They say that you should never meet your heroes. In this context the word hero is used in a very broad sense, as anyone you admire or look up to. I suppose we all have a few of those. Writers, artists, activists, thinkers, scientists, musicians, actors, athletes, you name it. Why shouldn't you meet them? Is that good advice?
In one of his last public debates, British journalist and historian Christopher Hitchens said that, if faced with the hypothetical question "Wouldn't you like to meet Shakespeare?", his reply would be "I can meet him, any time, because he is immortal in the works he's left behind. If you've read those, meeting the author would almost certainly be a disappointment."
And there's the key word, disappointment. Our heroes might not live up to our expectations of them. It's wrong to assume that, for example, great artists are also great people. They may well be, but there's no guarantee of that. Horrible people can create great art too. So I would say do meet your heroes if you have the chance, but bear in mind that they're just people like you and I, and no one's perfect. (And if you do meet them, my advice would be not to fawn on them. No one likes that, except perhaps really needy, narcissistic people.)
When it comes to artists (in the broadest sense of the word) there's another common misconception, that great artists always create great art. They can't help it. We see talent as some sort of innate superpower, something that you either have or don't have, and if you have it, it will then permeate anything you do. That's also bollocks. Artists can have (and often do have) huge ups and downs in the quality of their output.
For example, earlier we mentioned Shakespeare. A few of his plays are quite poor. People don't like to say it, but it's true. And do you have to like every painting by Picasso? Most certainly not. If he hated some of them (and we know that he did), then so can you.
(When it comes to to classical music, many people think that you have to like all of it or none of it. No one does. Even the most ardent fan of classical music can give you a list of works that he or she finds incredibly boring.)
But of course, those discrepancies in quality shouldn't detract from someone's best efforts.
Because of all that, some people question the very existence of such thing as talent. One of them would be our son's former piano teacher. All of her students do very well. What's interesting is that none of her students audition before she decides to take them on. (Many piano teachers will listen to you play once, or give you a trial lesson, and then decide whether you have "it" or not.) When she accepted him as her pupil she hadn't even met him yet. For all she knew he might've had two fingers missing. And she did the same for all her other pupils.
She simply believes in what a famous pianist once said: "When playing music, the three most important things are practice, practice and practice". (Similar story with drawing. A comics artist once said "If you draw eight hours a day every day for a year, you'll become good at it". Most artists don't want to tell you that. They know it's true, but they keep it to themeselves.)
Quick digression: A young Giuseppe Verdi applied to study at the Conservatory in Milan. He didn't get in. When he auditioned, the examiners thought he didn't have what it takes to study there. Not only he is now considered one of the greats, while the hundreds of people who did study there are completely forgotten, but that very same Conservatory is now named after him. Conservatorio di Musica Giuseppe Verdi. That's just a slap in the face, in my opinion. First I'm not good enough for you, and then you try to cash in on my name? If I were his descendant I would campaign to have the name removed.
But if there's no talent, what separates some people from others? Perhaps there is such thing as talent, but we overestimate it, or misunderstand what it is or what it does, and that can be counterproductive.
First of all, talent is not a substitute for hard work. If you do not put in the long hours, it won't go anywhere. Believing that all you need is talent can make you complacent. And second of all, talent does not make you immune from the occasional stinker. And if you overestimate what talent does, that stinker can have two very different (but both detrimental) outcomes. It can either make you delusional, where you start believing that anything you do has to be great, or it can send you into a downward spiral, where you start thinking that perhaps you've "lost it".
I like to believe that some form of talent is present in everyone, but it has to be nurtured. Some people may have to work harder than others, but the potential for greatness is there. Mediocrity will also be there too sometimes, but that's ok. It will make someone's best efforts stand out even more.
