Perfection

Every full moon Creative Labyrinths will be releasing a special episode. This is the first of such where I attempt to strip back every layer possible so I can access the truth about the topic at hand.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:29

Welcome to Creative Labyrinths. This is the first full moon episode. And my intention is to, every month, have a short form episode that revolves around my own reflections and musings around a particular point of interest, I guess. I kind of see it a little bit like an audio journal of my own wonderings about my own processes and conversations that I've had with other people in prior interviews and episodes. And for this particular episode, I wanted to talk about perfectionism and the concept of perfect. It's a concept that I've heard many people Creative people talk about this striving towards an ideal perhaps. And even the argument, does the notion of something being perfect even really exist? Is perfection an actuality? And for me it is. However, the big... kind of realization that I had two days ago really is that perfection is a perceptual reality, an experiential reality as opposed to moving toward or trying to fulfill a set of criteria. And if we're to take this idea and to see perfection as being a perceptual state, then we can understand that perfection is something that belongs to the individual themselves in how they view and observe something. So for me, really, what I'm talking about is the way that I view my own creative output. and perhaps you can share in this, with this kind of ideal of, is this perfect? It resides in how I am seeing what it is that I've created. And it is in this way that if I have a concept that I am trying to meet, a set of criteria that I am trying to meet inside of myself, a pre-ordained path, like the fate of an artwork. If I feel like my artwork has not hit that target, whether it be a piece of music, a poem, or whatever, if I feel like it hasn't hit that target, or we could say expectation, then I see it as existing as not perfect. However, if we take into account the context of this particular artwork, this particular creative output, we can see that being what it is, in the context that it exists, it is what it is. It is as it is. So for me, perfection and what perfection really means and what perfect really means is something that is being the thing that it is supposed to be in its most truest form. So if we extend this idea of perfection, we can see that if we look at an artwork, whether it be a book or a play or a choreographed dance if it falls outside of the limitations and doesn't meet this criteria and we deem it to be not perfect immediately we have already introduced the notion of good and bad this dualistic thinking about art is well I suppose a hot topic and I love having this conversation with people and And basically the question is, is there good and bad art? And again, it's highly subjective, but I myself have really tried to move away from this paradigm. For instance, if I'm listening to a new piece of music or a sculpture that someone's making and we're talking about it, if I don't like it, All that means is that it doesn't necessarily adhere to my aesthetic sensibilities. That doesn't mean that it's bad. If I don't like it, it doesn't mean that it's bad. If I do like it, on the contrary, it also doesn't mean that it's good. That's just my perception of how that thing is. And I'm trying to move away from this concept of good and bad and move deeply into... another aspect of perceiving art. And I was reflecting one day on the various tastes that I have in music. I think I was shopping one day and there was an old song on and I liked it and I was like, I wonder what it is about this piece of music that makes me come alive. And then I went through in my mind the variety of music that I listened to and I was trying to find a common thread through that because from the outside it doesn't look like there's much. And what I realized was the common thread through the things that make me come alive in art is honesty and authenticity. If an artwork is unashamedly honest in its expression, in seeing some type of courage and risk that the artist has taken in, I suppose, unveiling their creative world. I have a large appreciation for that, regardless of whether it ticks my aesthetic boxes or not. And it is in this way, it is in this honest, truthful expression that I see a type of perfection. Because it is existing as it is, in its own naked light. To be perfect is to be as it is in all of its trueness. And so... For myself in my own creations, something that I wanted to clarify for people who are listening is all of these reflections that are made in these conversations and myself, they're not cognitive processes that consciously roll around in my mind as I'm creating. In fact, there's not a lot of thought, conscious thought that goes on amidst the chaos, fury, tranquility, rage, lust, whatever, in the making of an artwork. These cognitive processes occur underneath, I suppose, but only come to light through reflection. And that's why these conversations are so helpful for me and for others because it's the reflection of the past. That's what's happening. And so the one thing that I do bring consciously in when I am playing and creating, painting, writing, whatever, is this honest. Am I being honest here? I'm searching for any areas that I feel I may have cut corners because I wasn't ready to take that risk. And sitting down and doing this talk now for this first full minute episode, it's been hard for me to get to sleep the last couple of nights because all I've wanted to do is to sit down and to just attempt it. But when it comes time to do that, there seems to be this invisible force field around the microphone that repels me away. And it's purely because... I'm not sitting here with a set of notes reading verbatim off the page or anything. There is a spontaneity and a risk that comes along with that and I made a pact with myself at the start of this that as soon as I began, I would just go and I wouldn't stop and I wouldn't start again and I wouldn't edit again. And so this is really the first take. I've just sat down and started to have a conversation with kind of a center of gravity there. And so that's an exercise in me trying to shed all of the protective barriers that come in creating in a creative space. Because those barriers that come up... Perhaps different for everybody, I'm unsure, but I can guess that there are probably commonalities to that, such as, is this decision that I make in this artwork going to alienate a whole bunch of people? Is this decision that I make in this artwork going to make it difficult for people to connect emotionally with what's going on? Are people going to laugh at me if that's the decision that I make? Is this never going to be recognized by anybody? Because sometimes there is a lot of energy and heartache and time and money sometimes that goes into creating and it would be a lie to say that these things don't roll around in the mind because they do. But the thing that I'm talking about is consciously seeing them and consciously confronting them and making them fall away and making sure that the decision that I make is coming from a place of creative expression. And yes, it is personally risky and sensitive in the output. And I'm sitting in that sensitivity now as... an example of what that is like without any road ahead of you of knowing where you're going not trying to meet some arbitrary classification of something but instead wandering and Becky and I touched on this in the conversation and there is a faith that comes along with that creative process a faith that wherever that process is going to take you is where it's supposed to be or it's where I'm supposed to be and if that path is taken with honesty and a certain degree of courage then I myself view that expression as being perfect because it is as it is and it's incredibly fruitful And some of the paintings that I've produced that I think have been absolute, they just have not been something that I was satisfied with aesthetically to the point where I burnt them or cut them up or stabbed them or whatever it was. The frustration was so much that I needed to murder it. They were the ones that, for some strange reason, provided the most satisfaction because at the end of it, my emotional outpouring was true. And I could see that emotion existing and flourishing in all of its colors. And that's profound. That's to know oneself. And so that is the... That is the goal. That is the mission of, I suppose, my secret mission of this, which is to fuse self-knowledge and creativity together and to understand that they are actually one and the same. Self-knowledge is done through this exploration and through this risk-taking and it can be utterly profound. So, I'm going to stop here because... it is as it is and I don't know how long I've been talking for or whatever but this is just the first full moon episode and each month will be something else and each month will be affected by the interviews and the conversations that I've had before and so that's all it is I suggest walking into the world and finding the light in others and discovering how to make that light brighter. As always, thanks for listening. This is Creative Labyrinths.