Some time in the near future I will be doing a session with arts students at the University of Guyana (as part of my Artist in Residence work with UG) as well as a Moray House talk, sometime in May, on being an artist. Against that background, I was skimming a sports channel on TV recently, and heard the famous golfer Lee Trevino (now retired) say something in an interview that pulled me up short. Responding to a comment about the intensity he was known for when he was playing, he told the interviewer, with a laugh. “Oh yes. To succeed you absolutely have to be passionate about what you do. When you have that passion, you wake up in the morning and the first thing comes into your head is to get your hands around a golf club. Whatever your quest is, if that passion isn’t there, forget it.”
Trevino’s comment jumped out as one of the things I have pencilled in, for both of the talks mentioned above and it is this: it doesn’t matter what your field of endeavour is, your success is going to depend largely on the degree of commitment you put in. You need talent, yes, but you also have to be passionate about what you do, so that you learn the craft, you maintain the high standard that the best are known for, and you put in the grinding hours, and the long nights of work, that are needed if you are to shine. Passion is paramount.