Thursday, November 30, 2006

Mistakes make perfect...

Ah Wulf - who is the finest bass player I know, a man with dexterous fingers and great musical sensitivity - asks the right question: will mistakes be part of our new song?

Well, I think possibly they will. It opens up a whole theological discussion about the relationship between mistakes and sin - they can't be the same, can they? And so there must have been mistakes before there was disobedience in the garden...

Even more heretical(?) Jesus must have made mistakes as he learned to be a carpenter. You can just see Joseph's exasperated expression as Jesus messed up a mitre joint (whatever one of those is!) and his patient retelling of his apprentice son how it's done.

So, in the jam session I hope to have with Wulf after the resurrection - when I will have had time to sit and perfect my guitar technique - I've no doubt we'll make lots of mistakes. But the music we make by the end of that session will be sublime!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wonder if it is only this imperfect human situation that judges doing something different or unexpected as "mistakes", wouldn't it be wonderful if after the ressurection the "mistakes" that we may make will be viewed as just a different and interesting way of doing things. No longer a "mistake" in the negative sense, but always in the positive.....

Anonymous said...

Hi Simon

I was going to try and come up with a clever answer here but decided that I better go to Church instead...though that might be a mistake.

Anonymous said...

Okay having walked the dog in a dark muddy very wet field here are my thoughts on this...

Mistakes are aberrations from the 'norm'. But not all 'norms' are right, nor wrong - but might just be 'norms' against which in a particular context we measure the development of skill. Such as in a game or in music.

Here it is not a moral category of wrong but a skill category to be advanced as we play (you are not a bad person if you lose at snakes and ladders or can only play G D & A on the guitar). If playing is the important thing then mistakes are actually an essential part of the game - essential aberrations without which there would be no skill to be displayed or game to be played. Actually if the game is really 'good' then 'perfection' will never be reached but new skills will always be required. This may mean that things previously considered against the norm (mistakes) have to become the norm to test new skills (did Punk do this in music?). If any of this has any sense then mistakes will be necessary in heaven or there will be no game to be played or skills required or indeed music at all.

It is strange how walking the dog in a muddy field makes you think that things make sense until you actually come inside and type them up!!!