Accepting Rust

So a lot of exciting things are going on!  As a brief summary, I checked another item off my list of things I absolutely have to do in 2010 by seeing CRUMBLE (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake) at Single Carrot Theatre on Thursday.  I liked the play and thought it was well-executed on all fronts, so nothing but good news there.

In other good news, Piano Day is almost upon us!  I'm fulfilling a lifelong dream on Wednesday, when I'm expecting an antique piano to arrive in my dining room.  There will be a post about the piano's history, plus photos of its arrival.  Yay!

However, before I get into all that (there will be time enough midweek), I've been thinking lately about perfectionism, aptitude, and attitude when it comes to creative work.  I've said it before and I'll probably say it many more times: I struggle with perfectionism as an impediment to my work.

Despite all I've said about it, though, I've never mentioned the one case where aptitude won out against perfectionism in my life.  When I was nine years old, I decided to learn to play the flute.  It wasn't my first instrument or my last, but it was by far my best.  For many years, I planned on playing my flute as a career, getting a BFA in music performance and signing on with a major symphony orchestra.

The flute was/is the one art I have ever felt, deep in my heart, set me apart from the crowd in a big way.  Yes, I gave poor auditions and yes, I played obvious wrong notes sometimes.  But I never felt I had met my match among my peers.  This was something I felt unequivocally great at--when I tried to be the best, I was.

However, by virtue of self-doubt (as always, I wondered if I had the focus) and/or listening to other people, I didn't get that music degree.  To this day, I gravitate toward people with performing arts degrees because I feel I relate to them on some basic level, but if I chime in too much I end up feeling like an outsider.  A fake.  A wannabe.  After all, anyone can be a big fish in a small pond.  Every teenager wants to take the stage for thousands of people.  But I never really showed the world what I had.

At the same time, I know few people with performing arts degrees who have made it their primary career.  In fact, if I look at my two closest friends with BFAs in performance, both are working for non-profit organizations, just like me.  It's possible--maybe even likely--that I would have ended up in the very same place with or without the music degree I always wanted.

These days, I spend a lot of time singing and playing the piano, mostly because it's a great solo combination. I don't need to rely on a group of fellow performers to give me context.  But I can't help but wonder if falling in love with being a mediocre singer is, in some sense, an easy way out.  Not that I don't enjoy or shouldn't do those things, but no one is ever going to watch me sing and approach me afterward to say "that was incredible.  Really incredible."

And by the same token, it hurts a lot to know that at this point, no one's going to say that after seeing me perform on anything.  Not playing for four years while I went to college really set me back, and it's hard to get out my flute without focusing more on what's not there than what is.

I'd like to touch on this again, and more: the knowledge that I'm free to do anything I want, but I'm often impeded by the feeling that I've turned my back on something fundamentally important in my life.  I really need to own the spot I'm in and make it what I want, but that's hard work indeed for a self-critical perfectionist like me.  I'm interested to know if this is a common struggle for people who devote a lot of energy to a creative art in their younger years, only to be set back by a demanding degree program, a lack of a piano or fellow musicians, or a pure and simple lapse.  Everything comes back eventually, but it's hard to face the reality at first.  It's hard to realize you've let a great tool get rusty.

Perfectionism -- and Letting Go of It

As artists (and I use the term generally here), we often want to create something great.  Even from a young age, when our lives are filled with praise for our talents, expectation tends to accompany it: "you're such a good actor, let me know when your first big movie is coming out," "invite me to all your gallery openings in New York," "you'll autograph a copy of your first CD for me, right?"

These fantasies are a lot of fun as a kid, imagining our great successes later in life.  And indeed, it's this aspiration to greatness that keeps us going through good times and bad.  I attribute a lot of my successes to being born and bred a perfectionist, and a stubborn one at that.

At the same time, when we get to art school we spend a lot of time debating whether there's anything new under the sun.  Are we constrained or liberated by the fact that "new ideas" really don't exist anymore?

And when I find myself feeling no more than average, when I start mourning the fact that I'm not a good friend, that I'm bad at my job, that I'll never be a great writer, and/or I haven't ever done anything truly commendable (none of which are true), I start to wonder: when should I start focusing my energy on tempering this craziness rather than praising it?  I'm always wondering, will letting some of my self-criticism and perfectionism go make me complacent?  Will it lower my aptitude?  Will it hold me back from doing great things?

The truth is, I don't think so.  As someone who often thinks if the bar isn't out of reach it's not set high enough, I've been wondering lately if asking too much of oneself can be constraining in its own right.  For example, musicians are trained to relax our bodies completely.  This is the only way for our fingers to conquer the fastest notes, the only way for our voices to acquire a pleasing tone.  How often have we seen a great performance and heard someone say "she makes it look so easy?"  In fact, musicians can suffer a whole range of serious injuries as a result of poor technique, keeping tension in wrists and vocal cords.

More and more, I feel like this training can be applied to everything we do in life: only when we are entirely at ease and sure of ourselves, only when we release our tension and stop anticipating difficult passages with trepidation in our hearts, can we sail right on through the rough patches and come out on the other side unscathed and wickedly impressed with ourselves.  In this model, worry and perfectionism don't have a place.  Sure, sometimes we have to concentrate a little harder to make sure things turn out the way we want them, but unrealistic expectations don't really get us anywhere.  It's all just work, and eventually it all comes together into something great anyway -- isn't that why we do it in the first place?