There are a lot of perfectionists in the world.  Perhaps you yourself are one of them, or know someone who is.  Many famous people are perfectionists, especially artists of all stripes, honing their craft or whatever they are working on, striving for exactly the right sound or feel or look.  Take Ralph Ellison.  He wrote Invisible Man, a highly successful novel that was judged at one point as the best American novel since World War II (world wars being the demarcation point for literary eras, apparently).  That was pretty much it.  He published a collection of essays, but he was too much of a perfectionist to ever finish the sequel to his novel.  He apparently had over 2000 pages written when he died, but wasn’t close to finishing it.  He was even unsatisfied with Invisible Man, a book so remarkable that I didn’t entirely hate every word of it when I was forced to read it in high school (have no fear, I didn’t read all of it, but the parts I read weren’t excruciating like most of the rest, but especially Moby Dick and The Scarlet Letter, oh, and The Red Badge of Courage, god how I hated them).  I can picture musicians being the same way, tweaking individual notes and sounds until just the right sound emerges.

What a horrible-sounding way to go through life.

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