It only has to be beautiful enough

It doesn't have to be perfect.

It only has to be beautiful enough.

On a drive home, I realized that things--art, craft, results, don't have to be perfect.  A naive or even inchoate realization, perhaps.  I realized that the motions I go through when I drive are not an artful ballet by far, but they are enough to take me home.  Shifting gears, breaking, judging distances.  All done with relatively little long-term planning.  All done without regard to having to stare at it and fix it up.  All done without a constant drive (excuse the pun) to perfection.  I conduct a series of relatively imprecise physical motions, and the laws of force, momentum, the design and slope of the road, and mechanical elements in my vehicle respond to my orchestra to do the rest.  And the end result is a drive that is at least beautiful enough to take me home.

In fact, a drive that looked too perfect wouldn't even seem as artful.  In the movies nearly missing a turn, turning short, shifting gears at just the right time--right at the brink of failure, are the actions that appear artful to us.

Almost as if just missing it were the epitome of artistry.  A basketball swooshing through a net seems more artful than one bouncing off of the backboard, bouncing on the rim, and going in to score a point.  That same woosh can be heard when the basket is missed entirely and the ball falls short, skidding over the outside of the net.  One swoosh is impressive success, and the other is woeful failure.

And though my drive home isn't nearly as exciting or suave as a speeding hero's in a movie, perhaps it is less exciting precisely because of my broad approximations and safe choices.  Still, both sets of motions arrive at the same end result.  They take me home.

Perfection could be seen as precise geometrical turns, but that would seem to be a technical perfection left in the realm of car commercials.  These perfections might not seem as artistic at all, and when they are, they could be considered an approximation of art.

So much of what we do and what we create is an approximation.  Not an approximation of perfection, but an approximation of a vision.  These approximations seem much more exciting inside narrow windows.  So why in art and in creation should we strive for perfection?  It seems these approximations--these small judgments that add up to resemble an average judgment, a vision or end result--are often much more pleasing than technically perfect execution.

After all, a copy of a recording of a song is an approximation of the sound in a room and that sound is an approximation of an instrument or singer's voice vibrating the molecules in the room.  These vibrations are an approximation of the execution of a series of motions which approximate the musician's intent.  This intent is an approximation of the artists ideas which are often an approximation of the artist's feelings.

There are many approximations along the way, but we can still feel it when an artist "hits it."  And much of this "hitting it," despite levels of technical practice and skill, is due to randomness and luck.  Since these motions are approximations, much of the rest is filled in by our minds.  Connections are made by our minds.  Just as we don't think about every tiny motion of our drive home, we don't think of every tiny molecule, or every tiny vibration of the notes in the music.  We take all of these approximations in and our mind experiences and calculates an average of the whole.

There is a lot of "filling in" and connection-building that our minds do when they experience and absorb something.  Because of this, our motions, our communications, our art, and a great deal of our creations need only be an educated and fortunate approximation of our intent.  And a great deal of these must benefit immensely from the projections, normalizations, extensions, assumptions, and connections made by the world and the mind to "fill in the rest."  Just as the basket, gravity, and force work to translate the approximation of the athletes motions into a game-winning swoosh of the net.

I think it applies to art, life, understanding, communication and creativity.  It doesn't have to be perfect.  It only has to be beautiful enough.