Ben Affleck, talking to Michael Bay about the movie Armageddon, in which oil drillers are sent to an asteroid to drill a hole in it, drop a nuclear bomb into the hole, and then detonate that bomb:
>I asked Michael (Bay) why it was easier to train oil drillers to become astronauts than it was to train astronauts to become oil drillers. He told me to shut the fuck up
Not to belittle astronauts, but space travel training is more teachable than true art.
[1] Ira Glass quote: > Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.
Ironically, or fittingly, I've been reading a comprehensive collection of his short stories, because it was impressed on me early in my life that he was a great author, and I have recently been horrified at how terrible many of his more obscure ones are.
The interesting thing is that the quality does not simply improve with time and experience. There are extreme outliers.
In it, an engineer is brought into a war zone, where giant tank-like creatures are on the edge of overrunning the front lines. The lines must be maintained in a cave system to keep extracting a valuable mineral. The generals keep pressuring the engineer for weapons, but he wants to understand the problem first. After lots of analysis, he directs the troops to destroy a certain structure. Within days all the tank creatures die. Then the engineer explains that the cave system is actually the inside of a caterpillar on a cosmic sized leaf, and the tank creatures were its immune system. Killing the caterpillar allowed the troops to loot the caterpillar's body in peace.
Ever heard of it? I'm not sure that my memory is completely accurate.
(musician/artist here) I don't believe in 'talent' or 'gifts', and I don't believe art/music, like a lot of things, is something you can teach (mostly). You can learn it, but you can't teach it. (Botvinnik - founder of the 'Russian School of Chess' (!) - said that about chess, I keep seeing people in different fields saying that.)
You learn it by doing it. A lot. And learning from what you love, e.g. the greats in your field. And you won't do that day after day for decades unless you really love doing it. No-one else knows what you should be working on, or what you love. Everyone's bad at anything when they start. I hear a lot of people saying they wished they played flute (or something), but they're not talented. That myth does a lot of harm. I tell them, well, just start!. It's all anyone can do. Art is essentially about doing your own thing, not willfully, but following what your nature dictates. 'You' don't create it; it just flows out of you.
So I'd also think that space travel training is more teachable than art, for different reasons.
A (probably apocryphal) story: ...a woman once came up to Fritz Kreisler after one of his concerts and said to him, “I’d give my life to play as beautifully as you do.” To which Kreisler replied, “I did.”
One's own path. - If we take the decisive step and enter upon the path which is called our 'own path', a secret is suddenly revealed to us: all those who have hitherto been our friends and familiars have imagined themselves superior to us, and are now offended. The best of them are lenient with us and wait patiently for us soon to find our way back to the 'right path' - they know, it seems, what the right path is... - Nietzsche, Daybreak, 484
Yes. 100%. It's a muscle you train.
>> Doesn't it require a natural gift that you're born with?
It helps a lot, but from my experience having parents who can support you with lessons and prop you up well into your 20s is a bigger factor to being a successful artist.
>> Not to belittle astronauts, but space travel training is more teachable than true art.
In my mind it's much harder to be an astronaut than an artist, excluding extremely elite painters and musicians. And I doubt most artists would disagree with this.
I think that's what they're going for with this mission. Nearly every world-famous artist would be interested in something like this, so they won't be short of options. If you can, why not pick the absolute best?
Ai Wewei or Banksy or Stan Lee?
Stephen King or Salman Rushdie?
Sorry for getting snippy, but my Point is, art, especially of all things, while it certainly has its quantifiable aspects, is a domain where talking about “absolute best” and “world famous” is not very constructive or useful, imho.
1. Yo Yo Ma
2. Stevie Wonder
3. Salman Rushdie.
"Before the revolution, Tula province only had one writer - Leo Tolstoy. After the revolution, Tula province has 100 writers, all of them card carrying members of Soviet Writers Union; so situation with literature is now 100 times better".
- Easy doesn't seem to have any place here.
- It sounds like bringing in diversity of perspective is a large priority here, and starting with trained astronauts would severely constrain that.
I'd expect crew will accompany them - they've batted around a 100 passenger number in the past - and it's likely to be highly automated as well.
The sculptor's certainly not gonna go hop out for a spacewalk to fix an antenna.
i think everyone replying to you just got wooshed.