Me Being a Hypocrite

So Mrs. Wells has been yelling at me for the past 4 months to get a better bridge and today I took my violin to the luthier, and he looked at it, and asked me what I needed. I told him I wanted the sound more resonant, especially the G string and the nasty wolf on that C# I had. He said there was nothing wrong with my bridge, he adjusted my soundpost a little, did what he could do which was only so much. Mrs. Wells said she knew he could make very good bridges, as she was very happy with the one she had bought from him and so she wanted him to fit my violin with one too. I asked him how one even tells how good a bridge is anyways, and he said that's just the thing, you can't really, because every violin is different and you don't know how it will sound until you get it onto the violin. And he said that sure he could make me a new bridge but there would be no guarantee it would be better, and it would basically just be an expensive experiment. It struck me as slightly surprising that even a professional luthier could have such little certainty and control on the results of the sound created by the intricacies of a bridge and violin. I guess it shouldn't have been surprising, but I've never really thought about it before. Seems silly now to think that even the best luthier could know exactly what to do to make an instrument sound a certain way. But still he can craft some really good bridges for good instruments, and sometimes it just works. And there's just something that works right and feels right. And you're like, yes! This is a good bridge/instrument. Maybe we would like to think that every move that lead to the creation of this bridge was purposeful and calculated and masterfully, ingeniously put together to make just the right thing.. but it really was just a series of lucky accidents. And perhaps we'll be inclined to look at the artwork of the great masters like Monet or Caravaggio or Rembrandt or Van Gogh (or maybe Rothko), and think that they knew exactly what they were doing. Or the compositions of Tchaikovsky and Beethoven and Debussy and Bach, believe that every note knew exactly what its purpose was before it was written down. And then we will be intimidated and discouraged, because how could we possibly approach this level of refinement of skill? Well of course it's not possible! When an artist creates a work, the end result is never the same as the artist was intending. And I think all great artists know that. When we look at a Van Gogh, and feel the underlying communication of emotion in the rhythm of the strokes, and we think, "what sort of genius had the capacity to create this?" When we look at a Beethoven symphony and feel the shifting colors and entangled rhythms, and we think, "what sort of genius had the capacity to create this?" As if that was all there in the artist's mind and they just knew exactly how to transcribe the idea into a work of art. No. The artist took a risk. They had maybe an idea of what they wanted, but the final work is bound to be different. And sometimes, it just works. It just works right and it feels right and there's that something right about it. And you wouldn't be able to reproduce it no matter how hard you tried. It really is kind of up to chance. Once you've learned the basics of how to craft that bridge, there's only so much you can do. (Not to say that the learning is easy. It's incredibly difficult.) Beyond that, you have no control. You can't get exactly what you wanted, but you shouldn't let that stop you! Or else you're never going to get a single mark down on a paper in your entire life. You just need to keep practicing and keep trying and keep letting yourself make mistakes. And something's bound to turn out right.