Perfection: Replacing Large Defects with Smaller Ones

Even though the concept of absolute perfection is something that by definition can never be reached, over the years I have developed my own idea of "relative" perfection, and so far the best expression of it I have found uses the metaphor of wood finishing.

Imagine you're a woodworker and desire to make a table top as seemingly flawless as a high-quality piano. You start by sanding with a relatively coarse grade of sandpaper. Using that with good technique can smooth out most natural defects but the problem is that rather than eliminating them it actually replaces them with smaller defects, that is, finer scratches.

So the next step is always to sand with a finer grit paper. (This is the same whether polishing plain or finished wood.) With effort and good technique you will eventually notice that you have managed to smooth out at the large visible scratches that were bothering you before. But you look closely and notice that the exact same thing has happened: you've simply managed to smooth out larger scratches by replacing them with yet smaller scratches.

Obviously, next is paper with grit that is finer still. You finish THIS stage when you notice that the remaining scratches are smaller still.

Depending on your standards eventually you will reach a point where the surface looks smooth. But a magnifying lens quickly reveals...smaller scratches.

Applying this metaphor to other skills, such as playing a musical instrument or a sport, or whatever, and you realize that the same principle applies: although your guitar playing will always contain defects that SOMEONE can detect, the goal of the pursuit is not to eliminate all defects, because that is impossible. In perfect adherence to the metaphor, you practice to make your mistakes smaller and less noticeable, ultimately in the hope of reaching the point where your mistakes, the "scratches" in your surface, are too small to be readily detectable by the people you expect to be judging your work.

If people put a "magnifying lens" to your playing, they just may notice defects, but since people mostly don't want to do that, you can say you've reached an acceptable level of perfection when you reach the point where you've replaced all your "large" mistakes with ones that are too small to be readily detectable.

So as you're playing that complicated song, or carving turns down a ski slope, you yourself may notice small errors along the way but that's OK, you only need to reach the level where your mistakes are too small to be detected by others.

Replacing large scratches with smaller ones until the scratches are too small to be seen will achieve a "mirror" finish. And replacing your large mistakes with smaller ones by practice will bring you to the point where your performance may also be seen as "flawless".

Notice that this doesn't apply to "character", the particular appealing style you might bring to a piece of music, but simply to pure technique: playing the corrects notes clearly at the exact right times.