What Does an Ice Cream Maker, a Flower Grower, and a Musician Have in Common?

I was playing at the farmers market this week when I found myself talking with two of the vendors.

One made ice cream. The other grew flowers.

The ice cream maker started telling me about his process. Temperatures, ingredients, recipes, trial and error. You could tell he had spent a lot of time perfecting his craft.

The flower grower told me how much she loved working with her hands in the dirt. We talked about growing things, caring for them, and watching them develop. I joked about whether she talked to her flowers. She smiled in a way that suggested maybe she did.

Both of them were passionate about what they do.

And both conversations reminded me of a post I had read from a musician who was talking about making a mistake on stage.

At first glance, these things seem unrelated.

But I don’t think they are.

The ice cream maker is fascinated by the process of making ice cream.

I’m fascinated by eating it.

The flower grower is fascinated by growing flowers.

I’m fascinated by looking at them and smelling them.

The musician is fascinated by every note, every lyric, every little mistake.

The audience is fascinated by how the music makes them feel.

Creators live in the details. Audiences live in the experience.

That’s not a criticism of either side. It’s simply the way things work.

The ice cream maker has to care about ingredients and recipes. The flower grower has to care about soil, water, and sunlight. Musicians have to care about practice, phrasing, timing, sound systems, and all the thousands of details that go into a performance.

But the customer buying an ice cream cone doesn’t need to know any of that.

The person admiring a flower doesn’t need to know any of that.

And most people listening to music don’t need to know any of that either.

They aren’t keeping score.

They’re asking themselves a much simpler question:

Did I enjoy it?

After my set, a young flower grower stopped and complimented my music.

She probably couldn’t tell you whether I missed a chord, flubbed a lyric, or rushed a verse.

Why would she?

She was listening to the music, not grading the performance.

Musicians often spend far too much time worrying about details that audiences never notice.

We replay mistakes in our heads.

The audience remembers the song.

We remember the wrong note.

The audience remembers how they felt.

Maybe that’s something worth remembering the next time we walk on stage.

Do the work. Learn the craft. Pay attention to the details.

Then let them go.

The audience came for the flowers, not the fertilizer.

They came for the ice cream, not the recipe.

And they came for the music, not the mistakes.