Time & Perspective Quote by Josh Silver

There’s a particular sting in the casualness here: the joke isn’t that he was a prodigy, it’s that “progress” is a myth we sell ourselves in creative life. Josh Silver frames the admission with two hedges - “for a minor amount of time,” “probably” - the verbal equivalent of playing soft, then letting a dissonant chord hang in the air. He’s not begging for admiration; he’s puncturing the expectation that time automatically equals mastery.

The specific intent feels twofold: self-deprecating honesty and a quiet defense of what he became instead. For a working musician, especially one known more for band chemistry and songcraft than conservatory polish, there’s freedom in saying the peak of one narrow skill may have passed. At 15, you can drill scales with monastic single-mindedness. As an adult, you’re juggling rehearsals, touring, writing, life logistics, maybe even the strategic decision to prioritize feel over virtuosity. “Better” here likely means technically cleaner, faster, more obedient to the metronome.

The subtext is almost tender: talent is real, but attention is the scarce resource. It also sneaks in a larger cultural point about adolescence as an accelerator for certain kinds of excellence - when your identity is still molten and your calendar is still mostly yours. Silver’s line lands because it refuses the inspirational narrative and replaces it with something musicians actually recognize: you don’t always get better, you get different, and sometimes “different” is the entire career.