I Am Not Talented

I am not talented. Invariably, after some performance or another, I receive a handful of compliments. Of course, like most artists I know, I'm hopelessly insecure and love to have my ego stroked after a gig. However, the worst compliment one can pay me, or any other performer for that matter, is "You're so talented!"

Let me be clear: it is not complimentary to tell someone that they're talented. Talent is one's innate ability--one's inborn aptitude prior to effort or education. Telling someone that they're talented effectively negates all the hard work, drive, and endless self-criticism needed to become a successful artist. You might as well compliment someone on their achievement of being born with brown eyes.

Maybe I'm being oversensitive. Maybe I'm not being grateful that anyone would make the effort to pay a compliment at all. The use of the word, however, is symptomatic of a larger cultural problem surrounding the arts. We've maintained the Romantic notion of inborn artistic "talent" to the economic detriment of those artists by devaluing their professionalism, expertise, education, and craftsmanship. The lack of understanding of the kinds of effort needed to become a skilled enough performing artist to even enter the professional world is part of the reason it's difficult to get paid fairly for services rendered. It's not only at the level of streaming services either. When you hire someone to play an hour of music at a wedding even, you're expecting a quality performance which has likely taken 20 years or more of education in order to deliver reliably. Additionally, an hour of music performance takes 4-8 hours of practice every day for a week or so leading up to the gig (depending on the level of difficulty of course). It also requires a reliably maintained instrument and transportation. Talent is not capable of doing any of these things. Work is.

Fostering the notion of "talented" artists encourages a continued systemic devaluing of highly skilled professionals. We rarely, if ever, refer to lawyers, doctors, or bankers as talented despite a comparable amount of specialized education and skill-building. So next time you feel compelled to compliment an artist, tell them that they're skilled, impressive, expert, superb, arresting, or any other thing that acknowledges the craftsmanship they've worked so hard to develop.

#ClassicalMusic #Music #Talent #Criticism #Flute #Composer