I’m loving this book I’m reading right now by Haruki Murakami called Kafka on the Shore. It touches on the idea of imperfection a lot… In this next passage a character is talking about why he likes Schuert’s Sonata in D Major. He’s already explained that no pianist has ever been able to completely nail it, and it’s because the sonata itself is imperfect.
“That’s why I like to listen to Schubert while I’m driving. As I said, it’s because all the performances are imperfect. A dense, artistic imperfection stimulates your consciousness, keeps you alert. If I listen to some utterly perfect performance of an utterly perfect piece while I’m driving, I might want to close my eyes and die right then and there. But listening to the D major, I can feel the limits of what humans are capable of – that a certain type of perfection can only realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect. And personally, I find that encouraging.”
I find that encouraging as well.
