Quote:
Originally Posted by Taylor514ce
Well, shucks. I get totally absorbed, to the point of merely "going through the motions" in everything else (work, eating, sleeping). So with guitar, I bought one and played about 6 hours a day, day after day, until I could play the few songs I set out to play. No lessons, no books, just me and a guitar and some basic instruction on how to form specific chords.
Drawing, yes, I draw morning, noon, and night lately. Zelda's given me some good advice and pointed me to specific techniques. My daughter draws and has some books, but I haven't had the patience to force myself through them. I read through them, don't do the work, then go off with pencils and pads and doodle and sketch through lunch and during work breaks and in the evenings. When I look at things now I'm semi-consciously noting shapes and lines and shadows. It's cool - you don't see something, you see the voids around it that give it shape and substance.
It's "ok, got it. People are basically made out of cylinders. Draw the main body line, pay attention to the shadows, then make the bare minimum of marks to capture the shapes... go".
Learning has always come easily for me, to the woe of many teachers. I never did schoolwork... going through the rote of answering the same questions over and over seemed more like punishment for learning than a technique for doing so. However, I don't have "stick-to-it-tivness", as I've heard it described. Once I know I can do something, I don't feel the need to do it. I stopped writing for a few years because I was publishing everything I wrote, so, what was the point? Same with guitar. I reached a certain point, knew that I could dedicate more time and improve, so why do it, when I could spend that time doing something NEW? I'm sure I'll reach an "ok, that's good enough, I get it" point in drawing so will stop drawing.
I look forward to a point in my life when I don't have to work and can spend my time doing a number of things at which I'm reasonably proficient and enjoy doing.
@Geoff: Oh, I AM a genius, if you want to go by completely flawed, out-of-date, Anglo- and Western-centric "standards" of measure. I bet most of us here are as well.
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Oh, man alive ... we are sooooo very alike. I have quite literally gone several days at a time so absorbed in something that I forgot to eat and barely slept. I still get that way.
When I'm working on computer models, I dream in wireframe and texture maps. Sometimes I solve some really wild design problems in my dreams ... and the solutions actually work.
Originally, I was tested as having an IQ of 169, which I would guess would put me in the genius level. But, as a practical note, IQ says nothing about how successful (or not) a person will be as an adult. Most of the people I know who I consider as successful (good job, happy family, great life) are probably not as "smart" as I am .... but so freaking what??
When I was living in the Sierras I got hit by a really nasty (and I do mean nasty) viral illness. They wouldn't allow me a bed in the hospital because I was simply too contagious. So, strange as it may seem, I stayed home and tried my best to take care of myself. (Really stupid, I know now ... I should have gotten my ass back to LA and checked into a hospital with an isolation ward. Hindsight is 20/20.) Anyway, after having a high fever (about 108) for the better part of two weeks, I came out of it, but with aphasia.
For those of you not familiar with the term, it's an odd type of brain damage that leaves you with the knowledge you should know a word for something, but the inability to form it in your mind. You can describe the hell out of it ... but not name it. Mine lasted for about three years, but that was three years of me being completely obsessed with the dictionary. I had to relearn words for everything. I have since met people who weren't even able to do that ... so they remain adrift in a world in which it is close to impossible to communicate. I mean, imagine trying to talk to someone and you cannot find the word "shoe" in your memory. All you can say is "it's that thing that goes on your foot (that's if you can remember "foot") and it's made out of leather (again ... lucky you if you can remember "leather).
Where am I going with all of this?? It gave me a real appreciation of what it is like to be learning disabled. I always glided through everything growing up. The only things I did not learn immediately where those things about which I had a serious (rational or not) fear. Terrified of speaking in public, so I never tried oral debate ... stuff like that. Would never (ever) be a litigator because all my best arguments (about anything) fly right out of my head when faced with any audience bigger than perhaps four people. And, I have to be pretty snockered to be able to talk to four people at a time.
I wish I understood what makes my brain work ... that would be the ultimate form of self awareness. I do know that I have something called "pitch memory" which makes me really good at picking out music by ear. On the other hand, I'm differently color blind in each eye, which means that I see one set of colors with my right eye open, another with my left, and yet a third through both eyes. I didn't know that wasn't how most people saw things until I was almost 30 and mentioned it offhand to a couple of opthamologists. They thought I was teasing until they tested me ... and found that ... yeppers ... how weird. However, that anamoly has given me a different feeling for color, and I understand how people can love one color and hate another ... I love green, but not through my right eye. Right eye green gives me the willies.
I had read the entire Worldbook Encyclopedia by the time I was 8. They were books and I simply had to read every book in the house. I don't know why ... it's just how I was. I remember, however, when I was very young (say maybe 10 or a bit older), I first had to hold the book in my hands and think about what this book was going to tell me ... really anticipate the experience that I was about to have and savor it, because after I read that book, there woudn't never been a first time reading that book ... ever again. I don't know when I dropped that habit, but I haven't done it in a long time.
I could go on like this forever, and I don't want to wear out my welcome, so I'll stop now. But (there has to be a but), it puts me in mind of something that I'm going to post to a new thread, just because I think you all will appreciate it. "My Meeting with Larry Niven."