Genius vs. Expertise

Does genius even exist? If it does, does it matter?

I’ve been thinking about expertise this week.

The thing that got me thinking about expertise was seeing this post on social media.

If you click on that post you’ll see a short video that primarily features Danny Carey, drummer for the band Tool, a group famous for its byzantine song structures. Carey is considered one of the best rock drummers of all time, known for being able to play odd time signatures and polyrhythms with great precision. Whatever you may think of Tool’s music, Carey is obviously a kick-ass drummer.

(He also seems like a remarkably chill and fun-loving dude as shown by this video of him playing with the University of Kansas pep band at a basketball game and this one where he’s playing with some teenagers from a music academy covering a Tool song.)

But to me, Carey’s performance is not the most interesting part of the video. At one point, you’ll notice Carey turn over his left shoulder, communicating with someone off screen. Soon, a body appears, ducking under Carey’s left arm, removing the snare drum (which is apparently malfunctioning in some way), disappearing for a moment before replacing it with another snare.

All of this happens while the performance of the song continues unabated. Carey does not miss a beat. The moment the snare is back in place, Carrey is hitting it at exactly the right time.

Carey’s expertise is obvious, but I find myself just as interested in the expertise of the man replacing the snare drum. His name is Joe Slaby, and he works as Danny Carey’s drum tech. He’s the one who first posted the video to social media, where it’s continued to circulate for over a year.

It seems like we spend a lot of time with narratives that explore “genius,” but maybe we give short shrift to stories about expertise. This is one of those newsletters where I’m thinking out loud more than usual, so I could be convinced otherwise, but that seems right to me.

Maybe it’s because genius is exciting in its unknowability. Most of us learn pretty quickly what it’s like to not be a genius, so perhaps it’s inherently fascinating to vicariously experience what it’s like to be a genius. A genius is inspired, they have received a gift, and the genius’s job is to then nurture that gift and share it with the world. The genius is often troubled, burdened by genius, and because of these burdens, the genius is a total asshole, but the genius is also forgiven because, after all, they are a genius.

Donald Barthelme’s short story “The Genius” (collected in 40 Stories) lampoons this notion of “the great man” and what happens when the man is viewed as a genius. It opens:

His assistants cluster about him. He is severe with them, demanding, punctilious, but this is for their own ultimate benefit. He devises hideously difficult problems, or complicates their work with sudden oblique comments that open whole new areas of investigation—yawning chasms under their feet. It is as if he wishes to place them in situations where only failure is possible. But failure, too, is a part of mental life. “I will make you failure-proof,” he says jokingly. His assistants pale.

The story is told through fragments from the genius’s life, lampooning the kind of reflexive deference and worship we give to genius. We actually have no idea as to the specifics of The Genius’s genius. His apparent genius is the only thing that matters or remains. Barthelme continuously punctures this attitude, as in this fragment:

Q: What do you consider the most important tool of the genius of today?

A: Rubber cement.

Expertise is something different from genius. Expertise is achieved through diligence applied over time. Genius is born. Expertise is raised, I suppose. We might be tempted to say that Danny Carrey is a “genius” musician, but from what I’ve read about him, his success and skill is the product of dedicated practice over many years. In the 2016 Rolling Stone rating of the top 100 drummers of all-time, Carey comes in at #26, one spot ahead of Dave Grohl of Nirvana/Foo Fighters fame. In Grohl’s memoir The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music he tells about how before he had a drum set he would play drums on pillows or even simulate drum rhythms and fills by clicking his teeth together.

This is not being gifted with genius in the way we popularly think of genius unless deep down genius is simply passion manifested through practice, obsession married with expertise.

Maybe that is genius.¹

I’m extra fascinated by the clip of Danny Carey and Joe Slaby because for just about a year I’ve been taking drum lessons at my local School of Rock. Most known for its program for children and teens, they also offer lessons for adults, so every Tuesday I take a lesson with an instructor and then spend 90 minutes playing with other students in a band. This quarterly session we’re dedicated entirely to the music of The Rolling Stones.

It has been interesting to take drum lessons for the first time in my life given that for a few years in the late 90’s I was the drummer in a Chicago-based indie rock band called Quiet Kid. Now, don’t get me wrong, we were not hot stuff on the scene, but over the span of my time in the band we played just about every major rock club in Chicago: Lounge Ax, The Elbo Room, Schuba’s, Metro. We were often the openers for the opening band for the opening band for the headliners, but still, we played our music in front of (sometimes) hundreds of people.

(Or biggest gig was playing with Spoon as part of a three act bill.)

I was the drummer in Quiet Kid, but at the same time I could not really play the drums. I could play Quiet Kid songs because, by default, the drum parts had to be something I could do on the drums. It all worked just fine for our purposes. The lead guitarist and front man for the band were two of my oldest friends and even if they found my playing suspect, they weren’t going to kick me out (I don’t think).²

I suppose it’s possible to be a drummer without being able to play the drums. If I apply the same logic I tell my students when it comes to writing - anyone who writes is a writer - I was definitely a drummer, but this past year has shown me what it’s like to pursue drumming with direction and diligence, and it’s been both fun and fascinating.

For one thing, I’ve gotten significantly better at playing the drums. I can play stuff I could not play a year ago. I’ve crossed a threshold where I now play the song, rather than play the drums, if that distinction makes sense. I’m still very aware of the gap between me and a professional drummer, but I can now understand that gap and seek to close it, even if the odds of traversing that distance are quite small given the fact that I started drum lessons in my 50’s.

Another thing I’ve discovered is that being relatively dedicated to practicing the drums - practicing every day, practicing with purpose - has helped me with my main vocation of writing. Sometimes it’s just a matter of having a hobby to distract me from my work in a way that gives me a necessary break.

But I think there’s more to it than that even. In Adam Grant’s most recent book Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things he shares research that shows people who seriously pursued hobbies in a different area from their jobs, their confidence in their work increased. The appears to be a halo effect on learning something specific and feeling accomplished in that task to learning in general.

Consider the implications of this research on what has been done to students as non-core subjects have been drained from the curriculum, so those with interest and passion for music, art, theater, et. al…don’t get to see the benefit of experiencing their progress in those subjects transfer to other disciplines. There are no geniuses in Hidden Potential. The people Grant uses to illustrate his theory, like basketball star Stephen Curry, are often gifted, but it’s clear that Curry’s basketball genius is primarily the result of dedicated work, passion married with practice, obsession married with expertise.

It would seem silly to describe Danny Carey’s drum tech, Joe Slaby as a “genius,” because we don’t think of people in those sorts of roles as geniuses, but is he all that different from Carey himself? My first drum teacher at School of Rock is a professional drummer who has played in front of tens of thousands of people. My current teacher works primarily as a drum tech like Joe Slaby, touring as part of the crew for bands that play in front of tens of thousands of people. When I asked him a bit about the expectations for his work, he said that the has to be able to set up a drum kit within 1/4 inch tolerance of what the performer desires. Consider what this means in a fully three-dimensional space.

A drum tech also has to be able to tune the drums to precise specifications, and during the show - as shown by Joe Slaby - to be instantly responsive to the needs of the performer. The expertise for this work is obvious. Why couldn’t this also be seen as genius?

Of course I’ve been thinking about genius and expertise in the context of writing and teaching because, well, those are the areas in which I have the most knowledge and experience myself. It’s rare that you would see a teacher described as a “genius,” right? Professors may be seen as geniuses, but they’re usually more of the type Barthelme lampoons in “The Genius,” showy lecturers who cultivate an image that doesn’t necessarily seem grounded in anything specific. Barthelme’s story is from 1971, so if he had someone in mind, it was from an era before this one, but when I read the story, I picture Steven Pinker, a once-accomplished scholar who today primarily beclowns himself³ through he conspicuous display of his outsized self-regard.

Why couldn’t teachers be geniuses, though, geniuses forged via passion manifested through practice? This thought struck me as I was reading an installment of Dan Meyer’s Mathworld’s newsletter, “Is Asset-Based AI Even Possible?” Meyer is observing that by its nature AI instruction/tutoring works from what students don’t know (deficits), rather than what they do know (assets).

There is a lot of evidence suggesting that students learn best and more quickly through asset-based approaches. Meyer’s expertise is in math, but the same is true in writing and I am a dedicated practitioner of working from a base of what students already know and can do, the most notable skill being thinking. Everyone can think, but a huge proportion of schooling seems to ignore this fact.

I digress.

As part of Meyer’s post he shares a video of math teacher Katrine Bryan as she works with a student who cannot answer the question under discussion. If you watch the video, you see Bryan ask a series of questions that probes for knowledge the student possesses. There is no direct instruction on how to do the problem. Instead there is a process by which Bryan draws the student towards the kind of thinking that will yield not just an answer on a discrete math question, but will also increase the sum total of that student’s mathematical knowledge.

Bryan is clearly working with an incredibly high level of expertise when it comes to teaching. Having spent years pondering what good teaching looks like and how it manifests itself in the real world I’m willing to say that this is an example of genius.

The good news is that there are a lot of Katrine Bryan-level geniuses working in classrooms around the country. The bad news is that as a society we are doing everything possible to undermine the autonomy and support they need to put that expertise to work in the service of helping students learn. The idea that AI tutors could ever approach this level of engagement and expertise is pure fantasy, but billions of dollars are presently going to go towards that fantasy because these people think that teachers are the problem rather than the solution to helping students learn. Imagine what that money could do if it was invested in people.

We think of genius as the province of solo artists, but what if that’s wrong too? The video of Katrine Bryan shows the necessity of learning as a social process, a shared experience among many, rather than an individual pursuit. Without the students eager to learn and open to thinking through questioning and conversation, we would never get to appreciate this expert teaching.

When I arrive to the School of Rock for my Tuesday lesson, one of the teenage bands is rehearsing and in the rehearsal you can see the benefits of a pedagogy that assumes most of all you want to play as part of a group. Some of the students are further along in their development than others, but together, they make music. As I wait for my turn in the lesson room, my foot taps along with the tune.

Sure, you can hear the mistakes, the missed notes, the dropped beats, and there is little evidence of genius - I know for sure genius is not present in our Tuesday evening rehearsal room - but when we the last note of “Sympathy for the Devil” rings out and I look at my fellow musicians we are smiling.

Links

This week at the Chicago Tribune I wrote about how I almost missed Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah because it was picked for Jenna Bush’s book club, and thank goodness I didn’t. At Inside Higher Ed this week I explore how the key to writing something good is to trick yourself into ignoring the fact that ultimately writing results in a fixed object. Process is everything.

Some weird stuff went on at the Hugo Awards as a handful of nominees were purged from the list. Writing at Esquire, Adam Morgan looks at the censorship scandal.

At Lithub, Maris Kreizman looks at the “bulletpointization” of books, the drive in some quarters to reduce books to their smallest unit of information, rather than seeing reading as a full experience.

Writing at the New York Times, Ben Dolnick gives us “the essential Alice Munro.”

At his newsletter, Sweater Weather, Brandon Taylor has a fascinating critical reflection on two “internet” novels. It’s from 2021, but it goes to show you that good criticism doesn’t go out of date.

Judging from the number of views, lots of you missed this past week’s Wednesday reading recommendations.

From McSweeney’s this week a literary detective mystery, “Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Possibly Flirtatious Texts” by Ysabel Yates.

Recommendations

1. Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon
2. Show Your Work by Austin Kleon
3. The Power of Moments by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
4. Barrel Fever and Other Stories by David Sedaris
5. The Life Changing Magic of Not Giving a Fuck by Sarah Knight

David H. - New York, NY

David looks drawn to engaging, humorous texts that have some measure of advice and inspiration to offer. Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh isn’t strictly advice or inspiration, but it’s definitely entertaining, and in its way, rather inspirational.

1. Drama Free by Nedra Glover Tawwab
2. The Color of Water by James McBride
3. Raising Good Humans by Hunter Clarke-Fields
4. I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
5. The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan

Hannah Y. - Philadelphia, PA

Eat the Document by Dana Spiotta explores the life of a 70’s era radical wanted by the authorities who winds up as a 1990’s suburban mom. I’ve read all of Spiotta’s books, and I think this is my favorite.⁴

I’m on the road in the latter part of the week to speak at a conference of community college educators in Greeley, Colorado, so preparation for that may preclude me from a fresh batch of Wednesday recommendations, but I’ll do my best.

Alright, ladies and germs, what do you think of my theory of genius? Makes sense? Cockamamie nonsense? Somewhere in between?

Thank you, as always for your attention to my attempts to think out loud and make some sense out of things. You are appreciated. Readers and subscribers make this newsletter possible.

See you next Sunday,

John
The Biblioracle.

1. This is a short funny clip with Grohl talking to Pharrell about how many of the beats he played on Nirvana’s iconic album Nevermind were copied from 70’s and 80’s disco like The Gap Band.

2. When I moved away from Chicago they did replace me with someone who was a much more proficient drummer, though.

3. This includes being part of sex abuser/sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s legal defense, after being one of Epstein’s buddies.

4. All books (with the occasional exception) linked throughout the newsletter go to The Biblioracle Recommends bookstore at Bookshop.org. Affiliate proceeds, plus a personal matching donation of my own, go to Chicago’s Open Books and an additional reading/writing/literacy nonprofit to be determined. Affiliate income for this year is $7.30.