The great science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke is known, among other things, for this adage, the third of “Clarke’s Three Laws.”
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
I think of this often when considering the magic at our fingertips daily – smart phones being the prime example. But I think it’s really true beyond technology to skills.
When you watch Yannick Nézet-Séguin elicit emotion from the orchestra, it is magic. When “Russian Five” would take the ice for the Red Wings in the 1990s, it was magic. When you watch the latest multi-tracked Jacob Collier track, it is magic.
All are the magic of skills developed to the point that a casual onlooker can’t tell them apart from the impossible.
And yet…they are skills, built over time. Piece by piece, we can slowly build our own skills that are indistinguishable from magic.