Society
The Beauty of Imperfection
Perfection is boring.
When I was seventeen, my parents took me to New York for my first interview with Juilliard. While we were there, we visited the Museum of Modern Art. I wandered, a bored teenager, disinterested in the art I saw on the walls. Until I saw “One Number 31.”
I knew nothing about Jackson Pollock, but the moment I saw that painting, I realized I was in the presence of something remarkable. I froze, staring. There was a bench directly in front of “One Number 31,” and I slowly sat down. The violent tendrils of paint seemed to grab my soul, poking and wending their way around inside my head. My eyes followed paths of color, trying to understand why this imperfect art elicited such a profound response.
Imperfection has always been beautiful to me. Art created by broken people, by flawed humans, showing angst or madness or grief or sorrow or joy. There is a purity to imperfection, and that’s what makes it beautiful.
My husband and I traveled to Chicago many years ago to see the Van Gogh and Gauguin exhibit. I drifted from painting to painting, and suddenly found myself six inches from “Starry Night.”
When I look at “Starry Night,” I don’t see what most people see. I see the stars, I see the brush strokes, I see the pain in the swirls Van Gogh jabbed into his night sky. And just as I had done with “One Number 31,” I froze. I devoured the stars, I absorbed the madness. I didn’t realize I was crying until someone next to me touched my arm.
Music can be beautiful in its imperfection, too. “Maybe This Time” from Cabaret, sung by Liza Minnelli, is one of the most powerful songs ever written. It’s a song of sorrow and hope and desperation, and Liza Minnelli fills every note with emotion. Her voice cracks, just a bit, when Sally realizes that love will never be what she needs it to be.
“I Am What I Am,” Albin’s anthem in Las Cage Aux Folles, is another song made beautiful by imperfection. Albin’s voice fills with anger as he declares “It’s my world that I want to take a little pride in, my world and it’s not a place I have to hide in.” He demands to be accepted as both Albin and Zaza, and in the end, he is. “I Am What I Am” still makes me cry, even after all these years.
Current popular music has moments of beautiful imperfection, albeit few and far between. Pink’s “What About Us” is a soaring powerhouse of emotion, focused on the needs of the oppressed, and the lies we’ve been told. Lady Gaga’s “Til It Happens To You” tells society they will never truly understand what it feels like to survive sexual violence.
Sometimes, the song doesn’t need to be sorrowful, or even about anything important, sometimes it’s the voice. A voice that pierces into cynical hearts, a voice you hear and it shows you, once and for all, the beauty of imperfection.
In 2020, Harry Styles released “Falling.” It’s a beautiful song about loss and love and the pain of watching a relationship disintegrate. The music video is cinematic. “Falling” is a truly wonderful song.
One person who loved “Falling” is Jungkook, a member of BTS. And last October, he released a cover of the song. No music video, no fanfare, just Jungkook’s voice.
I listened to Jungkook’s cover of “Falling” for the first time two weeks ago. About a minute into the song, I realized I was crying. Much like standing inches away from “Starry Night,” something happened to me without my realization.
Jungkook sings “Falling” in English, which is not his first language. Some of the pronunciations are hard to understand, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except his voice. Jungkook sings “Falling” with so much emotion, so much sorrow, I wondered for a moment if he feels a connection to the lyrics. The imperfections make it all the more beautiful.
There is great beauty in imperfection. In the age of social media, filters, Photoshop, and auto-tune, we are inundated with demands to be perfect. Perfection, frankly, is boring. As Leonard Cohen sang in “Anthem:”
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in
