I like your writing and your thought processes. It seems so much of what I do is the result of a mistake I made at some point in my life. While as a new legal secretary, I announced to an older employee that there was a guy in the reception area waiting to see her. She said, "No, there's a gentleman waiting to see me." I remember that lesson from fifty years ago like it was yesterday. I'm now more than half-way through my tenth novel but I'm about to throw out a sizable chunk of it to make it more cohesive.
In Long Form Improv comedy we often refer to mistakes as gifts - we try to recreate normal human life on stage and fail at it - because being on stage is not normal life - and then the "mistakes" often become the unusual thing we then heighten for comedy. I try to take this same attitude into all my creative pursuits.
Enjoyed reading this. Love your books, too. Well, the ones i have read. I don’t have all of them. Maybe one day. Perhaps tomorrow. Probably should have stopped 4 sentences ago. Anyways, thank you.
“NASA engineers and neurosurgeons should strive for maximum conscientiousness” needs a comma after ‘engineers,’ or - easier - just swap them. Otherwise, perfect.
The writer whose name eluded you is Anne Lamott, author of the classic Bird by Bird. AFAIK, she’s the coiner (can I say that?) of the phrase “shitty first drafts”.
Great post here, AJ. I think we should all be aiming for B+ lives if we want to be accomplished, happy, and still live with relative ease.
I always wanted to do a podcast where we read the shitty first drafts of later on great scripts - I wonder if the writers of those scripts even have them, or would be willing to share.
Thanks for opening the topic. Here are some thoughts.
Most of what people are talking about when they use the word perfect is actually some ideal or standard. When something doesn’t meet the ideal or standard, we say it is imperfect. A resolution for this is to identify the ideal or standard and also identify where it came from.
As you noted, the fear of not meeting the ideal or standard can be used to avoid stuff. Also, when examined, it will sometimes turn out that the ideal or standard is actually impossible to satisfy, like for someone to have the standard for being a good parent to ALWAYS be there for their child. Obviously, no one is ever ALWAYS there for someone (or even especially for ourselves). Even if we were Siamese twins, we wouldn’t ALWAYS be there for the other.
A more useful meaning for the word perfect is for something to be the way it is and not to be the way it isn’t. That takes all the mischief out of it. This makes the entire universe and everything in (and not in) it, perfect. End of story. Most will hate this idea as it removes a familiar covering.
This use of perfect would better be served by the word excellence. Excellence has no implicit end point like a mountain with no top or direction like west that can be moved along, but as far as you go there is always more west to go.
Implications of living in an entropic universe
Pretty close to the idea of perfection are our old moral buddies right and wrong. Perfection held as how something is or isn’t takes care of these two hoodlums as well. There no right or wrong. There is only the varying rate of correction. If the rate of correction is high enough, one remains on purpose, and the goal is reached.
Here’s the backup: in an entropic universe such as ours, there is no getting it right, ever. There is just making enough corrections, well enough and fast enough to get wherever there is for the moment. During the journey to there, one is off course all the time (or wrong in those terms). If you are rigorous with the level of precision you bring to looking and languaging, you will discover for yourself that you are never actually on course but rather are always simply correcting for being off course. Such is the nature of moving within a universe that is constantly running down in every dimension.
It’s ironic how touchy we are about making mistakes when that’s all we’ve done and will ever do. We are making mistakes constantly, as that is all that is possible. The question always is, are we correcting fast enough to get “there.”
Thank you, AJ for stating so eloquently what I have been trying to put into words for years. I For me, this post alone is worth the subscription.
but what about when Spinal tap turned the amps up to 11..? That beats Nadia even, ha
AJ, perfectly stated
I like your writing and your thought processes. It seems so much of what I do is the result of a mistake I made at some point in my life. While as a new legal secretary, I announced to an older employee that there was a guy in the reception area waiting to see her. She said, "No, there's a gentleman waiting to see me." I remember that lesson from fifty years ago like it was yesterday. I'm now more than half-way through my tenth novel but I'm about to throw out a sizable chunk of it to make it more cohesive.
In Long Form Improv comedy we often refer to mistakes as gifts - we try to recreate normal human life on stage and fail at it - because being on stage is not normal life - and then the "mistakes" often become the unusual thing we then heighten for comedy. I try to take this same attitude into all my creative pursuits.
Enjoyed reading this. Love your books, too. Well, the ones i have read. I don’t have all of them. Maybe one day. Perhaps tomorrow. Probably should have stopped 4 sentences ago. Anyways, thank you.
“NASA engineers and neurosurgeons should strive for maximum conscientiousness” needs a comma after ‘engineers,’ or - easier - just swap them. Otherwise, perfect.
The writer whose name eluded you is Anne Lamott, author of the classic Bird by Bird. AFAIK, she’s the coiner (can I say that?) of the phrase “shitty first drafts”.
Great post here, AJ. I think we should all be aiming for B+ lives if we want to be accomplished, happy, and still live with relative ease.
I always wanted to do a podcast where we read the shitty first drafts of later on great scripts - I wonder if the writers of those scripts even have them, or would be willing to share.
Thanks for opening the topic. Here are some thoughts.
Most of what people are talking about when they use the word perfect is actually some ideal or standard. When something doesn’t meet the ideal or standard, we say it is imperfect. A resolution for this is to identify the ideal or standard and also identify where it came from.
As you noted, the fear of not meeting the ideal or standard can be used to avoid stuff. Also, when examined, it will sometimes turn out that the ideal or standard is actually impossible to satisfy, like for someone to have the standard for being a good parent to ALWAYS be there for their child. Obviously, no one is ever ALWAYS there for someone (or even especially for ourselves). Even if we were Siamese twins, we wouldn’t ALWAYS be there for the other.
A more useful meaning for the word perfect is for something to be the way it is and not to be the way it isn’t. That takes all the mischief out of it. This makes the entire universe and everything in (and not in) it, perfect. End of story. Most will hate this idea as it removes a familiar covering.
This use of perfect would better be served by the word excellence. Excellence has no implicit end point like a mountain with no top or direction like west that can be moved along, but as far as you go there is always more west to go.
Implications of living in an entropic universe
Pretty close to the idea of perfection are our old moral buddies right and wrong. Perfection held as how something is or isn’t takes care of these two hoodlums as well. There no right or wrong. There is only the varying rate of correction. If the rate of correction is high enough, one remains on purpose, and the goal is reached.
Here’s the backup: in an entropic universe such as ours, there is no getting it right, ever. There is just making enough corrections, well enough and fast enough to get wherever there is for the moment. During the journey to there, one is off course all the time (or wrong in those terms). If you are rigorous with the level of precision you bring to looking and languaging, you will discover for yourself that you are never actually on course but rather are always simply correcting for being off course. Such is the nature of moving within a universe that is constantly running down in every dimension.
It’s ironic how touchy we are about making mistakes when that’s all we’ve done and will ever do. We are making mistakes constantly, as that is all that is possible. The question always is, are we correcting fast enough to get “there.”
Whiter Shade of Pale is a perfect song as is 7 Nation Army as is Cry to Me by Solomon Burke
How CONE-VEEN-EE-EN-TUH that someone who is imperfect, dislikes perfection. 🙄
I would help, but I must signal my perfection by feigning disgust instead. 🫷