Strength Training

Was reading a back issue of Lenswork last night and this morning and found an article entitled, "The Nature of the Problem" by David Bayles and Ted Orland. Smart dudes.

Here is a very brief excerpt, which has me really thinking today:

"Making art is difficult."

Well, duh. Yeah. But they went on to write more.

"...art rests fundamentally upon talent, and that talent is a gift randomly built into some people and not into others. In common parlance, either you have it or you don't - great art is a product of genius, good art a product of near-genius (which Nabokov likened to Near-Beer), and so on down the line to pulp romances and paint-by-the-numbers. This view is inherently fatalistic - even if it's true, it's fatalistic - and offers no useful encouragement to those who would make art. Personally, we'll side with Conrad's view of fatalism: namely, that it is a species of fear - the fear that fate is in your own hands, but that your hands are weak."

Now that's some powerful stuff. Are our hands weak? Are some hands stronger than others (when it comes to fate, anyway)? There's much more to the article, of course, but I had just finished downing my Quaker Oat Squares and had to leave for work, so that's where I'm left dangling. Thought maybe ya'all would like to dangle with me for awhile.