Art & Creativity Quote by George Shearing

Shearing’s line lands like a musician’s inside joke that happens to double as a thesis on how disabled people are forced to think one step ahead. In standard notation, you write the note and then decorate it with accidentals. In Braille music, the order flips: the modifier comes first. For a blind pianist and bandleader who built a career on touch, memory, and swing-era polish, that technical detail isn’t trivia; it’s a small, lived example of how the world reorders itself when vision isn’t the default.

The intent is practical on the surface - a fact about transcription - but the subtext is slyly philosophical. You don’t get to discover the pitch and then adjust. You commit to the alteration before you arrive. It’s premeditation baked into literacy, a reminder that access often requires predictive strategies sighted people never have to notice. The “flat sign first” becomes a metaphor for navigating institutions that weren’t designed for you: you anticipate the barrier, you encode the workaround, you proceed.

Context matters: Shearing came up when blind musicians were routinely framed as novelties or inspirational props. He sidesteps that sentimentality with a precise, almost offhand observation. No pleading, no hero narrative - just a craft note that quietly asserts expertise. The wit is in its calmness: he’s not asking to be admired for overcoming blindness; he’s showing how musicianship adapts, and how adaptation has its own elegant logic.