When Elena showed me her new violin, I told her a story I heard when I was her age.  It's called "The Touch of the Master's Hand."

        Nobody wanted the battered old violin, the last item at the auction. The bidders were already rising to leave.  "Who'll give me three dollars?" said the auctioneer.  "Two?"

        No takers. 

        A man stood up and walked to the front of the auction barn and reached out for the violin and the bow.  He lifted it and began to play the kind of music nobody there had ever heard before.  The bidders sat back in their seats, mesmerized by his music. 

        After he played, he walked out and the room was silent.  Finally, someone called out, "Two thousand," then another, "Three"--and so on, until the violin sold for way more than its actual value.   

         What the buyer got was still a battered violin, its value not in the  instrument but in the hands of the master musician.  The buyer wasn't going to take that home. 

        
   
        Since the story was part of a sermon,  I'm pretty sure the point of it had nothing to do with violins or art supplies.  To me--acquisitive as I am for paints and papers--I take from it this message: A true artist can make music even with a beat up instrument.  Or a painting with inferior paints.  A professional photographer can make great pictures on a pin-hole camera or an iPhone.

         It's exciting to watch other people making what they are experts at making.  Each person's process is like a narrative unwinding in front of your eyes: Mr. Marker meets Blank Page; Nimble Fingers meet Keyboard, etc.

         It can also be thrilling to buy new art supplies or imagine having the newest tool or instrument.  It's tempting to think: if I had that brand of whatever, that little widget, I, too, could make something amazing.

         What we are buying are possibilities, fantasies, and hope.  We're buying the experience of playing music moderately well or surprising ourselves with an occasional stroke of luck (or brilliance) on the page. We may not have spent ten thousand hours perfecting a skill yet, and we may not have an advanced degree in music, art, writing, drama, or dance, but pleasure is its own amazing thing.