I love what this artist can do on the fiddle and I wish I understood more (than a tiny bit) of what she is saying in this lesson. (You may want to skip to 1:58, when Lissa comes on.)

An awareness of my own ignorance does not prevent me from being skeptical of the method she teaches here. When people learn something enthusiastically (rather than being required to learn under a specific tutelage), it seems more common for them to learn by throwing themselves into the middle of the art–failing woefully, yes, but reaching for the whole. It has been widely noted that language is best learned immersively; and it doesn’t do much good to be able to pronounce a single word precisely.

Nobody, of course, tries to master every single possible nuance of an art at once; but I doubt that very many people learn by taking one atomic piece at a time. Breaking a skill down to its constituent pieces is a skill of itself and is demonstrated by people already proficient in the craft. Casual practitioners of any craft rarely cognitively interrupt their work into minuscules.

Gazing heavenward
or only to the light
in the ceiling of our train,
a Spanish man sits and sinks
into his sockets, eyes
the size of billiard balls
His swan neck bends around itself
to lift his slackened chin.
Reddish whiskers fill his cheeks.
His hands, slain on the tray before him,
demand to be believed.
Though I see no thorny crown,
though his ears aren’t filled
with blood, I can almost see the strokes,
the single strokes that give him life–
El Greco’s Christ is breathing,
and here am I, the donor on the right,
asking how it can be, and whether I
–me–should fold my lace-sleeved hands
and gaze beyond him
to the light that floods His face.

Ellen Orner