Not Every Piece Is a Masterpiece: But Here’s Why You Should Do It Anyway

Most artists don’t have their first painting hanging in a museum. Most modern musicians didn’t get a billboard hit with their first song, either. Have you ever wondered exactly how much work it takes to produce a masterpiece?

For a moment, consider the total output of these well-known composers:

• Bach: 1128 songs
• Beethoven: 722 songs
• List: 700 songs
• Mozart: 600 songs

Let me put that into perspective. In order to cross the threshold of having more than 1,000 compositions like Bach did, you’d need to write at least one song twice a month for about 40 years straight. Actually, Bach wrote for about 50 years… but that’s beside the point.

Out of all of Bach’s 1,128 songs, however, how many can you name today? How many are considered to be a masterpiece?

Personal Anecdotes

Recently, I’ve been having a real mental issue with quality of work. As I sit here right now, in fact, there are three different windows open on my laptop. One of them is an edited version of my manuscript, one is this article, and the other is a final paper I’m writing for a class. I hold each to a very different standard.

• My book gets best efforts over an extended period of time. This will be published. It will have my name attached to it. Once the book is printed, I can’t go back and fix anything. It should be the best possible reflection of my voice in words.
• My website content gets reasonable efforts over a short period of time. I write an article every week. They have my name attached to them, but I can retroactively fix typos whenever I want. They should reflect my voice, but in a slightly more natural way. They don’t have to be perfect.
• My schoolwork gets effort. Yes. That’s all. I don’t necessarily care if it reflects my voice or not.

This became extremely apparent to me over the past month. As luck would have it, I encountered a topic of discussion that worked both as a school assignment and a blog article. Yes, sometimes there’s a weird overlap in life.

There was obviously a great deal of difference between the two. The version for my school assignment constituted something I had to write. The version for my blog was something that I wanted to write — I took much greater care with it, but it still wasn’t perfect. Either way, working on both simultaneously made me realize the extent of my internal quality control measures.

But it also made me reflect on an important idea: what’s the point in completing something that you know you’re not going to be completely satisfied with?

Necessary Revisions

The first reason, of course, is fairly obvious. Sometimes things need to go through multiple iterations. As an interesting example of this, Beethoven’s first version of Für Elise was just weird.

Basically, he wrote it, wasn’t satisfied, and then tucked it away. The key point, however, is that in spite of being dissatisfied with how it first turned out, he still finished it. After years had passed, he returned to the song and revised it with the more familiar melody that you’ve probably heard a hundred times in your life.

Today, Für Elise is one of his most famous pieces. I think it’s safe to say that it worked out for him.

Perfect is the Enemy

Have you ever heard the phrase “perfect is the enemy of good?” It’s usually attributed to Voltaire. He didn’t exactly come up with the idea, but he did write it in a poem…

The relentless pursuit of perfection often prevents us from achieving something great. I think about that fairly often.

You probably know this already, but a couple of years ago, I decided to record an album where the production and recording for each song was limited to a single day. If I chased perfection, I would have never finished anything.

Certainly none of them turned out as masterpieces. Did they at least come out as good? I don’t know. You tell me.

What I do know, however, is that having an album is better than having no album at all.

Working Through the Bad

Sometimes you just have to write the bad songs. You have to make the boring art.

Ed Sheeran has a lot of hits, right? He’s also written a lot of songs — most of which, you’ll never hear. In a 60 Minutes interview, Sheeran stated that he has written thousands of songs in his life. That’s more than Bach! In fact, he’ll frequently write multiple songs in a single day because he knows that he has to get through the bad ones.

“You don’t write a good song by not picking up a guitar.”

Side note: It’s funny to think that Ed Sheeran has probably thrown away more songs than I’ve ever finished, but I guess that’s why he’s a superstar.

Returning to the classical world, Beethoven wrote nine symphonies. The first few kind of sucked in my opinion. Although I’m rather fond of Symphony No. 5, it’s his ninth symphony (the one that includes “Ode to Joy”) in particular that is widely regarded as his crowning achievement. It’s the symphony by which all other symphonies are judged.

Listen to it here:

The point is… Beethoven would have never gotten to his ninth symphony without writing the other eight.

We learn from all of those “lesser” works. They improve our skill and help us hone our craft.

We Just… Really Need It…

There’s another very important reason that we haven’t discussed yet.

You should make things because they make you happy. Don’t write music because you expect to create a masterpiece. Write music because you enjoy it.

And if you don’t write music, just apply that sentiment to any form of art that you do engage in. Art, in all of its degrees of mastery, nourishes our souls. Without it… how much joy would truly be left in the world? I would almost argue that we now need art and joyous expression more than we have at any other point within the last hundred years.

The Spiritual Application

Are you waiting for something?

We can get so caught up in planning the perfect thing… that we never actually do the thing. We can get stuck inside a single idea and lose sight of the next hundred. And sometimes, we can even fear failure or poor results so much that we don’t even give our goals a chance.

That manifests in various ways (and it definitely isn’t just limited to spiritual practice), but let me zero in on the topic of witchcraft, specifically:

Maybe you’re waiting to do the perfect ritual because everything has to be a certain way. Maybe you’re waiting because you feel like you need to finish reading a particular book or doing some sort of extra research. Or maybe you’re scared that whatever happens won’t be exactly like you imagined.

Stop waiting.

Just do the thing.

Let completion be an act of satisfaction in and of itself.

I’m not telling you to half-ass stuff, by the way. I personally think you should always do your best, but a best that is limited to a finite period of time.

It might not be perfect. It might not be a masterpiece. But that’s okay. It will be yours. And it will make you better.

That might look something like this, by the way: I’m going to write the best blog article on this topic that I possibly can within one hour.

Oops. Ran out of time.