Being good at stuff.

So, I'm an aspiring musician and it does worry me; the whole nature/nurture thing. Are you born great at something or do you have to achieve it? I can't believe that I'm the only person in a "creative" or expressive endeavour to think about this; no-one wants to struggle their whole life and then realise they're the credibility equivalent of a Japenese Elvis impersonator. Madonna famously said "If I had more ambition than talent, then I'd be a monster", confusingly for a person whose only discernable talent is cold-hearted amibition. Maybe that's how she sleeps at night.

I see people around me who are very talented; people who work hard and as a result do great stuff (I also know people who seem to see using their talents in any way as some kind of perversion of a God-given gift, but that's a different story...) and I see people who are incredibly talented but either don't do any work, or expect "the process" to be easy, so create generic or boring stuff. So that should be some consolation. It sort of suggests that work is a neccessary condition in most cases. But not sufficient.

In my pig-headed arrogance, I've convinced myself that the majority of artistic geniuses are really talented, intelligent people with the courage to pursue a personal vision they've created. That isn't easy, but it is something anyone could do, given the time and inclination, and is not the preserve of a few pre-selected individuals.

The nice thing about artistic endeavour is that it is non-competitive on some level; it doesn't really make any sense to talk about whether Frank Black or Stevie Ray Vaughan is "better". You may as well fish about architecture.

Any readers out there? Post your comments below.

So I promised to start blogging, and say something interesting. The fact is, I don't need to, because this is an anonymous blog not linked from anywhere so were I to witter about slip differentials or hidden rivers of London no fucker would ever read it.

But in the spirit of having something interesting for me to read to my grandnephews and grandnieces... I've deferred responsibility. I've got a couple of recommendations:

http://darkteatimesoul.blogspot.com/

This is a blog from a friend of mine who lives in Brighton. It sometimes contains material of a political nature but he has been known to make intelligent comments in the sphere, so don't let that put you off. Unless you're a staunch tory/neocon/compassion vacuum.

My other recommendation is The Drawing Moustaches in Magasine Monthly Magasine (Bi-Monthly). The name's probably wrong but it's not bi-monthly in reality and I like drawing on shops. I don't know the website because J-Lo has buried it so deeply in the interweb, neither blogspot nor google can find it.

http://iloveboggle.blogspot.com/

Fantastic bloggle spot, shortly to be updated I'm sure. This is the best resource for the amateur or pro-am boggler.

Check these out and then come back and I'll have something for you.

A friend of mine has been doing quite a good blog so it's made me want to start it up again. In the four months since my last blog I've been thinking about death a lot less and more about life. Maybe I should introduce myself? I am a struggling musician in London, working in an office job. When I started blogging I was someone who called themselves a musician without much proof to that effect apart from a small collection of guitars from eight years of student loans. Now I have played a few gigs and written some decent songs so I'm more like a musician tha snomeone who hasn't. But it is a bit of a nightmare, I want to get people down to my gigs but to do that I need to get a following which to my mind involves writing some great songs and playing loads of gigs. But some promoters, it seems, don't like you playing loads of gigs because that means that fewer of your fans come to each; but until you have a fanbase to split I can't help but think that this is a secondary consideration. It's quite liderally a "Catch-22" situation.

I've been reading a collection of articles by Bertrand Russell about religion which have really convincing arguments about the way that, not only does religion inspire and manipulate fear (not a reason against organized religion par se), but it is inspired by fear. When you look at it that way, religion prevents people from conquering their fear. And then there's all the baggage applied by the organisations themselves. I think Russell was writing at a time when Christianity was more powerful and so he had more reason to state the case so strongly. But he wasn't writing explicitly about Christianity. I don't really think intolerance of religion is good idea, I think persecuting people for their beliefs is not a mistake, it's easy to pick on people who have the courage to profess their beliefs - but many of them are so arbitrary. The idea of attacking other people for a heavenly reward is pretty fucked up, too. This is all incredibly obvious.

I will be more interesting soon, I promise.