I've known a few folks in my life who had a gift...the real gift....some I've known face to face but only a couple and I guess that is because in knowing someone like that you get to know the flaws as well and so the gift isn't as pronounced.
Like everyone else, I ran into Ravel through listening to Bolero in 1955 and still have the record (here's a link to some of it just in case you don't know the tune) and now, in my twilight years, I think I've heard everything he ever wrote and have a lot of it in my head (from memory...in my head is musician speak for memorized). However one looks at genius, be it Mozart or Bach or perhaps a handful of others, well... I went to a lecture given by Carl Sagan (of Cosmos fame) before he became pop-famous, and he told the story of a French philosopher of the middle 19th century who had the idea that you inhaled genius. Seriously, at one key point in your life, while walking around with your mouth agap, you got a dose of what you were to become and it settled into your body and there you go.
So we get up and about today looking for that good air...it is never to late.
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