The Genius in All of Us

Bruce Springsteen and the Paradox of Pickiness

I got a chance to see Springsteen the other night, in New Jersey no less, and it was transcendent as always. As Nate Chinen wrote in the New York Times about the same show, "He gave his usual force-of-nature performance." The man is a whisper away from 60 years old and he still rocks the house like no other human being. His shows are an hour shorter than in the old days, but the intensity is still breathtaking. To my mind, it's more difficult to understand his stage energy now than when he was in his 20s or 30s.

It's also mind-bending how Bruce transforms a giant auditorium into a back patio. An 18,000-seat arena seems tiny when he's on stage. I think it's because you can actually feel him connecting with every person in the room. It's a cathartic experience, a celebration of the struggle and sadness of being alive. I used to run away from the comparison of music to religion; but now I think they are often the same thing.

I could go on and on about Springsteen's virtues, but that would be boring. You've heard it all before. It also wouldn't be completely honest, because the truth is that I've come away from the last several tours feeling quite critical of him too. Being in the presence of greatness can have that paradoxical effect: it can raise a person's standards and expectations to such a level that small disappointments become a part of the experience. Some call it being "picky," but really it's just holding certain things you love to a higher standard. I wouldn't want to waste thirty seconds of my life critiquing the production of a Barney episode. But the sublimity of Springsteen invites a passionate and critical assessment. It's so close to perfection that you can't help but notice what's missing.

What's often missing these days, sadly, is the NOW. In this latest whirlaround with the "legendary" E Street Band,[1] Springsteen is waste deep in his fans' nostalgia. He spends an extraordinary amount of energy trying to live up to the Legend of Bruce -- striking the expected poses, playing the expected tunes, giving the audience not just the spirit of what they came for, but the precise letter of it as well.

I'm not saying the man doesn't care about his music. He does, deeply, and it doesn't suffer in these performances.[2] But in his and the band's preening, Springsteen is moving away from the raw and powerful experience of a *Springsteen show* and replacing it with a pitch-perfect template of The Bruce Springsteen Experience.

This may be inevitable. Though still a vital musician -- he's as original as ever in his recent records -- Springsteen recognizes that he has dug a very deep groove in the American psyche. He's a known and revered quantity, and audiences badly want to hear those old songs; they want to see Springsteen leap on the piano. They want Clarence to lean on Bruce's shoulder. They want Steve to share his mic. It's harder to be Bruce Springsteen now than it was thirty years ago. All he had to do then was worry about creating vital music. Now he has to worry about being vital and meeting very specific demands.

I was lucky enough to see Springsteen many times in his prime (from the mid-'70s to the early '80s).[3] Those shows were all-consuming and exhausting. But they also had an organic pace. They would explode out of the gate with two or three roof-shaking numbers, and then we'd all catch our breath. The musicians would tune. Bruce would tell a little story, or send one out to a local fan he'd met the night before. Then another great song, and then another breath. 

Today's shows don't catch a breath. There's no space to talk, or drink, or tune. The pace is relentless, as if taking a few moments here would someone deflate the experience. Even the song requests are incorporated into the show without actually stopping the music -- Springsteen plucks a sign from the audience, shows it to the band, and they storm into it.

This relentlessness strikes me as ironic, because what Springsteen and the fans have come together to relive was actually a very different sort of experience. Back in the day, the band was well-prepped, but each show unrolled in the moment, with plenty of real interaction between the band and the crowd. Bruce was conversational, humble, and willing to let moments of reflection creep into his head and onto the stage.

Taped to the side of my desk is one of my favorite Springsteen remarks: "I cannot promise you everlasting life, but I can promise you life RIGHT NOW." That, to me, is the essence of what Springsteen has been able to deliver all these years. The show I saw the other night was powerful, and spiritual. But it was also staged to the nanosecond. No room for error, no room for reflection, no room for the NOW.

It's easy to be a critic and hard to be an artist. I know Springsteen would be criticized for whatever he does, or doesn't do. I offer these thoughts more out of affection than anything else. Greatness is terribly difficult to achieve, and perhaps even tougher to manage.[4]

---

[1] The "legendary" part is now official:

 

 

[2] One nostalgic decision does actually hurt the music: One the giant anthems (about half the show), the band often now features an oppresive melange of five guitars: Bruce, Steve, Nils, Patti, and Soozie. The music usually calls for two, or a carefully arranged three. 

[3] First show: 10/10/1976, Oxford OH.

[4] Thanks to Dan L. for the ticket and for his thoughts, some of which I've stolen here.

Springsteen's gift to his mother

A powerful tribute -- and quite unlike any other Springsteen tune. I know this comes a few days late for this year's Mother's Day, but what the hell. 

This performance was the song's live debut, November 17, 1990, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

Click to play: The Wish

Obama on persistence

A few weeks ago in a press conference, President Obama said something that really resonated with all my research on how people achieve greatness:

"That whole philosophy of persistence . . . is one that I’m going to be emphasizing again and again in the months and years to come, as long as I am in this office. I’m a big believer in persistence. I think that . . . if we keep on working at it, if we acknowledge that we make mistakes sometimes and that we don’t always have the right answer, and we’re inheriting very knotty problems, that we can pass health care, we can find better solutions to our energy challenges, we can teach our children more effectively . . . I’m sure there’ll be more criticism and we’ll have to make more adjustments, but we’re moving in the right direction."      - President Barack Obama, March 24, 2009

Motivation to keep going

Very illuminating profile the other day on George Lucas, revealing glimpses of the both the roots of his success and the dangers of becoming absorbed by it.

I loved the comment from Sid Ganis that Lucas possessed “an intuition that he stubbornly sticks by.”

“There’s something in him, when you’re told, ‘No, it’ll never work,’ it’s motivation to keep it going.”

That refusal to give up is such a key facet of becoming great at something. Many of our highest achievers somehow seem to relish people telling them "no." There are some wonderful stories of Michael Jordan being especially adept at magnifying tiny displays of disrespect or lack of belief in his ability, turning them to enormous challenges in his mind and using that to booost his motivation.

Most of the Lucas article highlights a certain ego sickness that seems to have taken hold of Lucas, a smugness that compells him to make rude remarks to the reporter  -- "that's why you're here" -- and to bizarrely indulge in preemptive nostalgia for small, beautiful films that he hasn't yet made.

The Genetics of Mathematics

Behold the feats of 27-year old Frenchman Alexis Lemaire, who just accurately calculated the 13th root of a random 200 -digit number. I was alerted to this achievement by my Uncle Stan, who feels that it must be proof of a genetic gift since this ability could not be learned or taught.

My (admittedly incomplete) reply to Stan:

***
Stan,

First, you need to back away from your argument about genetics, because genes don't work that way. It's entirely understandable that you think they do. I did too. For a century, we've all been taught that genes contain information and programming for how our minds and bodies are supposed to develop. This is wrong. Genes don't contain such intricate plans. I know this sounds preposterous, but it's true, and I will demonstrate it to you in the opening chapters of my book. I'm as shocked by this stuff as everyone else will be, and it does require a very strange reorientation of some rock-solid beliefs.

Second, you are illustrating a false choice: either this man's problem-solving ability is innate (genetic) or it is learned/taught. The missing option there is that it is *developed* -- developed from the first moment of conception to the very moment of his latest calculation; developed from an incalculable number of dynamic interactions between genes, hormones, nutrients, thoughts, emotions, actions, movements, curiosities, and so on. Putting all of this into a development paradigm fits two important truths:

A. Genes are not directors. They are actors, along with other equally important actors. It is an ensemble, and the product created is only possible as a result of that ensemble. A trumpet player does not make jazz on his own. He needs to interact with the other players. Human development is a jazz improvisation. It follows certain rules, but the outcome develops from the interaction.

B. "Development" does not imply that everything is under our control, or ever will be. If we say that anything can be taught/learned, we imply that we have near-100% control over the process. We don't. We don't control which gene actors are inside each developing fetus, nor do we control how many trees are growing in the front yard. Nor do we control the content of the water that the mother is drinking. Nor do we control all the cultural messages the baby comes into contact with. What we can do, though, is learn more about all these variables, and perhaps gain a little bit more control over some of them. It's not a guaranteed recipe to create exactly the individual capabilities we desire, but it is a plan to nudge all of humanity in the right direction.

David

Kurt Vonnegut

The great Kurt Vonnegut died on Wednesday, and for a moment the earth stopped rotating. To me, he was an inspiration for his brutal honesty, intense skepticism and willingness to think and write utterly strange things. He seemed to be constantly in pursuit of a particular spectrum of truth that only he could see. When I reflect on the aspirations I have for my children, high on the list is that willingness to be brazenly your own self. If that isn't one of the key ingredients of greatness, I don't know what is.

I was fortunate to briefly visit with Vonnegut in his home almost 20 years ago, as I was just beginning my writing career. Here is the published interview that came out of it.

Calling all born-genius legends

A friend recently asked me to explain the Ted Williams phenomenon. Perhaps the greatest baseball hitter of all time, Williams was famously endowed with unparalleled eyesight, astounding coordination and a "natural" swing.

 

It's a nice story, but as I've said before, when you look closer, these tales always turn out to be much more interesting. In his own 1969 autobiography, Williams wrote: "They used to write a lot of bull about my eyesight. How I could read license numbers on cars before another guy could see the license....Sure, I think I had good eyesight, maybe exceptional eyesight, but not superhuman eyesight. A lot of people have 20/10 vision. The reason I saw things was that I was so intense...it was discipline, not super eyesight."

A more recent Williams biography by Leigh Montville identifies Williams' obsession with improvement as his defining characteristic, and chronicles his over-the-top dedication to perfect his swing -- his "scientific" approach. Montville explicitly and painstakingly debunks the sportswriter-created legend of Williams' "natural" ability.

To me, learning these details makes Williams' feats even more spectacular. Built-in ability is nice, but acquired ability is inspirational.

Please send me your favorite born-genius story. I'd like to collect, and examine, all the best legends out there.

How to bake a Beethoven cake: Johann's recipe for musical genius

You've probably seen this old anti-abortion canard, popular among "right-to-life" activists:

"How would you advise a mother who is pregnant with her fifth child based on the following facts: Her husband has syphilis. She has tuberculosis. Their first child was born blind. Their second child died. Their third child was born deaf. Their fourth child had tuberculosis. Would you advise the mother for an abortion? Oops! If you said yes, you would have just killed the great composer Ludwig van Beethoven! We cannot know what God has in mind for every individual..."

Aside from hilariously having almost every biographical fact wrong (the writer above is 1 for 7 -- I will give a signed book for the first person to name the single correct fact), this pungent morality tale is riddled with logical and cultural fallacies. But my very favorite thing about the story is its faulty science: it rests on the assumption that geniuses are born pre-destined and self-contained, ready to unfold before our eyes.

The born-genius myth is a common one, easy and fun to write about it. But are we ready to confront the more nuanced truth? In his 2005 biography of Beethoven, Edmund Morris paints a sober portrait of a genius in slow, steady formation. His intensive training started early (before age 5), had dark psychological overtones, and reads almost like a recipe for extraordinary ability. Any modern researcher from today's study of expertise would recognize the elements immediately.

Ludwig's early training was ruthless and exhaustive, driven by his tyrannical father Johann who was disappointed in his own achievements.  Starting at age 4 or 5, Johann made his eldest son his special project, forcing him to practice constantly. "Neighbors of the Beethovens," Morris writes, "recall seeing a small boy 'standing on front of the clavier and weeping.' He was so short he had to climb a footstool to reach the keys. If he hesitated, his father beat him. When he was allowed off, it was only to have  a violin thrust into his hands, or musical theory drummed into his head. There were few days when he was not flogged, or locked up in the cellar. Johann also deprived him of sleep, waking him at midnight for more hours of practice."

Much like future tennis greats at today's Spartak training camp in Russia, tiny Beethoven was allowed aboslutely no artistic or performance freedom for several years. It was all about technique and discipline -- "the constant suppression of his [improvisational] fantasies by Johann ('More of your fooling around....I'll box your ears')," writes Morris. "Even on the violin, Ludwig's fingers could not help searching out new music. 'Now isn't that beautiful?' he would plead. The response was always, 'You are not to do that yet.'"

"Johann's insistence on his practicing by rote laid the foundations of a formidable technique. Over the next two years...he worked 'prodigiously' to develop [his] facility...Of his own accord, he took extra instruction from organists around town."

Did his god-given talent emerge immediately? Apparently not. More than three years into his training,
at around age 8, a schoolmate later recollected of Beethoven, "Not a sign was to be discovered...of that spark of genius which glowed so brilliantly in him afterwards."

At age 10, he outgrew his father's instruction, and moved up to a more capable mentor. At that point, he was exposed to Bach and taught how to compose variations on a theme. His first attempts were mechanical and uninteresting, later evolving into some awkward attempts at something new. When he was 12, his new mentor bragged in a magazine article that Ludwig had the potential to "become a second Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart if he were to continue as he begun."

And so it went, steadily, persistently, passionately . . .

   

 

How Paganini became Paganini

From the New York Times, May 28, 1852:

"We remember, in a provincial town, seeing on a temporary stage a tall, lank, wizard-looking being, with long dark hair falling over his shoulders, and an eye and face expressing together the genius and the sensualist, eliciting thunders of applause from a numerous audience for his marvellous performances on the violin, which, in his think transparent, skeleton-like left hand, became at will a one-stringed or a twenty-stringed instrument, rising from its full natural tones to the softness and sweetness of the flageolet, or imitation the tinkling of the harp . . .

"This strange mixture of dross and gold was born at Genoa, the 18th February, 1784. His father, Antonio, and his mother, Teresa, were both dilletanti in music, and were not long in discerning in their youthful son a strong taste for the art they cultivated. To encourage this taste his mother had, or pretended to have, an angelic vision, and in the morning thus spake to him: "My son, thou shalt become a great musician; for an angel, radiant with beauty, appeared to me this night, and has listed to the prayer I made him. I prayed him that thou mayest become the first of violinists, and the angel has promised me it shall be so." From this time the study of the violin became his sole object, and it was not many years before he surprised and delighted the most eminent masters of that instrument with his compositions and performances."

Springsteen (inadvertently) weighs in on my last post...

Ok, this is a little eerie. Just a few hours after writing the previous post, I found myself on the exercise bike watching an old TV interview with Bruce Springsteen. (For me, that's as riveting as any Sopranos episode.) I was startled when Bruce came out with this:

"I wasn't quite suited for the educational system. One problem with the way the educational system is set up is that it only recognizes a certain type of intelligence, and it's incredibly restrictive -- very, very restrictive. There's so many types of intelligence, and people who would be at their best outside of that structure [get lost]. Most of the schools, they're aiming to build you up and get you into the machine."

(He goes on to say a lot about what drove him early on, and what fueled his drive to become better and better and better at what he does. All very relevent to this project. I'll draw on those statements another time.)

Am I so utterly obsessed with Springsteen that when I heard him talk fleetingly about this stuff several years ago, I unconsciously decided to write a book about it, then followed through on that promise years later and -- on the precise day that I was exploring this one particular facet -- somehow unconsciously prodded myself to rummage through my old VHS tapes for the old interview so I could again stumble upon these words? If you know me and my family, you're nodding yes.