Re: Harry Potter and Adults

Josh wrote:

> But anecdotal -- I said "pretty much." And have you actually taken the
> trouble to master them? Forex, I've read all of Dickens's novels, and
> that's measured in board feet. I've taken courses on his work. I'm not
> trying to set myself up as a model of industry here -- I don't
> consider myself particularly widely read, and there are about a
> million things I think I /should/ have read that I haven't. But I do
> know that in the process I went from finding Dickens silly and boring
> to brilliant and fascinating. And that's really the gist of what I'm
> saying here -- that I've had these experiences, that others have had
> these experiences.

But there is still a great gap between 'appreciate it from a technically
knowledgeable standpoint' (I can see what the author/artist is trying to
do, and it's clever) and 'liking it'. There's a lot of modern
architecture I can admire and hate at the same time. 


> Some people master this stuff early on, and never have to work to
> appreciate it -- like Brian, they appreciate Bach's fugues from the
> get go. But for others, like me, a good deal of exposure precedes
> appreciation. Of course, there are some who will always abhor Bach's
> fugues whatever they do, but in my experience, they're a fairly small
> minority.

'Appreciate' I can. But when I reach for a CD to play for my
entertainment, they are not even on my shelf. 

> I don't find that particularly surprising, because there was a time it
> was true for me. That changed, gradually, as I became increasingly
> bored with the alternatives and increasingly sensitive to the great
> ones. There's still much that I don't like because I haven't taken the
> time to learn to read it properly.

I'm waiting for you to bounce of something the way most of us bounce of
stuff - no matter *how* much you study it, you *still* don't like it.
Most of Wagner, frex. 

> Too, do you think that it's an accident that Bach and Mozart, widely
> considered among the three greatest composers in the classical
> tradition, displayed almost superhuman musical ability? As a little
> boy, Mozart picked up a second violin, and, having never played the
> violin or any other musical instrument, having had no training in
> music,

And he was able to hold an adult-sized instrument then? That boy has
been _drilled_ in music by his composer father probably from the time he
was born, certainly by the time he was four. 


> played the second violin part in a string concerto /with
> professional musicians/ flawlessly -- something people who have
> studied and practiced for years can't do.

An achievement, but maybe not as much as you consider it to be. 

> Bach used to sit in on a
> string trio that he had never heard, and, as it was played, astound
> the composer by playing a fourth part, making it into a quartet. 

It's called improvisation, and is certainly a talent good musicians
posess. In very formal music, that seems not impossible to me. I am
willing to bet that he would *not* have done the same to Beethoven.
Anybody got that time machine handy? 


> These
> correspondences should serve as a tipoff that there's something
> special about creators who are widely considered great. One need not
> like what they do, but I always start out with the assumption that I'm
> dealing with the work of a mind far better than my own, and that just
> as I had to work to understand a smattering of Newton and Einstein, I
> may have to work to appreciate a Picasso or a Proust.

What's a 'mind better'? If I had been the son of Leopold Mozart - a
composer in many ways as good, and IMO more inventive than his son,
although we'll sadly never know what the sixty-year old Amadeus would
have produced - who is to say what I would or would not have done?

I have a mind that's pretty much universal. There are some areas to
which I cannot turn my mind, no matter _how_ hard I try (higher maths,
physics) and a lot of areas that I wasn't interested enough to *really*
apply myself to. I prefer writing fantasy and riding my horse to
improving my mind - which is a conscious choice, and one of life
quality, and does very little to make me feel inferior to the minds of
others. Talent - musical, artistic, athletic - is something slightly
different, but I wouldn't call those the product of 'better minds' since
application of the mind does not bring those results forth. 

Catja