Greatness

I once did a fair bit of teaching of younger jazz players, mostly via seminars in Europe. Often I'd encounter someone with no perceptible swing feel - which is catastrophic. After an hour of hard work and pushing and carrying on, occasionally I might cajole one into swinging, which felt like a revelation, but I'd coach them straight through that threshold to something even higher. Not just swinging, but really swinging! And it was surprisingly common to see a few reach that lofty height...at least for a brief moment.

"Wait! Stop! Freeze!" I'd scream. "You heard what you just did, right? That was really swinging, and it felt super different, right?"

"You cannot ever go back. This isn't your new normal; it's your new baseline. You must never - even in your worst, sloppiest, most unguarded moment - swing any less than you just proved you can. If you hadn't just proved what you could do, you might have doubted your capability. But that was proof-of-concept, and it can no longer be doubted. You know how swinging you can be, so anything less from this point forward would be inexcusable."

"Failing to swing your ass off is now a capital offense. You can no longer protest that, hey, you were trying your best. Now that we know what your best really is, settling for less makes you a lazy, shitty, spoiled baby. You can't shrug off not swinging. Not anymore!"

How many of them powered up, proceeding at this higher level? Very few, of course. Most immediately dipped all the way back to their previous level; to their status quo. Not because greatness was too demanding or draining or challenging, but because they couldn't reframe themselves. Crappy unswinging mediocrity felt comfortable. It made them feel like themselves. It felt like home. Like their own comfy beds. Night night!



But every great once in a while, one would experience some internal snap (something must snap!). Reframing would happen, and they'd power up several levels, renouncing the fluffy pillows and blankets of mediocrity. Swinging hard became their new normal.

Those were the great ones. And this explains: 1. Why there are so few "great ones", and 2. What one needs to do to be great.

See "Why My Cooking Isn't Great"


Their greatness wasn't a matter of latent capability (aka "talent), or hard work (strictly speaking), or even the quality level of their result. It was about two things: reframing and commitment. The two things nobody looks at or worries about or talks about or aims for.

These things constitute the Dark Matter of the human universe, and that's what this Slog has mostly explored all these years.