A beach in northern Brazil. The year is 1997. I am seventeen years old and just about every aspect of that sprawling, unwieldy, vibrant green country has blown my small-town mind.
I am on this beach with a group of teenaged Brazilians. It’s night time, it’s late. There is a fire, and we are sitting around it on sand still warm from the day’s sun. And then one of the guys produces a guitar. Logically the guitar must have been with him or near him but in my mind, he conjured that guitar from thin air. And as he struck the first chords of Bob Marley’s Coming in from the Cold, and every eye turned toward him, every female eye, in that moment I decided that I too would learn to play the guitar.
I promised myself that one day, I would sit where he sat, I would conjure a guitar from nowhere and I would play O Teatro dos Vampiros by the iconic 90s Brazilian rock band Legiao Urbana, and not the studio version from their 1991 album V, but the stripped back acoustic version from their 1994 album Musica Para Acampamentos. And when I strummed those first chords, the waves would cease to break and the moon would drop straight from the sky and plonk into the ocean. I promised myself that one day, I would be that guy and all eyes would be on me.
Last week I started broadcasting on local radio. I had responded to a call out from the Kiama Community Radio station asking for people interested in hosting a radio program or developing a podcast. Apart from having a face for it, I have no experience in radio. I have never had the desire to be on radio. But this seemed like an opportunity to do something different, something I had never done before. After a short training session to learn the knobs and buttons of broadcasting I hit the airwaves in the prime 7am to 9am morning drive slot.
And I loved it. I loved it a little too much when you think it really was just me sitting in a room talking to myself. We have a text line and listeners can let me know what they’re thinking, let me know that they’re out there listening, that really it isn’t just me sitting in a room talking to myself. I didn’t get a single text from a verified listener. There may not have been anybody listening. But I am not going to lie to you, when I finished my shift, I was buzzing.
I came late to Zorba the Greek, written by Cretan author Nikos Kazantzakis. Somehow the catchy song of the same name had infiltrated my thinking and led me to ignore the book for a long time. I am not sure what I expected, but it is an intriguing philosophical meditation on how to live a good life, contemplating if we are better off living a life of thought or action.
This question posed by Zorba has stuck with me. “An old grandfather of ninety was busy planting an almond tree. ‘What grandad!’ I exclaimed. ‘Planting an almond tree?’ And he, bent as he was, turned round and said: ‘My son, I carry on as if I should never die.’ I replied: ‘And I carry on as if I was going to die any minute.’ Which of us was right, boss?”
After considering Zorba’s question, the narrator concludes that there is no difference, writing that, “Two equally steep and bold paths may lead to the same peak. To act as if death did not exist, or to act thinking every minute of death, is perhaps the same thing.” I have since turned Zorba’s question over and over in mind, trying to arrive at my own conclusion. Can two seemingly opposite philosophies really be the same?
I followed through on my promise to buy that guitar and I still have it today. It is standing against the wall beside me now as I type. Sometimes I practice up to five times a day. But never more than short bursts of two or three minutes before I put it down and go back to whatever it is I was doing. Apart from a few bars of Redemption Song, a bit of the riff from Fast Car and some chords of Blue Suede Shoes, I cannot play a thing.
I can make only a few of the easier chord shapes. When I try to use a plectrum, it flies from my fingers and spins in the air like a tossed coin. My strumming is abysmal. A man falling down a flight of stairs keeps a better beat than me. When I pick up my guitar cats become nervous, dogs return to their beds and whimper, elephants start heading for high ground. My guitar playing is truly awful.
I have lived my life as if I could drop dead at any moment. It wasn’t a conscious decision, things just happened that way. I have wanted to do and experience everything before my time ran out. As a result, I have done a lot of different things and mastered none. But I do not care. I have forfeited the acquisition of expertise, in favour of the acquisition of experience.
I enjoy the feel of the guitar in my hands. I enjoy strumming the strings, plucking out notes. I enjoy the experience. When I pick up the guitar, for a few minutes, I am that guy on the beach regardless of the noise I produce. The radio is no different. I will never be an expert broadcaster. I may never be a good broadcaster, but I enjoy the feeling of being a broadcaster.
As children, we are encouraged to learn so that we may acquire a proficiency or a mastery. Education is a progression. But I wonder if we would not be better off considering learning as an acquisition of experience rather than expertise. If so, maybe we would be encouraged to try more things as we aged, to start new things knowing that there will never be enough time to master them, but all the time in the world to experience them.
If you would like to tune in to my breakfast show you can listen at www.kcr.org.au. or you can listen on Spotify or the I Heart Radio app. I am on Wednesday mornings 7am to 9am Australian Daylights Saving Time.
Learning to Learn and the False Pursuit of Proficiency.