Perfection

One thing I've really been noticing lately is that I (and many other music students) have some really deep-rooted perfectionist tendencies. I write (and speak) using above-average, if not quite perfect, grammar, and I still beat myself up over the occasional blunder. I find any grade under 85 only marginally acceptable (forget that 80 would still give me an A- at my new school). I bake decidedly delicious delicacies and freak out when I don't decorate them perfectly (even though I'm sure no one really cares when they're eating them).

A few days ago, my Theory Lab instructor said something that is really weighing heavy in my mind: nothing can ever be perfect. It really, truly doesn't exist. There is incredibly high achievement - but there is no such thing as perfection.

That thought in mind, I went into a practice room later that day with a Gilbert and Sullivan collection to practice my singing.

Like most musician-perfectionists, I have that loud, scattered voice in my mind that screams, at the most inconvenient of times, things like: "What the hell are you doing here? You SUCK!!! Your tone is all wrong, your breath support fails, and the soprano practicing down the hall is laughing at you." It's a very annoying voice, and it always goes for my artistic/creative jugular.

But, as I was singing from the Gondoliers, there was a still, quiet voice behind and beneath the one screaming "You FAIL!! You tell people that you're a musician? You're a fraud!!!" The still, quiet voice wondered: "Rena, did you really pick up your entire life and plop it down on the other side of the country so you could stand in a practice room and tell yourself how much you fail? Or did you move 6000km so you could improve?"

Fact is, just as my Theory prof pointed out, the greatest musicians in the world are in practice rooms trying to get better. The urge to become better is at the heart of true musicianship. But I'm never going to get better if I never get past my fear (and my pride) and practice. Who cares, really, what the people down the hall think?

When I'm in the practice room, it's my space for the duration of the time I'm in it. My practice time is my time to improve. I'm not in competition with the soprano, bass, contralto, what have you down the hall (who, one would hope, are all too busy working on their own stuff to give my own work a second thought). I have to be willing to make some ugly noises before I can make beautiful ones. Whether I like it or not, I am as I am musically. I'll never sing with learned technique if I don't start with what I have now. I have to let people hear that before I'll have a prayer of being able to share the sounds I know are begging to be released through use of proper technique.

So, I sing in practice rooms now. Most of the time, I hear what I usually hear: tension in notes well within my capable range, poor breath management and transitions, and bad onsets. But every now and then, I hear a glimmer of good technique; an effortless high note, a terrific onset, a brilliant transition.

My voice is not perfect, and it never will be. But it's progressing and improving. And that's more exciting than perfection ever could be, anyway!