In the context that Ms Moratto intended, definition #1 applies. It’s meant as a compliment, but I have doubt.
Here’s a gift: “Last year’s score of 162, the highest possible for a boy of 11, beats the estimated IQ of 160 for famed scientist Albert Einstein. Daniel, who dreams of going to Oxford University, came in the top one per cent of the Mensa test — which measure logic, reasoning, verbal intelligence, vocabulary and math skills”. Daniel moved from China to the UK when he was seven. His intelligence is a gift.
Mozart was playing the violin at aged four and wrote his first composition at five. Chopin gave his first piano concert at seven, while at the same time composing his first pieces.
Mimi Zou, age 4, gave a two minute piano concert at the Royal Albert Hall in England. She has a gift.
Musical gifts are often accompanied by hard work. Mimi practices three hours a day and has a 40-minute lesson once a week. Pablo Casals, the cellist, at age 90 was asked, “Why do you still practice?” He answered, “I think I’m getting better.”
Contractors build a house. They finish. They go home. They’re done. Musicians spend lifetimes practicing, studying, and trying to perfect what they do, never really achieving perfection. It’s not Sisyphean, but close.
Mary-Elaine Jacobsen, a psychologist, identified three traits of highly gifted people:
Intensity: gifted people are extraordinarily focused, empathic and enterprising.
Complexity: they can quickly digest and analyze huge amounts of information.
Drive: they are highly inquisitive, motivated and committed.
Two more, not mentioned here. Gifted people are able to connect seemingly unrelated ideas and are aware of things others are not. I think that’s where my “gifts” fit in. In the photograph that Lori Moratto referenced in the first quote, seeing “the craziness of the tree against the smooth sand.”
“You see what so many of us walk past.”
I remember the moment I saw this. It would have been easy to miss. Only because I had a very long lens could I move far away from this scene, compress the distance, and create a relationship between the smoothness of the sand and the craziness of the tree. I could imagine before taking this image what would be required to end up with this print. Is that a gift? Or experience?
Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, didn’t look at all to Ansel Adams what his final print conveyed, but he could connect what he saw to what he knew his camera could record, then he knew what he could do with it. Seeing the process that he went through reveals his gift, er, experience. The first step in the path he took looked nothing like the final print, but he could visualize what he needed to do, both in processing and printing, to come out the other end with a masterpiece.
Some people attribute success to luck. In a quote often mistakenly attributed to golfer Gary Player, “The more I practice the luckier I get.”
Good photographs, good music, athletic accomplishments, an excellent book, are all products of multiple factors. Mistakenly taking success out of the hands of the musician or the vision of the photographer cheapens the dedication, the hard work, and the commitment of the artist. Mimi is only four, and she spends three hours a day practicing. Multiplied over a lifetime she might achieve extraordinary success and find herself very “lucky.”