Have you ever thought: Once I am there, where I know so much about music everything feels easy, it will all be well.

For sure, I have had this thought, and still struggle with it to some extent. This last week I was thinking about what kind of error lies behind the thinking. I think it boils down to the utopian fallacy.

Brief explanation

Here I want to give the following definition of the utopian fallacy:

The fantasy of a perfect future. A future where we have solved all problems.

This is a dream of something that cannot exist.

A problem-free state is not something we get from solving problems. If we, for example, find a vaccine for a disease, we create new problems of how to distribute that vaccine. This is inevitable as David Deutsch has explained and it has to do with fallibilism. There will never be any perfect theory of the world because our knowledge always contains errors and imperfections. Thus all progress consists of moving from a set of problems to a different set of problems.

Two main problems with utopian thinking is:

If there is an expectation of perfection in our future, we will be constantly disappointed.
The fantasy of a perfect future moves us away from looking at our present problems.

Here I want to focus on how the second point affects me.

Utopian fallacy in our personal life

Any time I think to myself, if I only would have more money, more time if there were no constraints, that amounts to constructing a utopian future for myself.

Since I mostly work on music, a prime example is when I see someone who can play piano much better than me and I imagine that if only I could play like that, things would be awesome. Then I might start listening to how they practice if that information is available, and imagine I should copy that. Getting more concrete, they might have a habit of practising scales for an hour every day and based on that I would start doing that. This is all a bit simplified of course but here is where the problem starts.

What a particular musician practices should be based on what problems they have with their playing now. Copying other musicians’ practice routines will only be effective if that routine is a solution to the present problems. The dream of becoming like them turns our attention away from the present moment, where our imperfections lie.

Take away

The road to improvement consists of taking an honest look at where we are. Dreaming of a better future can turn us away from those imperfections and instead make us stuck with them.

So instead of using the utopian fallacy to get lost, what should I do instead?

It's quite simple. Play a song, record it, and make a list of things I did not like and work on that. Having done this recently I decided I want to improve my rhythmic feel when playing 8th note lines. So transcribe a musician playing 8th note lines with great feel, such as Sonny Rollins, and compare it with my playing. Then point out specific problems:

I am emphasizing the downbeat of every bar too much.
My accents are predictable

Identify those problems, then try to improve them.

That is the process. There is no mystery, there is no miracle. It is just solving one thing after the other. And once I get into that, the feeling is inherently pleasurable. If I focus on these imperfections and realize the fun of working on them, this is another kind of utopia.

Recommended recording

Going forward I will post one recommended recording I have been listening to during the week.

So last week I was listening to the song "Everything Happens to me" and this recording with Branford Marsalis was cool. Haven't listened to him so much, might be a fun rabbit hole to go down into.