If you’re a poet or a painter or a musician or a dancer, you have to have talent, right? Maybe, maybe not. In this episode of Emerging Form, we explore talent. What exactly is it? How do you know if you have it? Is it necessary? Can you make up for it if you don’t have talent? Spoiler alert: the poet and the scientist do not agree on the answer to this one. As always, we’ll end with a game of Two Questions with friend of the show Jennifer Kahn, who writes for magazines like The New Yorker, Wired, and The New York Times Magazine and is an instructor at the Cal-Berkley journalism program. We’ll ask her to weigh in on whether talent is necessary, and if it’s possible to overcome lack of it in a creative field.
Join our discussion of this episode at our Facebook group.
Episode Notes
I Know Astrology Is Bullshit, But I Can’t Stop Reading My Horoscope by Christie Aschwanden at Last Word On Nothing.
Horoscopes by Holiday Mathis
Art and Fear: Observations on the Perils and Rewards of Artmaking by David Bayles and Ted Orland
Jennifer Kahn, UC-Berkeley
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I definitely feel I’m starting from the back of the pack but this conversation is helping me reframe what I am about these days. Thank you!
Thanks, Dea! So exciting to have you join us here … we’re definitely excited about reframing, too. If you find any specific ways it’s playing out in your creative life, let us know!
Well done, friend! Very tight! Will you be updating that persona assignment story-wink!
You can tell how long we’ve been working on this project! About three years in the dreaming and over a year in the actual making! But the time is ripe now for launching, at last … thanks so much for listening!