Chalk Art

Chalk Art, a set on Flickr.

10,000 Hours

There’s this theory about talent that's been floating through every academic field for the last few decades. It’s colloquially called the theory of 10,000 hours. In This Is Your Brain on Music author Daniel Levitin talks about this theory, “world-class expert — in anything. In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again.”

It’s an interesting thing to ponder, the intersection of practice and perfection. For me, there was always the exception of genius. Virtuosos and prodigies, people who just seem gifted at what they do. I always assumed the inspirational icons were just “born to do it”. That there was something unattainably exceptional inherently in them.

A lot of it I attribute to the biographers. They seem preoccupied with reporting the destination rather than the many journeys taken to get there. When you really delve deeper into these icons’ lives, you see the setbacks they had. The tiny tragedies that history foolishly seems to forget.

Before Bill Gates was a titan of technology, he was a teenager in high school like the rest of us. A lot of his success could be explained by circumstance. His school had one of the only computers in the district that could be used to code. Gates would spend every space second at that computer. And when school shutdown at night, fifteen-year-old Gates would bike to the library to use their computer, which was only open to the public from 2am to 6am. So Gates would set his alarm and log his hours while other adolescent slumbered.

Gates isn’t the only one who’s practice time seems to go uncelebrated. Before they were “bigger than Jesus”, the Beatles spent 12 hours a night playing sets at German clubs. It applies to any type of talent. I’m told Tiger Woods picked up his first golf club when he was here. Hendrix plucked his first guitar at thirteen. Parents are placing their children in prestigious programs at younger and younger ages. Violin virtuoso Hillary Hahn, who recently performed at Emory, entered Curtis’ conservatory at 10. Lady Gaga went to Tisch at fifteen. There’s an entire culture geared towards cultivating genius.

Still, if all it takes to create icons is nurture, why aren’t we seeing an exponential growth in genius? It’s because there really is something unique about the unmimicable overachievers. But I’ve come to realize it’s not some inherent natural talent, but the desire to devote your entire existence to your aspirations. So maybe the secret to success isn’t just practice. It’s figuring out what you can stand spending that much time studying. Find the subject that excites you rather than exhausts you. When you really sink your soul into something, ten thousand hours can tick by quite quickly.

On Music

There’s an ocean colored wall in Germany where the drain-pipes are placed so precisely that when rain water sprinkles from the skies, it provides a musical melody for passersby. It’s called the Funnel Wall and it’s located at the Kunsthof-Passage in Neustadt.

I’ve always envied the way music can be pleasing in all stages of it’s creation. Listening to musicians make their art can be magical. I can sit for hours listening to friends strumming their guitars. They start with simple notes, slowly adding slides and bends, building, shaping, spilling songs from their minds into their fingers. It’s like getting a glimpse of the journey they take before arriving at their destination.

Music can exist in the most miniscule of moments. All it takes is a few notes in just the right combination to convey even the most complex of emotions. Some friends of mine and I were listening to the Beatles the other day. One them commented on George Harrison’s title choice.

“I love how a guitar can weep, moan and howl,” he said.

It’s true, a guitar can guilt trip, a sax can be sexy, and violins can get violent. There’s an odd emotion instruments can carry in between notes. Music can move. A solo can make you shake sometimes. A favorite song can feel like a hug from an old friend. Music that moves exists only when the artist says something rather than does a series of trained actions. It’s not just the sound of a valve opening and closing, or a string being strummed but the placement of pauses and the communication of something more. One of my favorite song lyrics aptly explains this something more, “music is worthless unless it can make a complete stranger break down and cry”.

I think that’s what gives music such universality; everyone understands the emotion embodied in a note. We’re constantly exposed to new instruments we’ve never heard of. Yet, even those who’ve never set foot in Africa can understand the doldrums if played on a djembe. Music has an ability to transcend culture, creed, ethnicity, or whatever other barriers human create to close themselves off from each other. That makes it the most successful method of communication I’ve ever seen, or, in this case, heard.

Mumbai Music

I grew up living in a city of 20.5 million people, living in 230 square miles. Thirty two percent are living under the poverty line, surviving, on less that a dollar a day. The human spirit is literally palpable in the heavy humid air of Bombay, an odorous mix of sweat and the city.

My best friend, a born and bred New Yorker who moved to Bombay when she was twelve, now acts as a faux advisor to fellow foreigners. She tells the incoming immigrants how you have to tune out the sound of the starving. The begging taps on the car window, homeless children playing in the street, you have to forget about the melody of Mumbai for a while.

The high school we went to, the American School of Bombay, was for all of the city’s foreign nationals or expat Indians (other Indians who’d forgotten how to be Indian like me). It was in what would be considered a commercial district. Large open grounds with a few shiny business buildings springing out of them. It was where the stock exchange was, two of the most well known private schools, and the new U.S. embassy was in construction. Yet none of these is what the neighborhood was known for. A few blocks from our school is Dharavi, with an estimated population of between 600 thousand and over a million people, they can’t really say for sure. So, every day when we would leave school through security gates, where security was Indian men wearing U.S. flag pins on their uniforms, and take the drive home. There was always a red light at the end of the road, and in Bombay a red light means you turn away from the windows, and ready yourself for the possibly barrage of the poor. Near one of the largest slums in Asia, this light always guarantees them. That combined with rush hour traffic, meant a good five minutes at this light every school day. This is why my friend has learned so well how to tune out the tapping.

My friend had another way to survive the constant guilt. We had another rule. If we ever had food or drinks when we arrived at the light, we would hand them out the window immediately. We road home together after some sport practice, and as always the light caught us. A young boy, he looked twelve but with the malnutrition the children growing up in slums face he could have easily been fifteen or sixteen. He left a group of younger children and tapped on our car window. The moment we heard it my friend pointed at the large plastic bottle of water I had been drinking since after practice. I handed it to him immediately. He smiled, his eyes shown slightly hazel, blending with his tanned brown skin. But before he sipped the bottle, he took it over the young boys he had been standing with, making sure everyone one of them got the water they craved. By the time the bottle got to him, there wasn’t a drop left. Still he smiled, holding hands with the youngest boys and walking away down the side of the road.

My friend hadn’t noticed the aftermath of our gift, and I didn’t know how to begin explaining it to her. How sometimes the symphony of life holds hidden moments of joy, and that sometimes you have to open up blocked ears or you’ll miss the magic of the music.

Family

I woke up to a text message from my mother this this morning; “to let you know, Brish bua passed away this peacefully on Ganesh morning”. Bua, in Hindia, means paternal sister. It’s one of those things I’ve always loved about my language, how every familial relation has a word. There’s not just aunts and uncles, there’s a specific word for our fathers younger brother (Chachu), or your mother’s sister-in-law (Mami). Everyone is given a title, their rightful place in the family tree.

Brish bua was my grandfather’s oldest sister, the grand aunt. My grandfather was the youngest brother of five sisters so our frequent family reunions were run by the matriarchs. Brish bua was the queen of these, always the older sister. Yet, she never had the imposing qualities most family heads hold. She was a small woman in her late seventies, wrinkled like an old tree, every line a short story in a life well lived. She would always speak softly, to the extent that half your time talking to her would be spent leaning in closer.

Growing up, my brother and I would be taken to her home every few weeks for a Sunday brunch between all the family members who currently lived in Bombay. The first thing I’d always notice walking into her house was the shoes. All the shoes of the arrivals would be piled up in the foyer, right by the door. There were never less than 20 pairs, some segments of the family attempting organizes, pairing their shoes in neat lines. Others, like us, just left our shoes wherever we could find the space. This wasn’t a new sight; I saw the parade of shoes every time we entered a party or gathering in Bombay. Shoes were always taken off at the doorway, so as not to bring outside dirt into our homes. But still they were the first thing I would look at walking into Brish bua’s home. I’d use them to try and get a gauge on who was already here. When I was younger I’d look for other shoes from the kids section, trying to find the cousins and avoid the grown ups. Now I just looked at the shoes themselves, as a collective, realizing slowly that only one pair of those seeming endless shoes actually lived in the home I was about to enter.

Her apartment was on the 16^th floor, with a beautiful bay view of Bombay. Walking in, it always smelled like home cooked food. My mother always says food from your mother’s hands tastes best, this transferred exponentially across generations. Brish bua’s simple vegetarian meals were always delicious, and always satisfied in a way that only family food can. Younger me would always glimpse up at my father during these meals, and I’d notice that he was eating like me for once. He was the child at the table too, savoring every bite of his meal, while trying to stay inconspicuous to the older generation at the table. He’d always ask for seconds with desert.

Brish bua would preside over the meal, sitting in her chair at the head of the table. She wouldn’t talk much, and when she did it was always a question directed specifically at someone. She’s ask my brother about college, ask me about my school projects. She remembered a stunning amount, photos from the play I had been in a year ago, the service project my brother worked on his sophomore year of high school. She was always genuine, checking up with every single member of the family.

I don’t know when exactly all of this changed, but it did. The brunches continued, the family get together’s never stopped, but Brish bua changed. There was the year she began needing help moving from seat to seat, one of the grand children chosen to accompany her each time. The lack of mobility wasn’t so bad, she would still ask her questions, still make you lean in closer to talk to her. But then, one year, Brish Bua confused me with my mother, suddenly her grand daughter became one of the daughter in laws. My cousin Kiran became her mother. My father was his father. Eventually she started referring to all of the women in the room by her sisters’ names, and all the men by my grandfathers.

It’s’ not an easy thing to witness, the family rock falling apart. It’s not an easy thing to write, losing the ability to coherently understand the world. Words and family are two of the things I hope to keep a part of my life forever. Yet, both these things may one-day slip away from my mind, like salt through a sieve, memories and vocabulary gone so quickly. So how do you cope? You ask the specific questions, make people lean in closer as they talk to you, if only to spend a little more time with them while you still remember who they are.