The gift of imperfection

Play Me!

My favorite cellist is Rostropovich - Slava!  Well duh, you say.  He is one of the greatest of all time.  The conductor Seiji Ozawa said in a video about Rostropovich that perhaps because of him he believed in God.  What a statement!  But one of the main reasons I like his playing is because it's not perfect.  It's inspired.  It's gutsy.  It's stunningly beautiful.  It's risky.  There's no one else like him.  But if you listen to enough of his recordings you can find a moment or two of, shall we say, humanity, amongst all the divine that comes from his bow.  In fact, the first phrase he plays in the video above isn't really in tune at all.  Rostropovich plays with such incredible beauty and force of will that no one really cares.  Except conservatory music students, of course, who are famous for pointing out flaws as small and insignificant as the ripped hem of recital dress.  Hey - we train them to be critical of everything as part of their learning process.  They eventually learn to tame that skill into what it needs to be.  Well, some of them learn, and the rest are constantly disappointed because no one plays it as perfectly as they hear it in their minds.  


And that, friends, is where we miss the point of it all.  Art - music in this case - is life.  And neither music nor life is about perfection.  It's about the journey to perfection, a voyage to a destination which we freely admit there is no hope of ever arriving.  That fact that we never arrive is what makes us continue to travel.  Or the fact that there was that ONE time when we got sooooo close that we have to take to the road again, retrace our steps, and try to make it back there.  Here's an example: several years ago I played Franz Liszt's "Ad nos ad salutarem undam" on a recital at the Methuen Memorial Music Hall outside of Boston.  A beast of a work.  The organ at Methuen is a FANTASTIC choice for this piece - lots of wonderful color and power in a room encased in marble, beautiful sculptures and an acoustic that made it impossible to play too short.  Everywhere you look there was beauty, and the sound of the instrument wafted through the air like expensive perfume.  I remember preparing for that recital - it was the middle of the summer, BLAZING hot, and because the hall was a historic building there was no air conditioning.  The piece itself is a good 25 minutes long, so it required long practice sessions to get to know the instrument and find the right sounds that would give voice to what Liszt really wanted.  I still remember that concert.  It was an insanely hot night in July and I sweat completely through my outfit.  Gross.  But the Liszt was fantastic.  Those of you who know me know how rare it is for me to say that about my own playing.  It wasn't perfect, but the intent was there.  The fire was there.  And when required, the tenderness was also there.  All the imperfections of the performance (and I don't mean wrong notes) made it mine.  I read a quote once from a writer who said something like, "I don't like writing, but I like having written."  Ah, there is so much truth in that.  That feeling after a successful recital cannot be matched by anything.  The feeling during the recital, well, some of those are moments I really don't need back.  


My husband and I live in an older house built in 1929 with plaster walls and lots of other character one associates with older houses.  It also needs all the repairs one associates with old houses.  The house has started to settle since we waterproofed the basement, so there are some cracks in the plaster in places, and separation between walls and ceiling in other places.  One particular wall was really bad - the fireplace wall - because the chimney gets pushed around in the wind and moves the wall attached to it.  I just finished repairing some of the plaster and then painting the walls.  And you know what?  That one wall looks like crap.  It could be worse, but when all the lights are on and you look at the right angle you can see every bump and lump.  It looks like parasitic aliens writhing beneath the skin of an unfortunate human host. My husband says it looks like an impressionist painting.  You know what I say?  Fantastic.  Maybe I'll just mount a big empty frame on the wall and call it "Study in Red".  


Life is not perfect.  Thank God, because we'd all have to kill ourselves from the disappointment.  It's those imperfect moments that make us who we are, that give us the character that make us "us".  In this day of worshipping false perfection (plastic surgery, designer kids, pure bred dogs because they have to have a certain eye color), perhaps this is a difficult concept to understand. We hate seeing imperfection in others, especially our leaders, professors, politicians, priests and mentors, because it points to the imperfections in ourselves and damn it, we just don't want to admit they exist.  And we certainly don't want the rest of the world to see them.  When we see that imperfection, we crucify the person they come from, especially if they are in the spotlight.  Why do we continue to do this when we know it is destructive to the entire fabric of humanity?


I think music is one of the ways that art heals the world.  Watch the cool video below about the life of Rostropovich - it's long, but listen to it in the background while you clean or something.  It's proof to me that music is an imperfect process designed to create perfection in an imperfect world.  Our only job is to acknowledge the miracle and allow it to bring us joy.  


I think life itself is an imperfect process designed to create the perfection of joy for others in a world that is designed to tear us apart.  Don't take that to mean that I think the whole world is horrible - not true.  I just think it's the people in the world, in our own little worlds, that make life good.  Great even.  Fantastic sometimes.  And on occasion, inspired.