tomandzoe.com - live from the northside

If you ever needed confirmation that hard work is really the only honest way to be exceptional, you need to see Taiko drummers. These guys attend two-year training camps up in the mountains, they get up ridiculously early and go for long runs, they’re put on a special diet, and they drum - a lot. They drum so much that their hands bleed from blisters, they cry themselves to sleep, before they’re rudely awoken for another run up the local hill. Last night we went to see them in action. TaikOz had a special guest, the guy who started it all about 10 years ago, Eitetsu Hayashi.

After we got home I watched the women’s Luge highlights from Torino. These girls are mad. The track was apparently a very ‘nasty’ one because the girls were having a hard time finding the right line through the bottom section of the course. They were getting all out of shape, sliding up into the wooden barriers, being thrown from their sleds, tossed around like ragdolls and generally bitch-slapped. There were some terrifying crashes. I was wincing, holding my head in my hands, peeking through my fingers, and praying that they wouldn’t be killed. Unbelieveable that these girls ever walk away from these stacks. One girl was knocked unconcious when she whacked her head against the ice wall of the track, she was just hooking down the track, completely passed out. As Kiki would say “Owa”. Speaking of Kiki, we’re thinking of forming a new type of scrabble, Kikinese Scrabble. The words have to be ones that Kiki would use, or that make Kiki-Logic. “Overneath” (the opposite of underneath) and “Trashiepants” (Tracksuit pants), for example. The spelling is a bit of a mystery on some of these.

Anyway, my point is that when you see someone who’s really really good at what they do, it’s pretty inspirational and makes you wonder what you could do if you spent your whole life focussed on one thing. Sporting heroes who know no limits, scientists who’ve blazed the way, artists who’ve changed the world with their brush strokes, etc… etc… But, I don’t think Tiger Woods knows much about freshwater fish, and neither does Valentino Rossi. They probably don’t know how to put together a website (andy), or what size cone spanner to use on a singulator (timtim). They don’t know much about foreign exchange (phildo), asbestos testing (dunc), egyptian history (bob), architecture (lock), model aeroplanes (yld), helping people who are dying (ylm), splinting broken legs (clwedd), how to bottom turn into a 6ft wave on your backhand (dave), how to get the paint just right on a model (Uncle Dave), corporate law (Uncle Geoff), or anthropology (zoe).

So what’s better, knowning about a range of things, or being really good at one thing in particular? Is it better to be a Jack of all trades, or a master of one? Maybe it’s best to kick-ass at something in particular and then be able to do heaps of other stuff really well too. Perhaps its better to just have a go at everything. That’s what I do, try everything, in the vain hope that one of them might be the thing that I’m really good at. Hasn’t really happened so far. It sure isn’t putting, or riding a motorbike, or luging, or Taiko drumming. Damn you talented, hard working bastards: you’re making us all look very untalented and lazy!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 15th, 2006 at 8:29 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.