Klarinet Archive - Posting 000235.txt from 2005/10

From: or3mondtoby@-----.net (Ormondtoby Montoya)
Subj: RE: [kl] Paradise lost (was: clarinet afterllfe)
Date: Sun, 23 Oct 2005 19:46:27 -0400

It's easy to believe that earlier generations took their secrets with
them to the grave, and I suppose this was true in a few cases. Ditto
for composers and authors and glassmakers and....

However, my feeling is a bit different. Probably every statement has
an exception, but I believe that for the most part, modern human beings
don't want to invest the unimaginable (by modern standards) amount of
effort into their trade (be it art or carpentry or whatever else) as the
finest practitioners of old did.

Thus, it isn't that secrets have been lost.

It's that (for the most part) there are more facets of 'life' that
demand/attract attention nowadays, and therefore it's less common to
find a skilled trades person --- artist, mechanic, carpenter, or
whatever --- who is as intensely focused and as uncaring about the other
aspects of life and as accepting of deprivation as was the case
centuries ago.

The best artists & tradespeople work hard, no question about that. But
'harder than hard'? Most of us want to watch the six o'clock news at
the end of the day, and to be paid a million dollars and then have time
to spend it, and therefore we put our tools/pen/whatever down when
dinner is ready --- so to speak.

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