Mastery (57 page)

He tried every evasive maneuver in the book. He saw the MiG getting closer and closer when suddenly he heard from Mole, who had been following him and had now maneuvered into position. As Rodriguez looked over his shoulder, he could see the enemy MiG exploding—Mole’s missile had struck it. As the chase had unfolded, everything had gone as Rodriguez wanted, but there was not a second to relax. The second MiG was now rapidly approaching.

Mole ascended to 20,000 feet. As the MiG bore down on Rodriguez’s plane, its pilot realized Mole’s presence above him, and began to maneuver up and down to somehow escape being trapped between the two of them. Using this instant of confusion, Rodriguez was able to get inside the MiG’s turning circle. It had now turned into a classic two-circle dogfight in which each plane tried to circle onto the tail of the other and into firing range, moving closer to the ground with each succeeding loop. They circled and circled around each other. Finally, at 3,600 feet, Rodriguez got a reading and locked his missiles on the MiG. The Iraqi pilot went into a hard evasive maneuver, turning directly toward the ground, flipping upside down and trying to circle into a reverse direction to escape, but in the few seconds of the dogfight the pilot had lost awareness of how close they had drifted to the ground, and he crashed into the desert below.

Mole and Rodriguez returned to the base to debrief their superiors on the mission, but as Rodriguez went over it all and watched video of the encounters, he had a strange sensation. He could not really recall any moment of it. It had happened so fast. The entire encounter with the MiGs had only lasted three to four minutes, and the final dogfight a matter of seconds. He must have been thinking in some way—he had executed some nearly perfect maneuvers. For instance, he had no recollection of deciding to jettison the fuel tanks nor where such an idea came from. It must have been something he had learned, and somehow in the moment it had simply occurred to him, and very easily might have saved his life. The evasive maneuvers he executed with the first MiG astounded his superiors—they were so fast and effective. His awareness during the dogfight must have been exceptionally keen; he had circled to his opponent’s tail in ever-faster cycles, never losing sight of the desert floor they were approaching. How could he explain all of these maneuvers? He could hardly remember them. All he knew was
that in the moment he hadn’t been experiencing fear, but rather an intense adrenalin rush that made his body and mind operate in total harmony, with a kind of thinking that moved in milliseconds and was too fast for him to analyze.

For three days after the encounter he could not sleep, the adrenalin still coursing through his veins. It made him realize that the body possesses latent physiological powers—unleashed in such dramatic moments—that elevate the mind to an even higher level of focus. Rodriguez would go on to have one more kill in Desert Storm, and another in the 1999 Kosovo campaign, more than any pilot in recent combat, earning him the nickname the Last American Ace.

In our daily, conscious activity we generally experience a separation between the mind and the body. We
think
about our bodies and our physical actions. Animals do not experience this division. When we start to learn any skill that has a physical component, this separation becomes even more apparent. We have to think about the various actions involved, the steps we have to follow. We are aware of our slowness and of how our bodies respond in an awkward way. At certain points, as we improve, we have glimpses of how this process could function differently, of how it might feel to practice the skill fluidly, with the mind not getting in the way of the body. With such glimpses, we know what to aim for. If we take our practice far enough the skill becomes automatic, and we have the sensation that the mind and the body are operating as one.

If we are learning a complex skill, such as flying a jet in combat, we must master a series of simple skills, one on top of the other. Each time one skill becomes automatic, the mind is freed up to focus on the higher one. At the very end of this process, when there are no more simple skills to learn, the brain has assimilated an incredible amount of information, all of which has become internalized, part of our nervous system. The whole complex skill is now inside us and at our fingertips. We are thinking, but in a different way—with the body and mind completely fused. We are transformed. We possess a form of intelligence that allows us to approximate the instinctual power of animals, but only through a conscious, deliberate, and extended practice.

In our culture we tend to denigrate practice. We want to imagine that great feats occur naturally—that they are a sign of someone’s genius or superior talent. Getting to a high level of achievement through practice seems so banal, so uninspiring. Besides, we don’t want to have to think of the 10,000 to 20,000 hours that go into such mastery. These values of ours are oddly counterproductive—they cloak from us the fact that almost anyone can reach
such heights through tenacious effort, something that should encourage us all. It is time to reverse this prejudice against conscious effort and to see the powers we gain through practice and discipline as eminently inspiring and even miraculous. The ability to master complicated skills by building connections in the brain is the product of millions of years of evolution, and the source of all of our material and cultural powers. When we sense the possible unity of mind and body in the early stages of practice, we are being guided toward this power. It is the natural bent of our brain to want to move in this direction, to elevate its powers through repetition. To lose our connection to this natural inclination is the height of madness, and will lead to a world in which no one has the patience to master complex skills. As individuals we must resist such a trend, and venerate the transformative powers we gain through practice.

4. Internalize the details—The Life Force

As the illegitimate son of the notary Ser Piero da Vinci, Leonardo da Vinci (see
here
, for more on the artist) was essentially barred from studying and practicing the traditional professional careers—medicine, law, and so on—and from higher education. And so as a boy growing up in the town of Vinci, near Florence, he received little formal education. He spent much of his time roaming around the countryside and venturing into the forests outside his town. He was enchanted by the incredible variety of life he found there, and the dramatic rock formations and waterfalls that were part of the landscape. As his father was a notary, there was a fair amount of paper (a rare commodity at the time) in the family house, and feeling a great desire to draw all that he saw on his walks, he began stealing sheets of paper and carrying them with him.

He would sit on a rock and draw the insects, birds and flowers that fascinated him. He never received any instruction. He simply drew what he saw, and he began to notice that in trying to capture these things on paper, he had to think deeply. He had to focus on the details that the eye would often pass over. In drawing plants, for instance, he began to notice the subtle distinctions in the stamens of various flowers and how they were different from one another. He would notice the transformations these plants went through on their way to blossoming, and he would capture these changes in sequential drawings. In going so deeply into their details, he had fleeting intimations of what animated these plants from within, what made them distinct and alive. Soon, thinking and drawing became fused in his mind. Through drawing things in the world around him, he came to understand them.

His progress at drawing was so astounding that his father thought of
finding him a position as an apprentice in one of the various studios in Florence. Working in the arts was one of the few professions open to illegitimate sons. In 1466, using his influence as a respected notary in Florence, he managed to secure a position for his fourteen-year-old son in the workshop of the great artist Verrocchio. For Leonardo, this was a perfect fit. Verrocchio was deeply influenced by the enlightened spirit of the times, and his apprentices were taught to approach their work with the seriousness of scientists. For instance, plaster casts of human figures would be placed about the studio with various pieces of fabric draped over them. The apprentices had to learn to concentrate deeply, and recognize the different creases and shadows that would form. They had to learn how to reproduce them realistically. Leonardo loved learning in this way, and soon it became apparent to Verrocchio that his young apprentice had developed an exceptional eye for detail.

By 1472 Leonardo was one of Verrocchio’s top assistants, helping him on his large-scale paintings and taking on a fair amount of responsibility. In Verrocchio’s
The Baptism of Christ,
Leonardo was given the task of painting one of the two angels off to the side, and this work is now the oldest example we have of his painting. When Verrocchio saw the results of Leonardo’s work he was astounded. The face of the angel had a quality he had never seen before—it seemed to literally glow from within. The look on the angel’s face seemed uncannily real and expressive.

Although it might have seemed like magic to Verrocchio, recent X-rays have revealed some of the secrets to Leonardo’s early technique. The layers of paint he applied were exceptionally thin, his brush strokes invisible. He had gradually added more layers, each ever so slightly darker than the last. Operating in this way, and experimenting with different pigments, he had taught himself how to capture the delicate contours of human flesh. Because of the thin layers, any light hitting the painting seemed to pass through the angel’s face and illuminate it from within.

What this revealed was that in the six years that he had been working in the studio, he must have applied himself to an elaborate study of the various paints and perfected a style of layering that made everything seem delicate and lifelike, with a feeling of texture and depth. He must have also spent a great deal of time studying the composition of human flesh itself. What this also revealed was the incredible patience of Leonardo, who must have felt a great deal of love for such detailed work.

Over the years, after he left Verrocchio’s studio and established a name for himself as an artist, Leonardo da Vinci developed a philosophy that would guide his artwork and, later, his scientific work as well. He noticed that other artists generally started with an overall image they planned to depict, one that would create a startling or spiritual effect. His mind operated
differently. He would find himself beginning with a keen focus on details—the various shapes of noses, the possible turnings of the mouth to indicate a mood, the veins in a hand, the intricate knots of trees. These details fascinated him. He had come to believe that by focusing on and understanding such details he was actually getting closer to the secret of life itself, to the work of the Creator who infused his presence into every living thing and every form of matter. The bones of the hand or the contours of human lips were as inspiring to him as any religious image. For him, painting was a quest to get at the life force that animates all things. In the process of doing so, he believed he could create work that was much more emotional and visceral. And to realize this quest, he invented a series of exercises that he followed with incredible rigor.

During the day he would take endless walks through the city and countryside, his eyes taking in all of the details of the visible world. He would make himself notice something new in every familiar object that he saw. At night, before falling asleep, he would review all of these various objects and details, fixing them in his memory. He was obsessed with capturing the essence of the human face in all of its glorious diversity. For this purpose, he would visit every conceivable place where he could find different types of people—brothels, public houses, prisons, hospitals, prayer corners in churches, country festivals. With his notebook always at hand, he would sketch grimacing, laughing, pained, beatific, leering expressions on an incredible variety of faces. He would follow people in the streets who had a type of face he had never seen before, or some kind of physical deformity, and would sketch them as he walked. He would fill single sheets of paper with dozens of different noses in profile. He seemed particularly interested in lips, finding them just as expressive as eyes. He would repeat all of these exercises at different times of the day, to make sure he could capture the different effects that changing light would have on the human face.

For his great painting
The Last Supper
, his patron, the duke of Milan, grew increasingly angry with Leonardo for the time he was taking to finish it. It seemed that all that remained was to fill in the face of Judas, but Leonardo could not find an adequate model. He had taken to visiting the worst parts of Milan to find the most perfectly villainous expression to translate onto Judas, but was having no luck. The duke accepted his explanation, and soon enough Leonardo had found the model he wanted.

He applied this same rigor to capturing bodies in motion. Part of his philosophy was that life is defined by continual movement and constant change. The artist must be able to render the sensation of dynamic movement in a still image. Ever since he was a young man he had been obsessed with currents of water, and had become quite proficient at capturing the look of waterfalls, cascades, and rushing water. With people, he would spend
hours seated on the side of a street, watching pedestrians as they moved by. He would hurriedly sketch the outlines of their figures, capturing their various movements in a stop-action sequence. (He had reached the point where he could sketch with incredible rapidity.) At home, he would fill in the outlines. To develop his eye for following movement in general, he invented a whole series of different exercises. For instance, one day in his notebook he wrote, “Tomorrow make some silhouettes out of cardboard in various forms and throw them from the top of the terrace through the air; then draw the movements each makes at different stages of descent.”