I had the pleasure of driving to the Berkshires in MA with the Road Scholars this Summer. Over the course of about a week I was privileged to see live dance, theatre, and orchestral performance at a concentration of venues, Jacob’s Pillow, Berkshire Theatre and Tanglewood, Summer home the Boston Symphony. I came to appreciate how dedicated are people to their own specialization, who, as we know, not always, not often even, enjoy all that much financial benefit.  I had intimate lectures from theatre critic, dancer, and actors. Although I had done some limited performance in school and have always an interest in performance, I had never gotten to see up close and in so short a space of time the variety of endeavors, or seen such a mixture of competencies in so concentrated a form over such a short period.

At Jacob’s Pillow I saw dancers in rehearsal. From the medical perspective they seemed in better condition than athletes. They are athletes of course, but it is hard for me to imagine memorizing to perfection such profusion of precise movements.. I know that is something I could never do. Seeing varying body types of dancers, not all of them are thin and lithe, some larger and more muscular, even look overweight, there have to be issues such as inherited characteristics of mitochondria, and muscle enzymes involved in aerobic and anaerobic metabolism and feats non-verbal memory that are far above my own capabilities. all part of the wonder of art. People are doing things, ordinary mortals clearly cannot do.  That is a part of what performance art is, and the other half of what I look for, is something not only out of the ordinary, but outrageous, unexpected. That is all the fun. Some of the young performers had travelled to far away places, like Australia, and studied for years in one group or under one master performer with little in the way of usual compensation for their dedication, talent and efforts.

It came to me that humans all inhabit a circle abuzz with mostly random useless Brownian motion.  Looking at myself, I ask the question, what of my own trajectory?  Is it random or inner directed? The answer, at least in part, gives meaning to life. We go to our daily jobs which most of us just slid into on a path of least resistance.  The majority  are employable on account of a bare willingness to perform a certain function. The Marxian perspective is Alienated Labor.  Your supervisors pay for drudgery that, while being necessary, no one really wants to do and for that you are compensated, hopefully at a minimal level, to allow for vast profits on the part of the capitalists, while leaving a bare life sustaining pittance for you. If that is true, and you are not one of those  persons foolish enough to believe that your work is somehow appreciated or important, your future is to put enough away so that you will one day no longer have to work, all the while getting burnt out and disgusted with your job and your supervisors, who are there only to take advantage of you.

OK, I have to admit am right now  I am under the spell of Ann Applebaum’s book The Gulag which is a scholarly account of slave labor in Soviet Russia. This was endlessly cruel, senseless and horrendous and goes to show what we all know, that cruelty has no limits. It is very possible to view all recent history over the past recent thousands of years as a relation between the exploited and exploiters, stereotypical dominance and submission.

Marx’s view is consistent with the lives of a lot of people. But quite a few people manifest dedication, talent, and strength of character enough to leave the circle of the majority. That is far less true for the Gulag, where a person who works hard is a mere chump, although the book has some few examples of persons who were able to distinguish themselves, not by hard work, certainly, under circumstances of severe repression, by dint of some combination of ruthlessness and intelligence.  It seems more possible in a more open and free system such as our own to move out of this circle.  Pre-requisites are a little different, the also stereotypical  fire in the belly, or motivation which derives from a number of sources. From the neurological perspective this involves reward, motivation, and motor planning centers to be found in the largest part of the cortex of the brain, one’s frontal lobes.

Another requisite is talent, or aptitude. It is hard to get interested in something you are not good at. This is easily apprehended for athletes in whom you have to think this person has to have just the right combination of muscle and joint characteristics to achieve in their sport. Given that plus single mindedness and effort and you may have a better chance at superlative performance. But artistic performance is different. An Olympian will practice for years to perform in one particular type of event, which personally excites me very little,  but the musician, dancer, or actor, must be professionally able with a whole repertoire.

Reward centers of the brain, activated by Dopamine, limbic areas and nucleus accumbens get recruited as well, not always well developed in most of us. Some dullards are destined to get excited only rarely. Others get turned on almost randomly, but performance requires prolonged work and focused effort which means getting excited over something and not losing that excitement over the long stretch, enough to be able to hone an extreme skill. I heard a talk from a cellist. Obviously this person had musical ability. For a time he had been a bass-baritone performing professional opera repertoire. But he eventually gave that up to concentrate on his own specific musical instrument enough to become a true maestro. He  compiled a vast collection of recordings on the cello, unearthing cycles and collections in that instrument and in chamber groups which he can proudly leave behind after he exits this world. That requires talent yes, but also a willingness to make the Big Bet of devoting one’s whole professional life to limited field of endeavor in which there are no guarantees that there will ever be recognition or reward..

This level of dedication is not to be found only in music of course, or even performance, but is universal in all fields, certainly in the sciences.  Most of us for most things are part of the common circle.  But for me this circle  is a spinning pin wheel. Most everyone congregates about the center, but for some who are situated but slightly to the periphery will have enough centrifugal force to toss them out onto their very own tangent, possibly for the rest of their lives. Some skilled tangentists will make their way back to the circle again trying hard to stay on the outside only to be thrust out again into another personal endeavor.  There are those possessing the requisites. In any event, the varieties of human endeavor, William James comes to mind with his Varieties of Religious Experience, all the important differences among humans that make whatever is worthwhile in experience, are folks on tangents.