tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6171250541612293421.post3114773285128725772..comments2023-09-10T08:27:56.520-07:00Comments on DKDK Zone: Dialogue and the Paradox of Experience-based LearningDavidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16811463567457697454noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6171250541612293421.post-46357992512543052582020-07-27T08:31:42.235-07:002020-07-27T08:31:42.235-07:00funny---i am writing right now--2020---and just ca...funny---i am writing right now--2020---and just came back to this comment---i should have followed up more rapidly!! lol...it might have gotten me to AWE faster...Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16811463567457697454noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6171250541612293421.post-79831306336781251762011-08-24T07:47:41.965-07:002011-08-24T07:47:41.965-07:00David,
I just read your latest blog -- fantastic,...David,<br /><br />I just read your latest blog -- fantastic, by the way! -- and my mind wandered back to an essay I read last week in the NYtimes about charisma.<br /><br />The author explores the idea of charisma and mentions that "it cannot be taught...Someone who has it will exude it, whether performing 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' or Scarlatti, Mimi or Marguerite. Charisma is not earned with age; an artist is charismatic at 16 or 60. Rigorous training enhances and focuses it, but it cannot create it."<br /> <br />I began to dig into this statement and wonder whether or not charisma can in fact be taught, or whether it can be learned for that matter (a subtle distinction that is embedded in your blog). <br /><br />What if the author is right? The implications are powerful and potentially disturbing. Are there certain traits, characteristics, or behaviors that can't be learned (e.g. charisma, sense of irony, leadership, sense of humor, etc.)? I'd like to open up a dialogue on this; it's something I think about often but I'd be curious to explore further.<br /><br />Errol Garner, who I believe you saw perform when you were a kid, had charisma even though he never knew how to read music. When, where, and how did he learn this quality? Did he have charisma from birth, but it only shone through once he put his fingers to the keys? Did he exude charisma as a young musician or did it emerge later in life as he came into himself and crystallized his life experiences?<br /><br /><br />Some highlights from the Nytimes essay, linked below:<br /><br />"<br />To experience a charismatic performance is to feel elevated, simultaneously dazed and focused, galvanized and enlarged. It is to surrender to something raw and elemental, to feel happy but also unsatisfied. Charisma calls forth a melancholy, a vaguely unrequited feeling. I’ve caught myself, after certain performances of an aria or a movement, leaning forward, as if drawn against my will. Charisma requires that you acknowledge a new, larger set of possibilities.<br /><br />[Charisma] is a pure, mystifying gift. It cannot be taught, though silly how-to blog posts proliferate (“Eight Keys to Instant Charisma”). Someone who has it will exude it, whether performing 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' or Scarlatti, Mimi or Marguerite. Charisma is not earned with age; an artist is charismatic at 16 or 60. Rigorous training enhances and focuses it, but it cannot create it.<br /><br />...charisma is not virtuosity or intelligence or perceptive programming.<br /><br />While charisma would seem to be a subjective judgment, there is remarkable unanimity to our recognition of it. We know it when we see it.<br /><br />A performer who has it can turn it neither on nor off, but it often crystallizes in certain moments.<br /><br />Max Weber wrote, 'Charisma is a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman or specifically exceptional powers. These qualities are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader.'<br /><br />What we generally consider the 'content' of the arts — the notes, the libretto, the bowings, the plot — is actually just the structure that makes possible the crucial thing: watching a performer who is able to connect with fundamental realities. It is not that a singer’s charisma makes a colorful aria sound even better but that the aria provides a platform, a vessel, for us to experience the charisma.<br /><br />http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/arts/music/what-is-charisma.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all<br /><br />--<br />Stevestevekaellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15468983924474479069noreply@blogger.com