Episode Details

“Perfection isn’t real. Perfectionism is a disguise for your fear of what people will think.”

As an artist, you should never be striving for perfection.

It’s not attainable. To be real, it isn’t appealing.

“Faults” in things make them unique. If you were to go into a “cookie cutter” neighborhood, you’d get bored with the house design. Personally, I get lost easily in them because everything looks the same. Nothing stands out and it’s kind of creepy.

Perfection feels a lot like uniformity.

Things are made rare by their lack of “perfection”. When I was younger, I remember hearing about this albino alligator. I didn’t think much of it until I saw it. It was really cool to see. Usually an alligator is, of course, green and scaly looking. This one was white with pink eyes. It was wholly different from any alligator that I had ever seen. To this day I still remember it because it was so different.

Speaking as an actor for a moment. We sometimes want that perfect take or that perfect audition.

The perfect take can feel stale or devoid of the necessary emotion. It doesn’t stand out in any way. The perfect audition can look like the hundreds of other auditions being submitted.

So in your audition, you might “accidentally” scratch your nose. Leave it in. Humans scratch their nose on occasion.

If you’re writing a rough draft, you might misspell something or put the wrong punctuation. Maybe that actually highlights part of the story.

If you’re painting, you might “accidentally” drop paint in the wrong spot. Maybe that’s inspiration for the next brush stroke.

So why be perfect, when you can be you?

Which is much better anyway.