What's funny. We don't practice because "practice makes perfect."
There really is no perfect. Doesn't exist. And practicing is really a more mundane word for playing.
We practice and play so we can forget. There is moment of inspiration; a moment when a riff, a song, a lyric emerges from the ether. Then there is the process of trying to corral the butterfly. To be able to conjure up and repeat that moment of inspiration on demand.
We run thru songs, we play the riffs, we learn, memorize, and sing the lyrics so we can forget them. We are swimming towards a state of complete sublimated unconsciousness. First, we consciously learn and repeat, and then we gradually, intentionally forget.
The idea of perfect evaporates, you replace that with the concept of deep in the bone muscle memory. Learning to forget. The knowledge, the elements of the song become totally embedded in your being. So yes, you can sit in a room with a guitar and a collaborator and run thru 50 plus songs that you know, and do it easily, with no effort. No notes, no hesitation. You play. You don't think about playing. You just play, in the moment to moment. You don't think of keys and notes, or struggle to recall lyrics. You just play and it surprisingly all flows out.
You get to point where it is all playing & flying. You practice to elevate yourself and the music to a state of transcendence.
That is why we practice. To reach that magical state of forgetting. We practice to know and to forget. To be in the moment, and to flow without a thought. It's a glimpse of the Creative Divine. Not perfect. But perfectly amazing, gratifying, soul-enriching.
