Talent

Talent doesn’t exist, not in the commonly viewed acception. It is said that talent is a particular disposition, all right, but which disposition is that? Fundamentally it is a desire towards something, which sometimes borders on obsession, thus goes too far. Bach for instance repeated to whom would listen to him that if anybody worked as much as he did, anybody could be Bach. And who can work as much as Bach? Only he who loves and desires music for itself as much as Bach did!

That’s what it boils down to, the heart of talent is there: desire. You might argue that there is desire and desire, for some desire and never achieve anything, at least they don’t go very far.But what is it precisely that they desire? Often reputation, or to get revenge from life, or originality at all costs, or maybe they just desire to become an artist. In short, they desire all sorts of things which are not a pure enough desire, and ultimately boil down to a desire of oneself or an autistic and foolish egocentrism.

Thus, talent also serves to purify a desire of a reality which is exterior to us. In art (or even in craftwork or in work in general) there are two things, a term and an end. The term, your working matter will always claim victory over it; it is the limit, be it time or whatever else, what in any case is irreducible to your idea... thus, in one way or another it is the working matter itself. The end is what finalizes you. So something is finished not when the term has rung, but when you can look at what you have created and understand that your working matter has kept its secret but that in this cooperation between it and you, you have in some way succeeded to make its secret seep, you by insufflating your insight and your idea, therefore ultimately your capacity to desire, your working matter in keeping its secret and nevertheless cooperating with you.

Therefore, someone who has a talent is firstly a person who loves his working matter, for itself, before wanting to transform it, and above all who loves it to the point that he knows he will never be quite victorious of it.That’s the first aspect, and at this stage, the blockheads are out of the picture even before the gun sounds because they are people who absolutely want to dominate, who are incapable of saying: this is grand, I am overwhelmed. For that matter it is the reason why they ingurgitate antidepressant pills, for it is quite depressing to stay confined within oneself, and only reality can make me lift off, thus something other than me, or someone else, and that is what realistic love is, and that’s why it’s the most sublime thing to be realist, face to face with reality, in the form of a person or a working matter.

In short, talent consists very essentially not in accepting to be surpassed, but in wanting it truly, passionately, obstinately. So then you will retort "but everyone is surpassed, without necessarily having any talent". Well I say that is not the case, and to back up my claim I will use an image. If you see St Peter’s Basilica in Rome from a distance, to be truly surpassed you have to advance to its foot, that’s were you touch the vertigo in all of its measure. If you are a distance away, you eye it up and down, you imagine the Basilica, and your idea of the Basilica does not impose itself to you, you impose yourself to it. With art it is the same thing, there are those who watch from the sidelines whilst claiming to be humble, but who in actual fact don’t have the desire to come closer, half-hearted individuals, middle-of-the-roaders who embrace quantity and ignore quality, that’s what they are! Then there are those who are fascinated by a reality, who seek unquestionably to approach it, to get closer to it at each new occasion, and who truly feel the immensity of their subject, who are the only ones capable of humility, not at all cretinous, for they are faced with the immensity of reality... Someone once pronounced these admirable words: “humility is truth”. I have never heard the heart of reality beat so closely. But you cannot hear the secrets thump without approaching reality, instead of trailing your hemorrhoids around the beltway of your misgivings.

Thus a truly alive person doesn’t cease to interrogate reality, be that in transforming a matter or in love. In the first case we interrogate our working matter, and in the second case the person we love. We don’t ask “Why do you not love me anymore, or why do I not love you?”, but “why do you love me?”. An intelligence that doesn’t interrogate or ceases to do so is moribund.

Talent is desire on the one hand and the right questions on the other hand.

I might add, as we are on the subject of art, that Aristotle made this rather remarkable comment: if all realities were works of art, substance would be the idea of an artist. From there and through analogy, negating substance amounts to looking at a painting or a text without grasping any signification. Many of us enter into first philosophy through philosophy of art, given that the dominant culture is an artistic one, to be more precise a pseudo artistic one, but it is the approach that often predominates... man wanting to be the creator of all things. And what is the fundamental determination of a work of art? It is obviously the idea and the project of an artist. Thus Aristotle’s short phrase (which is to be found in the Zeta book of metaphysics) is quite astute as it aids in understanding what substance is.