The things that have happened to me in my life have taken away some of those straight edges and shaped me into a tree, shaped me into something less predictable, less understandable.

Jeff Tweedy

What Jeff’s talking about is essentially an idea about perfection. Creative people like to focus on making a perfect thing — say a table — but that presents a problem. We know what a table is. We have a whole range of expectations for what makes a good one. On the other hand, there’s no universal definition of a quote-unquote perfect tree. A perfect tree is an impossibility. This in turn is freeing because it means it can be anything. There are no rules — and therefore there’s less risk of failure.

From the book How to Write One Song.