Next logical step vs magic and inspiration

Yesterday, a friend of mine posted a facebook-version of the above video on facebook. It depicts a young boy, probably around 10 years old, who memorizes and solves - blindfolded - Rubik's cube in less than 2 and a half minute. My friend - as seemingly most of the millions of viewers of the video - was completely taken aback by this feat, and comments included that it "made them sleepless", or "I would never be able to compete with a brain like that". And while I can understand those sentiments, I don't agree with them.

I see a video like that, and I get inspired by seeing somebody living up to their potential. Our brains and bodies are capable of extraordinary feats, and I love each time I am reminded of that. And, to manifest this potential, we just need to work with our bodies and do all the incremental steps that it takes, and you will get there - no matter who you are! More importantly, I realize that this thing that this young boy can do feels to him like the next logical step. He has gotten there through a series of many many small steps - practicing memorization, practicing hand-movements, practicing algorithms, watching others who are better than him solve the cube, etc etc - and through each of those steps he has evolved a little tiny bit. However, put sufficiently many of those steps after each other, and with so little space in between them that memory diffusion doesn't cancel out the steps forward, and you can get anywhere. In fact, many of the commenters of the video also point out that the people around the boy seem so non-impressed. And that is most likely because they are - this is probably in a competition, where many people do quite similar feats, and there are many of them performing one after another in a big succession. To each of them, they would not be even remotely as impressed as we are by this performance, because they do and see similar things all the time. To them it is more a matter of small variations up-and-down - having a good day or a bad day.

Look at interviews with athletes after a competition and you will see the same thing. They have just done what to normal human beings would be extraordinary feats of strength, precision, and/or agility. But if you ask them to comment on what they did, they will usually say (and think) something like "well, my technique was a little bit off in the second heat, but in the third heat it got better". I.e., to them it will be minor variations around what was to be expected. To them, as it is to all, what you get in life is most often just the next logical step.

In the same spirit, I can think of so many times that I have come up to a performer of classical music just after a concert they have given (or when people have come up to me after one of my concerts). I know then that there is very little correlation between my experience of their technical performance (especially if it is of another instrument than my own) and their own experience of their technical performance. I might have been blown away by the seeming difficulty of it, but they might mostly remember that they missed a trill on the second bar of the third page, which annoyed them. To them - like to all - what you get in life is most often just the next logical step.

Yuja Wang, one of my favorite pianists alive today, plays an utterly difficult piece: an octave version of Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee. It is indeed a crazy difficult piece, but although most people in the comment section (as in the audience) are blown away by this performance, if you would ask her about the performance, she would probably say something like: "I was a bit blurry on that note in the end, but the octaves in the beginning were sharp and nice". To her, this performance is just the next logical step.

Having said all of this, there is one thing that must enter into this series of observations - and that is the magic that appears in wonderful performances. The magic that makes the technique fall away in the background, and the feeling of wonder come up to the forefront. It is the feeling of a sudden lift above the normal state-of-affairs. As Jan-Ove Waldner (my old table tennis hero) said about his performance in the semi-final and first half of the final of the world cup in 1987: "I was so much in the zone, that I had the feeling that I could go up against 20 chinese players in a row, and beat every one of them without loosing a single set." I can remember another occasion, one of the encores to a generally very impressive concert by Sokolov that stood out far beyond the others - it was such magic that I could feel how the entire audience was completely transfixed on every note that he played. While applauding afterwards, I stood and talked with a fellow piano friend of mine, and we both laughed and said: "this is why we came, this short 5 minute piece alone made the whole trip here from Linköping worth the while, many times around". I have also felt such a degree of inspiration myself on a couple of occassions, and in each of those times, I have noticed how big of an effect it has had on the audience.

Sokolov in one of his magic performances - here playing Rameau's Les Sauvages.

This magic that happens is thus something very tangiable, and even though you cannot command it to happen, you can make it much more likely. In other words, I am sure that even though Sokolov himself felt the same magic as we did on that particular piece, and was totally in love with the moment when it happened, it had happened to him many times before during his concert series. He plays on such a high level, that this degree of magic is something that happens to him fairly regularly. I would, however, be surprised if he would say that he can command it to happen. But it sure as hell happens to him much more often than it happens to more mediocre pianists. Also if I look to the main occasions where this magic has happened in my own concerts: In virtually all of them, it has been when I have been really really well-prepared. When I have played the pieces many times, both on my own, and in many previous concerts, and where I have really dived deep into the pieces, felt glimpses of the magic in these pieces before. Where I know each and every occasion where the magic can happen, where it has happened before, and where I feel so confident that I know the piece that memory lapses is a thought that doesn't even occur to me. Then, when I feel the feeling of magic approach me, I can think/feel, "yeah, let's go. Get ready for it audience - now comes the feelings!" In the same way, Waldner's in-the-zone playing around with the previously unbeatable Chinese opponents was not something that just happened, it was the result of many years of mental and physical preparations, that finally had bared fruit in a confluence of nerves turning to inspiration.

Documentary of the years leading up to 1989, when Sweden at last beat the unbeatable China with 5-0 in the team competition in the world cup. As you can see, this was a breakthrough, and just as Jan-Ove's in-the-zone playing in 1987, they were all then playing at the top of their game, producing table tennis magic that will live on for decades and decades to come. However, what you see very clearly from the documentary is that this did not happen by chance - it happened when it felt like the next logical step. 


In other words, what all this means is that what happens almost always feels like the next logical step. Even when the magic breaks through and lifts you off, if it holds for more than a few seconds, if it is something that you can sustain, then it is because you have been there before, and you now are carrying it just a little bit further - you are carrying it to the next logical step.

Finally, as an after-thought and teaser for future blog posts: all of this is completely parallel to how you go deep in meditation. In many of the techniques that takes you to the deepest states, you cannot exactly control when it will happen, or where it will take you - especially in the beginning it will feel like some deeper part of you will be deciding that for you. But what you can do is that you can create the perfect circumstances where it is almost inevitable that the deepening shift will happen sooner or later. When you have let go of any specific expectations, when you have stopped wanting to create it with your will-power, when your thoughts are completely transfixed on the current moment: then the deepening is the next logical step.