We don't have to go through this guy's traumas to unravel the mystery called talent. We are sure to come off exhausted and burned out. And, we still wouldn't experience the thrills of creativity. It's the worst kind of defeat. Inspiration is an unstable quantity-unpredictable but it is not changeable. It only stays this long and then it fizzles away.

Understanding your talent is grabbing at it every chance you get.

We all got potential. A measure of ability. A capacity to be inventive and so little time to ravel the functionalities. Experience teaches. It’s all in the long haul. A way to be on first name basis with our creativeness is to be constantly creative; we have to keep having a go at it. And soon enough we would have a feel of our habitat.

The zone is where we go to understand the muse. To enter the zone, we strip ourselves of mutual tensions and accept our gifts for what they are: gifts. You know how sickening it feels to have somebody scrutinize your present to them. Guess what? You are doing it to yourself.

The everyday little activities we perform, when we bring our heart to it and make out time to be creative in that, reveals a little bit of our talent. It is the mystery we are within.

The core of the individual’s characteristics is revealed in his talent(s).

Talent trapped exclusively in pods of spectacular art is not pure talent and consequently, unbeneficial to the talented.

Our lives, the daily chores that define us are often the channels for personal and artistic eruptions.

Bleed your soul’s juice. Charge up a world gone to hell in a hand basket.

Akpan

Friday, December 25, 2009

Making Talent Count

Talent, with its overinflated rating, has its place.

Give it too much significance and you are as dead as silence. As inspired as a couple of blank pages on a writer's desk.

As a writer, you have a responsibility. It calls you like the sound of a clarion, to something upward and truly fulfilling. You wouldn't want to trade that off for spiff if you knew any better. Being prolific ought to be unagitated. Like still waters thrusting into the deep of one’s soul to activate sediments of hard earned resources - your everyday experience of life - in literary enterprise.

You are what you write!

You can't rely on talent alone!

Certain things hinder a writer's progress in his/her quest for creativeness. There are diverse issues which are not unconnected which cripple a writer's productivity, eat away at the heart of his genius like cancer.

Fear is a mortal sin. So many writers have fallen like seed by the wayside because they were afraid of draught-petrified they might run out of stories. A far greater number of writers have given up their dreams of taking up writing as a career before they ever got started, scared of someone scoffing at their ideas. I do not for one moment believe that either of these two sets of writers lacked a writer's talent. What they lacked obviously is a fighting spirit.

Secondly, a lot of writers are stuck in a rut because they have priority issues.

Until you learn to treat your craft with the awe and respect it deserves, you will never beat the mediocre level. If you are one of those who take writing as a random pastime game (unless your goal is not to get published or to master the craft) be assured that your days as a writer are numbered. I just don't see it happening.

Goals mean everything. They are maps that point us to our dreams especially when we have them written down. If you see your goals on paper - where/who you want to be in five/ten years from now. And visualize your objectives, the short term goals that evaluate your progress monthly, weekly, daily, in black and white it's going to be near-impossible for fear of ridicule to penetrate your fortified defense.

Get your priorities straightened out. Writing is an adventure, the greatest of ‘em all. You go on an adventure with your bags packed, faculties prepared for whatever pops out from a corner in the woods.

Your writing periods should be planned. Set apart a time to scribble a few words everyday. You may have to squeeze time out of no time. Make it count.

Attend these suggestions with diligence. Soon you will discover that the problem is not talent related but an enthusiasm issue.

'Instead of saying, "I want to be a writer," and then sitting around wishing I were a writer, I’ve been really trying to throw myself into it. . . It’s taken me a long time to get around to writing. I’m forty-one years old and this is my first collection of stories. I don’t think I could have gotten to it much earlier. . . '

The words of Kevin Canty. I think we all could plunge ourselves into the inspiration of these words in absolute abandon and allow the waves of exuberance sweep us off the shores into the seas of deliberate prolificacy!

Merry Christmas!

Keep your pen bleeding!

Akpan