I already know about that

Sometimes when I’m talking shop with colleagues they will tell me about a recent course, workshop, or book that they have learned from. Sometimes they may say, “You probably know all about that.”

That is never true.

If I have made the study of a topic my life’s work, my niche in the vocal world, I still don’t know what YOU have to say about it. The new presenter that you have discovered may have angles of attack on an issue that would benefit the rest of us very much. New words, new observations, new combinations and priorities of all the good old stuff. It isn’t so much that everything old is new again; it’s that most deep topics never get old.

Personalizing this, there is teacherly advice that made zero sense to me at age 18 that now feels like genius. How can that be? Context, assimilation, synthesis, experience, hardening of the arteries – who knows? The climb to greater understanding is usually a spiral, not a rocket launch.