Practice makes perfect. This is a statement that at its foundation, is based on a lie. There is no perfection, at least when it comes to human pursuits. Try as we might, we never quite reach perfection. Sometimes we miss the bull’s-eye by a fraction of an inch, sometimes we missed the target completely. Yet, we strive. We reach for the golden ring, even though it is ultimately just out of touch.
I’ve been thinking about the idea of practice quite a bit lately. This blog is part of the weekly practice of mine. Recently I started a daily writing practice, which I begin every day with. Filling one small page with whatever is on the top of my head at that particular moment. I find it helps to have the ritual, regardless of the results. Making art, shooting photographs, performing improv, these all demand constant practice. With constant practice, comes nearly constant struggle, constant frustration, constant shortcomings. Sometimes things end up feeling like a complete failure. But even these moments are critical, and end up being valuable.
Another adage is that we learn from our mistakes. And this might not always be true, but if we’re lucky, we do sometimes learn lessons from our mistakes. That’s why practice is so critical. Especially when it’s a daily practice.Because sometimes, the right thought… the right word… the right photograph… presents itself through this practice. But more often than not, I am faced with what I call a “near miss.” And sometimes a complete swing and a miss.
Which brings to mind the idea of batting practice. This is a reference to baseball, but I’m sure it applies to other sports, and other pursuits in general. If we think about the best hitters in the history of baseball, their batting average is somewhere between .300 and .400. This basically means that even the greatest players did not get a hit six or seven times out of every 10 times they stepped up to the plate. And these are the best of the best. You could be a professional baseball player and maybe bat around .250 and be considered a pretty good player. Meaning you’re only getting on base one out of every four times at bat. For us mere mortals, our batting average, I’m sure, is even lower. And you can apply this to any pursuit; professional, amateur, hobby, art.
As you know I shoot a lot of film. I know it’s been said generally that if you have one winning frame per roll of film, one keeper, you’re doing pretty well as a photographer. One out of 36 frames. That’s not a very good batting average. Now think about the luxury of shooting digital, and having no real limit on the number of pictures you can take. The ability to delete immediately the photos that you consider failures. I think it’s really important, to keep the bad pictures, to keep the failures. To fight against your low batting average. To scrape and struggle and work hard to try to improve your batting average, a few percentage points at a time. Some games you may strike out every time you step up to the plate. Sometimes you may hit a home run. But every time at the plate is part of playing the game.
As a footnote to this post, I find it ironic that my first attempt at writing this entry was a complete failure on my part. I inadvertently forgot to save my first draft as I was typing, and lost everything I had written. A swing and a miss.