ATOMIC DOG

Editor's note: A version of this article was first posted on July 30th, 2004.

I've always had a hard-on for talented people. I don't care if I'm watching a short-order cook flip pancakes; if he's good at it, can send the pancakes flip-flopping skywards only to stop just shy of sticking on the ceiling and tumble down again onto a hot griddle, it makes me smile and feel I'm in touch with the divine nature of the universe.

Oddly, our society doesn't always reward talented people for doing what they're good at. As such, they're often hard to spot. I sometimes have to search under occupational rocks to find these talents.

There are plenty of people, though, whose talents are easily discernible because their talents are marketable and highly visible. Take sports, for instance. I never really gave too much of a rat's ass about basketball, but I never missed watching Michael Jordan play. There was such artistry in the way the guy played with the ball, played away from the ball, and played with his opponents' heads that it's a goddam pity that we couldn't somehow capture the essence of each performance and hang it on the wall somewhere so we could appreciate that enormous talent every day.

I felt the same way watching Muhammad Ali, or Gretzky, or Gail Sayers. I feel the same way now watching Lebron James or Georges St. Pierre. I feel the same way seeing someone do a squat or a power clean the way they're supposed to be done. And I think I sense this type of talent brewing in a college pitcher that was just drafted by the Washington Nationals named Stephen Strasburg. He might not yet be breathing the same rarified air as the other sports giants, but it's expected he'll soon be taking an occasional deep gasp.

But sport's hardly the sole domain of talent.

Puppy Dogs Licking My Ears

The other night, while watching parts of the Democratic convention, I saw a skinny guy from Illinois take the stage to do the keynote speech for his party. I'd never seen or heard of him before. He had the unlikely name of Barak Obama and he's the son of a Kenyan goat herder—yes, a goat herder—a son of a goat herder who became President of the Harvard Law Review during college and now wants to represent the land of Lincoln as a Senator.

Oh brothers, I heard this strong voice channeling the combined spirit and oratorical skills of Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, JFK, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. For a moment, I could have sworn I heard a distant choir of angels laying down a heavenly accompaniment. For the duration of his speech and for a little while longer, I felt that the world was good and all things are possible. I breathed in the scent of lilac and I felt puppy dogs licking my ears.

Now that's talent.

In short this guy was good, and screw your political leanings. If just one SOB writes to me that, "Yeah, but he's a Democrat," I swear I'll reach out my cyber paw and take a bear-like swipe at your head. Talent doesn't discriminate against political affiliation, race, religion, or sex. It is an equal opportunity employer.

Then there are the writers, musicians, artists, and architects. The Nabokovs and the Wolfes, the Mozarts and the Lennons, the Picassos and the Gehrys, the stuff they've done is every bit as remarkable as anything seen or heard in nature.

The list is gloriously long. But one thing most of these gifted ones have in common is money. For the most part, they've been richly rewarded for what they do.

The trouble is, some people read their success all wrong. They equate their monetary rewards as their true success instead of what they do or what they give to humanity.

Ersatz Masters of the Universe

When I was at EAS and running Muscle Media 2000, there were two "levels" of workers. The first floor of the building was populated by regular people, the guys and girls who worked in the warehouse, answered the phones, and balanced the books. The second floor, however, was infested with the management people, almost all of who had been high school buddies with Bill Phillips, the owner.

The people on the first floor weren't allowed to go up to the second floor unless summoned. In keeping with this "caste" system, the people on the second floor made lots of dough. Almost all of them had shiny new BMW's, and when you drove up in the morning and saw all of them lined up in their reserved parking spaces, you could easily see how a lot of passers by thought we were an automobile dealer.

Anyhow, hardly any of these management types had any discernible amount of talent. Many of them, were it not for Bill, would have, after years of ass kissing, risen to the level of middle management at Wal-Mart.

I can remember several conversations where these ersatz Masters of the Universe ridiculed people who made less money than they did, in one instance making fun of a husband of one of the secretaries, a guy I happened to know and like. While he had a degree from college, he had a low-paying job assembling wheelchairs. What they ignored, though, was that this guy was a consummate outdoorsman, a naturalist, hunter, hiker, ecologist. He just liked being outside, felt better, more at ease out of doors, and for that they ridiculed him.

If the apocalypse comes and you're relegated to eating berries and want to know which ones will kill you and which ones won't, this is the guy you want at your side; not some obsequious ass kisser with a shiny BMW.

The outdoorsman had talent, but it wasn't a marketable talent; at least he hadn't yet figured out how to market what he knew and could do. It didn't matter much to him anyhow because he didn't spend a lot of time thinking about money.

Ol' Ralph Waldo Emerson described these EAS pinheads perfectly:

"They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is."

And the world is full of these people, the occasionally well-compensated shitheads and the often woefully under compensated but enormously talented artists, the Michael Jordan's of some other, less glamorous world.

I use the word "artist" because that's what all talented individuals are. Medicine practiced well is an art, as is engineering. Hell, doing a tax return well is an art form, as is baking a damn pie.

Born in Communist East Germany

Consider my friend, Franz. He was raised in Communist East Germany before the wall came down. Franz didn't know who his parents were and even when his birthday was. As a young adult, he managed to escape to the United States where he literally bought the identity of an American boy who had died at the age of ten. Franz adopted the dead kid's last name and his social security number so he could stay in a country where talent can express itself in a whole lot of ways.

Today, Franz owns a small coffee shop where he serves sandwiches and pastries that he bakes himself. It's not a glorious career and it's probably not going to be all that lucrative, but let me tell you if anyone ever turned owning a coffee shop into an art form, it's Franz.

Franz makes it a point to know every customer's name and what they drink. He knows what they do for a living and how many kids they have. He gives away as many coffees and as much food as he sells. If a new business comes into town, he'll send over 20 free coffee lattes.

A few hours later, he'll send over some of the pastries he makes at 4:30 in the morning, followed by some more lattes. He'll even deliver a coffee to your house if you're under the weather, and if there's a charity event in town, he'll wheel over his portable espresso machine and donate his time.

The result? A coffee shop that's become the social hub of the town, a place where people know each other and talk to each other and feel comfortable. Last year, he made and sold over 70,000 scones. What's more, there's always a line out the door and the cash register rings all day long like the phones at Ticket Master when the Black Eyed Peas come to town.

Ever wonder why so many places go out of business? Because the owners didn't turn running the business into an art form. They didn't have the talent that Franz does.

Whoso Would be a Man, Must be a Nonconformist

I've got this theory about talent and artistry. I feel that to be good at something, you have to have read everything...or read nothing. Only then is the mind unfettered by convention, unfettered by the work or thoughts of others and only then can you do truly original, truly talented work.

I've often seen uneducated garage mechanics pick up a blowtorch and start creating incredible and totally original pieces of art with discarded metal. However, had they studied just a little bit, they might have been influenced by the work of just a few others, or worse yet, felt that they weren't qualified to create real art.

By not reading anything, they're fresh. They can't imitate or copy or conform because they haven't seen anything else. Likewise, the guy who studies for years and years and sees everything can also tackle art with a fresh perspective because he's been influenced by, well, everybody and can emerge from all that influence as fresh and innocent as the novice.

Picasso is an example of the latter. He studied conventional art, learned to paint objects as if his eye was merely a camera lens. However, as the years went by, his sensibilities left all that influence behind and he started creating artwork the likes of which had never been seen before.

I believe this lessen can transfer over to almost any occupation, any line of work. Obviously, a doctor or engineer or scientist has to study the rules but once he knows them, it takes a little imagination and a lot of courage to turn that talent into art. To quote Emerson again, "Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist."

I also think that everybody has some kind of talent, some little piece of divinity that is his or hers alone. Too often, though, this talent is hidden, undiscovered, or squelched by people with influence who denigrate that talent as not being marketable.

At the risk of sounding cheerleaderish, you have talent; you have artistry that deserves to be cultivated. It might require you to be yourself, to embrace nonconformity, to eschew imitation, but it's there. It might require a shot of confidence, bravery, or a good old-fashioned kick in the pants to bring it out, but you owe it to yourself to figure out what it is.

Most of all, though, you owe it to the rest of us so we can enjoy it and benefit from it, you Michael Jordan in hiding, you.

This article is an excerpt from Atomic Dog: The Testosterone Principles, which isn't available at fine bookstores everywhere. In fact, the only places you can buy it are here on the T NATION site and from Amazon, the latter of which grabs most of the profit and leaves me with almost nothin', so do me a favor and buy it from T NATION if you're so inclined. Besides, T NATION offers free shipping. Match that, you Amazon bastards!