[are you satisfied with an average life]
On Wednesday I had my piano lesson. My teacher told me to play my dorky little Beethoven piece, and I did; and when I was done, she said:
"Sarah, in all my years teaching, I have never seen anyone so insanely, insatiably obsessed with being perfect. Every time you screw up, you won't keep playing-- you have to go back and fix it. Well, stop it. Stop it right now. It's not going to happen."
Here is an interesting paradox: I am a perfectionist, but I don't consider myself one. Because, in my mind, if I were a perfectionist, the things I create wouldn't suck so much. Really, this is the most telling thing, because if I thought anything I'd ever done was perfect, I wouldn't be a perfectionist, would I? But that mode of thinking has enabled me to live with the delusion for a few years now. Welp, my piano teacher has punched me in the blind spot. Yes, I am a perfectionist. And I kind of need to cut that shit out.
Wanting to do well - that's not a bad thing. Wanting to do really well - that's just ambition, that's admirable, right? Sure. But I'm afraid it's made me a coward, and I don't like that.
With perfectionism comes a deep-seated fear of criticism. I've gotten better about this - I'm fine with people tearing apart my essays (but only the first drafts!), commenting on my HMDs, working me through my less expressive passages. But it also leads to a certain conservatism in what I choose to cover that, I think, will destroy my ambitions if I let it. Perfectionism is in using just that three-quarters of the bow, because using all of it might be overdoing it; it is in quickly acknowledging the other point of view in every debate, because god forbid one should be seen as close-minded. It is in leaving careful footprints behind me, with no marks where my feet might have slid a little bit, no breaks in step, the print of the heel and the toe equal in depth and with no blurred edges to give the illusion that a larger foot passed this way.
My teacher told me this in the beginning of the year, when I played for him: "It's good - I mean, it's in tune, you're shifting correctly and playing in time, but... decide how you want it to sound and then play that decisively. Better that half your audience should hate your interpretation than that none of them should be affected by it."
Easier said than done. But something I need to take to heart more than I apparently did, as my habits in that regard haven't changed. I mean, revolutionaries aren't always right; but they are remembered.
"Sarah, in all my years teaching, I have never seen anyone so insanely, insatiably obsessed with being perfect. Every time you screw up, you won't keep playing-- you have to go back and fix it. Well, stop it. Stop it right now. It's not going to happen."
Here is an interesting paradox: I am a perfectionist, but I don't consider myself one. Because, in my mind, if I were a perfectionist, the things I create wouldn't suck so much. Really, this is the most telling thing, because if I thought anything I'd ever done was perfect, I wouldn't be a perfectionist, would I? But that mode of thinking has enabled me to live with the delusion for a few years now. Welp, my piano teacher has punched me in the blind spot. Yes, I am a perfectionist. And I kind of need to cut that shit out.
Wanting to do well - that's not a bad thing. Wanting to do really well - that's just ambition, that's admirable, right? Sure. But I'm afraid it's made me a coward, and I don't like that.
With perfectionism comes a deep-seated fear of criticism. I've gotten better about this - I'm fine with people tearing apart my essays (but only the first drafts!), commenting on my HMDs, working me through my less expressive passages. But it also leads to a certain conservatism in what I choose to cover that, I think, will destroy my ambitions if I let it. Perfectionism is in using just that three-quarters of the bow, because using all of it might be overdoing it; it is in quickly acknowledging the other point of view in every debate, because god forbid one should be seen as close-minded. It is in leaving careful footprints behind me, with no marks where my feet might have slid a little bit, no breaks in step, the print of the heel and the toe equal in depth and with no blurred edges to give the illusion that a larger foot passed this way.
My teacher told me this in the beginning of the year, when I played for him: "It's good - I mean, it's in tune, you're shifting correctly and playing in time, but... decide how you want it to sound and then play that decisively. Better that half your audience should hate your interpretation than that none of them should be affected by it."
Easier said than done. But something I need to take to heart more than I apparently did, as my habits in that regard haven't changed. I mean, revolutionaries aren't always right; but they are remembered.