Every three months, I embarked on another quest for perfection. This happened because, from the age of four until I turned sixteen, I took Suzuki-style violin lessons and participated in Solo Day. Solo Day occurred four times a year and when it did, I joined an entire community of little Suzukians gathered in a church chapel with our parents. We’d each trot up the pulpit to perform on our half-sized violins a song we’d tediously polished. The younger students might play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. The older students might bang out some Corelli.
I learned three lessons the day I performed, at age ten, Vivaldi’s Concerto in A Minor, 3rd Movement. At the time, I wasn’t necessarily trying for a rousing or even a particularly memorable performance; all I wanted was to get through the five-minute arrangement without mistake. I practiced four or five times a day for three months with that goal in sight. But Vivaldi can be tricky and on Solo Day I stumbled over a passage that required a certain degree of legerdemain that, I learned, I did not possess. “Oh shit,” I said. The second lesson I learned: churches have pretty good acoustics. It would take too long to detail the shock, anger, and week-long grounding that followed. Ultimately, while my performance was not perfect, it was certainly memorable and my parents to this day are still angry about it.
The third and most important lesson learned was that perfection is overrated (Recent headline from The Onion: “Michael Phelps’ Name To Be Mentioned Six Times Following Olympics”). While we can’t help but admire or envy when something is flawlessly completed, there is more resonance for the observer when people fall short. Failure is simply more interesting. In that regard, we had a variety of reactions to the stories and poems in this quarter’s issue, from laughter to sympathy and plenty of others. As you would expect, it’s the journey, and the stumbles along the way, that we found the most entertaining.
Ryan Joe
Editor, Fawlt Magazine