The previous post reminded me of something I saw on Threadless once:
"Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Age 10"
If I didn't know better, I'd suspect that this Murakami fellow is psychic and knows exactly how I bumbled through my music education. Maybe, just maybe, it'd be nice to be not hard-work-averse.
There just happens to be people like that. They're blessed with this marvellous talent, but they can't make the effort to systematize it. They end up squandering it in little bits and pieces. I've seen my share of people like that. At first you think they're amazing. They can sight-read some terrifically difficult piece and do a damn good job playing it all the way through. You see them do it, and you're overwhelmed. You think, 'I could never do that in a million years.' But that's as far as it goes. They can't take it any further.
And why not? Because they won't put in the effort. They haven't had the discipline pounded into them. They've been spoiled. They have just enough talent so they've been able to play things well without any effort and they've had people telling them how great they are from an early age, so hard work looks stupid to them. They'll take some piece another kid has to work on for three weeks and polish it off in half the time, so the teacher assumes they've put enough into it and lets them go on to the next piece. And they do that in half the time and go on to the next piece. They never find out what it means to be hammered by the teacher; they lose out on a crucial element required for character building. It's a tragedy.
I'd like to think I'm pretty well read, and I read a wide variety of literature and trash. But it's been quite some time since a book last captivated me like this one has. This, in question, is Norwegian Wood, by Haruki Murakami. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it's almost impossible to put down. The plot isn't particularly exciting, nor is the writing particularly eloquent (plus, its translated out of -surprise surprise- Japanese)
Yet it is strangely captivating, and I find myself reading late into the night - something else I haven't done in quite some time, with the possible of exception of the Singapore Master Tax Guide - and stealing a couple of minutes to read a page here and there.
Read it if you haven't already done so. I got the book as a gift a while back (before exchange, to be precise) yet I didn't get down to reading it till now. Bah.
This is quite a few years old, but it still cracks me up. If you don't understand it, maybe it's time to go and brush up on some physics and math.
M(2.71828)r^2(1/y)^-1 x(force/acceleration) everyone! See you in the new year!
Now that school's out and I have a million and one things to do, I probably won't have very much time in front of the computer, ergo, little time to blog. Check back here from time to time, but frequent updates probably won't happen til January. Anyway, all you psycho blog stalkers out there probably won't be checking up on blogs all that often.
Til then, enjoy your holidays! I'll most definitely be back at Christmastime for Season's Greetings :)
True story!
I really can't stay
The neighbors might think
I simply must go
I've got to get home