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Kana -> RE: Experienced vs. Skilled (11/29/2007 9:10:19 AM)
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My thoughts, humble as they may be.
There are many things in life that I would refer to as jobs, tasks that can be done. In this I am thinking along the lines of an assembler at a factory, something that is taught and then done by rote. There are also things in life that I will label crafts. Some of these are obvious, art, music, blacksmithing, but many other things can fall under this label as well. Baseball is an example, or writing, or sales, or teaching or a million one other things. Generally with crafts there is a certain learning curve involved but after a little bit of work most people can achieve a basic proficiency at the thing. Cooking works perfectly here, most people know the rudiments of cooking yet few are true chefs. The thing that distinguishes a craft is that it is something that has immense depths and nuances contained within. One can learn to hit a baseball fairly easily, but to learn and understand the game itself takes a lifetime. Through continuous application and practice one can hone their “expertise” (oh that word is going to get me in trouble here), but nobody can ever truly become completely accomplished in all the fields demanded by a craft. Hence there are no experts, but there are Master craftsmen.
The master comment should give it away where I am heading with this, grins.
So to my mind, I can possess some skill in BDSM, I can have some level of experience, I can even claim a certain level of expertise in say, beating a woman with a rubber chicken, But that is not to say I have become even adequate in many areas that fall under the wide umbrella called BDSM.
In my mind this is an art form, the canvas is the body but the domain is the heart and mind. When on considers that each person contains a completely different set of variables and experiences I cannot say that I am either expert, experienced or skilled with that person until we build a history together. Human beings are too complex for me to claim otherwise. To take a submissive and make her mine involves artistry, nuance subtlety and patience. So to claim I have skill, hmmmm, I have some small knowledge of the craft of command, I have done this before. But to say I have mastered this craft would be a misnomer. I am at best a journeyman.
Tangential question: Is claiming that I have experience really just a way of saying that I have made many mistakes in the past and for your sakes, hopefully learned from them? Experience does not predicate mastery
So skill I have a little, experience a bit, expertise I do not claim, But I can make a slave sing.
The story goes like this.In Florence once an owner of a granite quarry found a perfect piece of stone. He offered it to the leading artists of the day, asking that they transform this perfect rock into a work of art for the world to admire. Artist after artist came and viewed it and humbled turned away, Leonardo, Bottacelli, Donatello Rossellino, all examined the stone and said they were insufficient to work with such perfection. For 25 years the rock stood, waiting for the hands to carve it. In 1501 a 26 year old artist and stonemason was given the task of working on the block. It took him three years, and when he was done he unveiled it at the entrance to the Plazza Delvecchio.
The artist was Michelangleo and the statue was the David. At the unveiling An admirer asked Michelangelo how he sculpted the famous statue out of this stone that no one else would touch. How did he craft this masterpiece of form and beauty? Michelangelo’s offered this strikingly simple description: He first fixed his attention on the slab of raw marble. He studied it and then “chipped away all that wasn’t David.”
He freed the angel trapped within the stone
A precision of vision. He worked undistracted by all the extra material, peering through the unformed shape into what the figure it could become. Michelangelo knew David—his age, how he was positioned, the shape of his torso, and that beautiful curved left arm just below his chin. Through the amorphous mass of rock, a clear form sparkled in his imagination. The marble would only need chipping away. And so, gradually, tap by tap, David—or the Pièta, or Moses—emerged. The glory of Michelangelo’s sculpting was that he could see through the raw material, through all the chipping away, to its ultimate destiny. He created these beautiful forms through what he removed, through what he negated.
That’s mastery. I am just a man who strives to learn. The details, the titles, the definitions mean little to me. The doing is all.
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