The days were glorious when learning was all that easy. Be it a new song, derived formulae, a new game of cards or board, a new lesson in music, a new language or a new script. It came all naturally enough not to pay a wee bit of second efforts in gaining the master hand. And definitely it was the master hand and not something half hearted and abridged. The days of sinuous fingers, precocious grey matter and a zealous mind. The syndicate of the three was indeed glorious.
I am not so sure if the same holds any good today. Time takes its toll and fast does it do. It now takes twice and more of sustained efforts to reach the same level of subtlety. The zealous mind isn’t all that zealous, the grey matter precocious but not at the same briskness, and the fingers not all that dexterous. All this flashes in my mind when I am playing an instrument today, trying to play with a clinical engineer's mind rather than that of an artist's soul. I am feeling the lack of skill and the desire, I once boasted like a virtuoso.
Todays, how I wish were yesterdays.
I am not so sure if the same holds any good today. Time takes its toll and fast does it do. It now takes twice and more of sustained efforts to reach the same level of subtlety. The zealous mind isn’t all that zealous, the grey matter precocious but not at the same briskness, and the fingers not all that dexterous. All this flashes in my mind when I am playing an instrument today, trying to play with a clinical engineer's mind rather than that of an artist's soul. I am feeling the lack of skill and the desire, I once boasted like a virtuoso.
Todays, how I wish were yesterdays.
