Perfectionism and Creativity
It’s a simple truth that practically all music is created so that it can be experienced by an audience.
Think about it. Two people listening to the same song are going to each experience the music in a different way as it works its way through in the complexity of their own mind. The meaning behind the lyrics, the variations in beat and melody, even the way the song is performed for a video or on stage is going to have an unknown influence on how it is appreciated in the minds of people from different backgrounds and life experiences.
Why should it matter that a song writer thinks about how music sounds in the mind of someone they will probably never meet? Mostly, it’s something a song writer should have some idea about because it should help them realise that, ultimately, they are not responsible for what a song means or how it’s enjoyed by their audience. And this gives the artist a sense of freedom.
The best thing an artist can do is create work as often and as best they can, and they should do this repeatedly, learning from their mistakes and making their work better each time. Of course, the question that most often troubles an artist working away at their craft is the worrying sensation that what they are creating might not be enjoyed at all by their audience.
A voice of self-criticism rises up inside their mind, going on and on about how what they are doing is a waste of time, and simply not good enough for anyone to want to listen to or look at it. In the end, the voice says, the best thing they can do is give it all away and get a normal job.
The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good
This is the moment where the French saying, ‘the perfect is the enemy of the good’ is so important.
Perfectionism is a psychological disorder. In its worse form, it’s actually something people seek treatment for because it can build a prison of obsession around a person and stop them functioning in their everyday activities.
Artists and song writers are particularly vulnerable to perfectionism and need to develop a special relationship with the forces behind it because understanding and dealing with those drives is the only way to creating the free mental space necessary for artwork to flow.
And that’s the real trick of it. All work requires some level of evaluation. The American writer, Ernest Hemingway is supposed to have said that ‘the most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit-detector.’
And he’s right. We all have to make a start putting our pieces together to write a song. Some perfectionists are so badly affected, even making start is impossible, but we’ll skip those unfortunates, for now.
Certainly, it’s important to work hard. To make something, to put it down and to quickly decide whether to keep it or throw it out. And to keep doing this until a point of satisfaction is reached, a moment of realisation that, where there was nothing, there is now something new. And it’s something new that will be read in the minds of an audience in a way that will resonate personally for them.
Then it’s time to move on to another work, leaving that one behind.
The Story of Perfectionism in a Pottery Class
There’s a story that illustrates how perfectionism can destroy creative work and it involves a class of students studying pottery.
At the start of the lesson the teacher divided the class into two groups. One group, she said, would be examined on the quantity of the clay pots they produced and the other group on the quality of the clay pots they produced.
When it was time for each group to be assessed, the teacher said that she would weigh the work of the ‘quantity’ group and they would be given a Distinction grading for fifty kilos of pots, a Credit for forty kilos and a Pass for thirty kilos and so on.
The group that were to be examined on ‘quality’ were told that they would be assessed on the production of just one pot only. And this pot had to be perfect.
When it was time for assessment, it was obvious to the teacher and all the students that the group who were to be assessed on ‘quantity’ actually made the best pots. They learnt from their mistakes as they made pot after pot, getting better and better as they worked.
The ‘quality’ group, on the other hand, weren’t able to make anything from the clay they were given. For a long time, they sat about discussing what a ‘perfect’ pot should look like, they disagreed with each other, broke off into rival smaller groups, and, when it was time to be assessed, had nothing but a lot of theories, unworked ideas and a pile of unformed clay.
So write that song. Do the work. Make it good, not perfect, and above all, learn how to make a start and keep on going and going.
James Gallaway