Nature

vs. Nurture

or, talent vs. work

or, Wile E. Coyote, Suuuuuuper Geeeenius

Have Brain, Will Travel? Ha!

The Myth of the Talented and Gifted

I can think of at least two places where I’ve discussed this concept: several chapters in my memoir, and most of my Season 4 Sherlock retro-reviews.

The basic overview of my (hot?) take on the whole thing is this: purely innate talent is a myth.

Now I’m not saying that people who are smarter or more talented than other people don’t exist. What I’m saying is that what I call Smart Person Magic™ is way more a matter of hard work and cultural environment and education than anything a person is born with.

Here’s what I said about this from Next Time, Chapter 4: ‘Landscape of the Body’:

…that’s what talent is. It’s work. It’s practice. I learned to read early because my mom was at home with me, encouraging me, reading to me, taking me to the library, showing me episodes of Sesame Street and Electric Company, and in a myriad other ways basically teaching me to read. I didn’t just magically start reading out of nowhere. I am a talented dancer because I’ve been doing it all my life—literally since before I was born. There is no such thing as magical, innate genius: Mozart wasn’t Mozart in a vacuum—his father created the environment where his talents were able to flourish. So many other incredible geniuses through history show this. Not to say that nature has zero to do with a person’s talent, but if one looks at what happens to a person with all one as opposed to all the other, it soon becomes plain that nurture, environment, education, whatever we want to call it, is essential.

I’d like to share a reflection about the Talented Myth from my old blog, that I stumbled upon recently. I’ve been Musing about this concept for a while now, it seems. Why? Because I’ve long been a fan of the Chosen One/Very Special Boy/Eccentric Genius trope, and would like to think more completely and critically about it, without completely giving up my fondness for it (at least, when it’s done well). Maybe it’s also because I’ve been called so myself, and it’s part of my own processing and self-therapy to thoroughly chew on it for a time.

I came across this while looking for some of my Sherlock Holmes-related writing, which totally makes sense. Looks like I originally wrote this in 2019, which feels simultaneously like yesterday, and impossibly long ago. The pandemic really cracked a gaping crevasse into our lives, didn’t it? Anyway, here ya go. Let me know your thoughts. Have I found any conclusions, from all this mastication?¹ Very unscientific ones: it’s my impression that it’s not only Nature, but that anyone with no ‘natural’ talent won’t be able to soar to exactly the same heights as those who do. But a person can be hugely accomplished with only Nurture. So I guess… Both?² Can it be both, with Nurture being the more weighted and important out of the two?

The Palm Of My Hand

It’s been said several times and by different people, that I know how to capture an audience, and hold them in the palm of my hand. Those that have attributed that superpower to me aren’t in fact wrong. It’s both a talent of mine, and also a skill. What do I mean by both?

You’ve no doubt heard of the nature vs. nurture argument vis a vis psychology as well as behavior. Is it something passed down in the genes, & inherent in the person from birth (the SO’s half-Asian children loving rice and not doing well with milk; a person’s sexual orientation), or are the things a person is good at and the things they do because of their environment/how they’re raised (there’ve been multitudinous debates about what made the Columbine shooters do what they did, and also about where talent comes from)? I want to talk about the very latter.

Growing up, I was a dancer, writer, and theatre person, habits and behaviors of which having started almost from day 1. As a toddler, it went beyond loving Alice in Wonderland: I *became* her for days on end. At 4 or 5, my obsession with Wizard of Oz went way beyond merely loving the movie and reading some of the books (yes, I was an advanced reader); I cast my family members as the roles. To this day, my mother still gives me shit for casting her as the Wicked Witch of the West (my dad was the scarecrow, I was Dorothy, and my little brother was Toto, natch). It wasn’t till adulthood when I could explain to her that that was the strongest female character in the movie: Glinda, my mom certainly was not, but neither was she Auntie Em. And she couldn’t be Dorothy. But I digress. Though, not really…

I have also always been an excellent mover & dancer. I’ve had ability beyond my technical skill level all my life, culminating in a prominent aerial dance company casting me in lead roles in their dance pieces in the mid-late ‘90s, while still calling me a “non dancer” the while. The director couldn’t deny my ability, though, and my dancer mom would always confirm by saying everyone can learn technique, but that I had something more: an innate talent.

As far as presence, that would soon translate to stage presence, and my junior high drama teacher always told me something similar: I had an innate talent, a natural knack, of taking a stage and dominating it. Immense stage presence and personal power. I remember he once did a “test” on the class, telling us all about it first: we were to, one at a time, fake some laughter, and he wanted to see if any of our fake stage laughs would be contagious, making the room join in with the real thing. Nobody’s laughter was contagious (fake laughter isn’t, unlike fake yawns).

Well, nobody’s, that is, but mine.

This vast personal power has been good for me in a few ways, very difficult in several others, but that’s another post for another day.

But.

Is this all from some mysterious talent I was born with? Or is it more a matter of my environment, and how I was raised, than any magical gift? I mean, I started displaying these talents and powers very very young. My mother, though, was a dance education major when she became pregnant with me (I always joke that I’ve been performing onstage since *before* I was born). She was a stay-at-home mom for my early development, taking me to the library twice a week, reading to me constantly, and including me in her children’s dance / creative movement classes until I was too old to take them, which is when I drifted into junior high theatre. So, I mean…

My junior high as well as high school had robust theatre and music programs, with brilliant professionals teaching us, which means that by the time I got to college and entered their BFA program in acting (one of the prominent ones in the country), I had undergone literally a lifetime of excellent training. Training, and encouragement. And of course, after the BFA program, I was that much better.

Would I have this incredible ability to hold a crowd as a middle aged adult, this immense personal power and huge presence, had I not grown up in that environment? With, say, parents who despised and denigrated the arts, weren’t artists themselves, or even forbade me to engage in performance the way I did, not only onstage but in everyday life, as I developed? If I had gone to crappy schools, with bad teachers, or no arts exposure in school at all? Well. Maybe. Would’ve been a lot harder, if I even managed to recognize the desire.

But.

That, of course, is a series of questions impossible to answer sufficiently. There’s literally no way to know.

One of the mysteries of the ages: nature or nurture, hard work or innate talent, magic or science…. actually the answer to that myriad mystery, methinks, is: Both.

Both, of each of those things.

And yesterday I cupped the Blue Dime Cabaret Central City audience in the palm of my hand, both as I danced and as I chatted during our producer spiel.³ It’s a thing that feels natural, for me. I get a little nervously charged before a show, but performing is easy—I know it like the back of my hand. Or the palm.

Then again, I’ve been doing it since before I was born…

1. Ew.

2.

3. Oh man, that was a great couple of shows! We did old-time saloon themed shows (and one honoring historical figure Lou Bunch) up at a real life bar from the Wild West era in Central City, CO, called Charlie’s Bar. It had all the elaborate decor you see in old illustrations of high-end pubs and saloons from back in the 1800s, and it was such a cool backdrop for our burlesquing.