Back in 2022, Substack writer Heath Racela got to meet legendary musician Ben Folds. Apparently, Folds holds master classes now, this one being in Concord, MA. The key take away that Heath mentioned in his write-up: “embrace the messiness of learning” Other keys: songs as a three-act story, “balance between the liberal and the practical” which is a concept I practically live by.

Here’s the comment I left on that post, “Writing Advice from Ben Folds,” reposted here:

I’ve long been an admirer of Ben Folds’ work, and I applaud him for holding these masterclasses; clearly, it was well worth the price of admission! While there are a ton of good takeaways here that I’ve taken note of, the two that truly stand out to me is embracing “the messiness of learning” and balancing the “liberal and the practical.” These are concepts that I figured out a long time ago myself, and for many years, people kept telling me to choose a niche and pigeon hole myself.

But, nope, I defied both my elders and my educators and chose to just learn all that I could about anything that I could, but with one important distinction, that the knowledge I gained could be used practically. Now 35, I find that all the “useless trivia” and “extraneous knowledge” that people claimed I was overloading my head with has helped me immensely in working through problems most people can’t even begin to tackle.

The trouble with our liberal educations today is that they simply aren’t rooted enough in practical applications, and practical educations are too focused on having ONE JOB. The more I read business people citing they prefer specialists over generalists, the more I want to take a rubber chicken and smack them with it. The fact of reality is that, sure, we can’t all know everything we need to, and this is why we have to turn to experts in other fields.

There’s nothing wrong with having specialties, BUT, today, people dedicate their entire lives to doing ONE THING, and that means no one can figure out basic things like personal finance, household maintenance, or other practical necessities of life without a YouTube video or TikTok content creator showing them how to do so, and then, it’s mostly monkey-see monkey-do.

But, I digress. This clearly was a great experience not just for you, but your kids as well. I’m thrilled to see their interest in music and sure, they may not fully understand the points that Ben said tonight right now, but exposing kids to the liberal arts while also being able to take practical life lessons from these experiences is the only way I feel any human being can truly be complete.