I am a great believer in fundamentals. Back in my youth, when I wanted to go from being a “hackoso” bass player to being a professional, I pleaded with a professional violinist to tell me the secret. He said, rather succinctly, “go home and practice your fundamentals.” In this case, he meant repeatedly playing scales and broken chords, aka arpeggios, and doing it with extreme careful slow accuracy.
Well, nothing else had worked up until that time. So I went home and did nothing but practice scales and arpeggios. Not terrible grandiose, not terribly fun. Dreadfully dull in fact. No idea if it would work, but I was desperate.
It made all the difference. After three months of 8 hrs a day of fundamentals, I was a pro bass player. I went from being able to play one or two pieces fairly well . . . to being able to sightread just about anything really well.
Something similar happened to me in the dance realm. For years I was very amateurish, no real technique, many advanced dancers just avoided me. Then I took some classes with some star instructors and again, it was not about “big dog moves,” it was about learning the fundamentals. Agonizingly simple stuff, like counting to 6 and shifting weight from one leg to another . . . but doing it properly.
Those experiences in the arts realm, of digging down and learning fundamentals, and the fabulous results always resulting therefrom, have probably been the biggest influence on my approach to just about everything I do. As a speaker or writer, I am always asking, what is the fundamental principle at work here? Because once you know that, and once you become a master of the fundamental elements, suddenly everything becomes effortless. It just flows, with no guesswork.
Every human endeavor has fundamentals. But sadly there are always people who want to just have a grandiose experience without “paying their dues.” And there are endless people willing to offer a slap dash “quick results” approach. I tire of them so easily.
After two years of pondering, my latest book is the “emotional fundamentals” of how we deal with money. It was a shock to realize (as it continually is for me) that I never learned the true fundamentals of money management, so of course I just drifted from fad to fad, from slapdash fix to slapdash fix. Most “education” for me has always been one or two superficial tricks, to look like I have some command, not really giving me the power and freedom that knowing the fundamentals gives to one.
So when I get up to talk about some vexing problem facing folks, it’s never about a quick fix, either to leadership or to arts education or to being a rich kid. The issue is, what are the fundamentals? Because when you learn those, you get complete command over what you are doing.
© Justin Locke
