"Technique"
My thanks to Anj, DannyL, and Matthias at the John Fahey Visitor Forum, who helped me reason this out.
What is
"technique"?
Is it what you learn? Is it something you develop? Is it a by-product of what you practice? Is it a "good thing"?
The answer to these questions, I believe, is "yes, partly".
Technique is partly what you "look like" and "sound like" to the outside world.
It is YOUR method, that which you have worked at and worked for your entire life.
It may not have turned out to be what you expected, but, well...
there it is.
EVERYONE has their own technique at EVERY activity, which each of us are perpetually in the process of developing.
Technique is a "means", not an "end". If displayed only for its own sake, technique is a "craft". If used to display
what is in one's heart, it is a part of what makes up a work of art.
Technique is a vehicle which each of us drives. If used to share something emotionally deeper, the technique itself becomes
almost transparent. It becomes the frame of the painting or perhaps its style (whether "impressionistic" or "bluegrass").
Having technique is "good"; being restricted by its imagined limitations is "bad".