While I was in Montreal, Michael McGuffin told me about Cecile Licad, a Filipino pianist who’s done some remarkable things. He told me about the time Cecile Licad was playing Rachmaninov in a concert, and the lights went out. She kept playing for more than a minute – beautiful, complex music – and when the lights came back on, the orchestra members scrambled to catch up. Thanks to YouTube, you can see it for yourself:

That made me think about what it’s like to know something complex so deeply that you can do it without your notes. I don’t have an eidetic memory and music isn’t my strength, but I’m starting to enjoy the benefits of breadth and depth in areas like creativity, Linux, and PHP–and Drupal, more and more. Of course, many of the things I work on are… well… a lot more difficult to do without electricity (although I _have_ worked through code and presentations on paper!), and nowhere near as easy to enjoy as a good musical performance. But someday I’d like to be a virtuoso at these things. Maybe sewing, too…

Thanks to Michael for the tip!