A speculative mind

  I have heard it said that the difference between being a professional musician and an amateur musician is this: An amateur musician practices until they get it right. A professional musician practices until they cannot get it wrong . That makes some kind of sense to me. They were talking about classical musicians, but I wondered about other kinds of musicians and for that matter other kinds of artists. I, myself am an amateur actor. The idea of practicing a scene until you could not get it wrong, just doesn’t work. You can practice memorizing your lines until you can’t get them wrong, but you don’t have to be a professional to do that. And memorizing lines is only about ten percent of what it takes to be an actor. To be a professional actor does take training. There are not many professional actors who simply lucked into a career. It takes work. It takes practice too, but not the kind of practice that a musician engages in. You don’t go over and over a particular part or scene ...

  Confession: I was a bed wetter. I wet the bed on most nights up until I was at least five-years-old. My mom tried various things to deal with this: a rubberized sheet under my sheet, no water late at night; I even remember maybe taking some medication. The doctor said it was a combination of being a heavy sleeper with a small bladder. In retrospect, the doctor seems like he was a sensible man (though if I did take pills for it, I have to wonder what was in those pills). What my mom and dad absolutely did not do, was to make me feel shame about this. I didn’t think too much about this at the time. I was blissfully unaware that many children were traumatized by bed wetting and by their family’s reaction to it. This is yet another reason for me to be very grateful for the parents I had. They did not punish me for wetting the bed. I seem to remember getting a nickel for every night I managed not to wet the bed. Logically, as a tool, this is no more effective than punishment. Neithe...

  I have been listening to a lot of radio interviews lately. There is one phrase that I have been hearing a lot. The interviewer will ask a question and then the interviewee will say “That’s a great question,” or some variant of “ that’s a good,” “great,” or “interesting question.” Are they trying to suck up to the person doing the interview? The subsequent answer usually shows me that in was not in fact a “great question.” It is usually a very average or obvious question. It seems to me the interviewee is just stalling for time while they think up a response. I think it is sort of the equivalent of saying “uh” or “um” as your brain is stalling to catch up. One time my friends and I played a game where someone starts a story and then you are supposed to continue it as long as you can, but as soon as you say “uh” or “um,” you are done. Most of us only lasted about thirty or forty-five seconds or so (me worst of all). But my wife got on a roll and just kept going. I think we had to...