The perfect musician has perfect pitch, a five million dollar instrument, a helicopter, the cutest dog, the best partner and knows all of her repertoire from memory.
She plays in style and knows in depth each legendary composer (she’s read every single book out there). She also understands orchestration, counterpoint, harmonic functions and has a vast knowledge on any music-related topic you could mention.
She has the opus number of each piece (solo, orchestral, chamber music) including the Köchel Catalogue and the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis all engraved in her head. Oh, don’t even mention the dates of guys like Beethoven. She recites them like if she were reading a paragraph.
The perfect musician loves film music, reggaeton and fox trot—not only classical. Her favorite composer is not Brahms like everybody else. In fact she likes Schoenberg. She is always encouraging people to understand or at least give contemporary music a chance.
The perfect musician practices 5 hours of scales, arpeggios and etudes and 6 hours of repertoire. She uses 100% of her brain capabilities and stays concentrated for 11 hours in a row. Her hobbies include bird watching, thinking about Mozart and learning about contemporary painting. She is often wondering about the future of music and what would music be like 10 years from now.
Becoming the perfect musician.
The person above sounds surreal, stressed and horribly busy. She sounds to me like a person that doesn’t have a life. More importantly, she sounds as if she has to mandatory love music.
In the past, I’ve tried to become someone like that many, many times. I often want to be as perfect or more as the musician above. But even though I keep trying I feel I can never reach my ultimate goal. No matter how hard I try, it never seems to get any closer. In fact, I realized that every time I move an inch closer, I add to the “perfection list” hundreds of things—making the finish line even farther away.
Laugh in the face of perfection.
The harder you try, the farther it gets. Being perfect is not within our nature as human beings, leave that to God, Buddha and mother nature.
Humans do their best and move on.
Yes, try to buy that Ferrari and save like crazy if you are certain it will provide you with happiness for a long time. Otherwise (and most likely), you’ll be better off enjoying your daily walks and getting warm showers. It’ll be cheaper too.
Take advantage of every opportunity to grow as a musician, but when your mind tricks you onto being perfect, laugh at it. Remember it’s not about being perfect, it’s about being the best you can and staying happy for the rest of your life.
For the Empire!
CESAR AVILES