Every fragment is a whole

Dedicated to art, beauty, and the illusion of perfection

Vivre sa vie, 1962, Jean-Luc Godard

Backstage on a music video set, a makeup artist applies lipstick on me and notices the asymmetry of my cupid bow, how one side is round and soft and the other sharp and angular. “Funny how our imperfections make us sometimes even more beautiful,” she says, or something to that effect, perhaps trying to make me feel better about the indecisiveness of my features.

My front teeth also “make me more beautiful”: once two poles with a gap so large I could comfortably hold a pencil between them, they now overlap so badly that they almost conceal each other, like two fingers crossed and hoping for the best, a gift of my ever-expanding wisdom teeth. Wouldn’t it be nice if wisdom teeth came with actual wisdom, even half as sizeable as the space they steal from your mouth?

It took some adjusting (and a consultation with a cosmetic doctor booked in the aftermath of grief), but, given the chance, I wouldn’t change these little idiosyncrasies of mine, not because I’m aware that we can’t really eradicate our imperfections, only mask them (perfection is, after all, just an idea, an illusion even, something less human than divine), but because they make me this person I happen to be, and who am I to change that. The body, its beauty or lack thereof, may be a cage, but only if you allow it to be. It can also be many other things, like, I don’t know, fun.

Just like perfection, beauty is also a kind of illusion: it only exists outside of itself and inside the mind of the beholder. It requires seeing to be beautiful, and, despite what mainstream media wants you to think, we all see the world differently.

Anne Carson said it best, as she usually does:

Perfection is less interesting. For instance, a page with a poem on it is less attractive than a page with a poem on it and some tea stains. Because the tea stains add a bit of history.

It reminds me of a short poem by William Carlos Williams, titled Lines, a stunning reminder of how aesthetics can diverge from canonical expectations, as well as how much words can hold:

Leaves are graygreen,

the glass broken, bright green.

If tea stains on a page can add interest and character, which serve as a placeholder for beauty, and a piece of shattered glass, a manmade object in ruins (bright green), can outweigh the leaves of a tree (graygreen) in aesthetic value, what does this tell us about the way we make sense of the world?

At Tate Modern, a museum I visit often, almost as an exercise in not dying, I stumble upon a work by the abstract expressionist artist Agnes Martin, whom I adore. I know the erudite art critics call her a minimalist, but I find her artistry more expressive than restrained, the way I sometimes find Joy Division’s music louder than Nirvana’s. I guess you don’t always have to shout to make ideas stick.

Agnes Martin, On a Clear Day, 1973

Thin penciled grids fill the composition, repeating themselves across the canvas like a chorus, suggesting the idea of geometric perfection, but never obtaining it, not even trying perhaps.

I take it all in, the full picture, head tilted like a dog trying to catch some familiar sounds, as I rub the asymmetry of my lips together, gently, looking for what I’m missing, the mystery that the surface won’t reveal.

And I know what to do, which is the only thing you can do: get closer, meet the work at its level, trace its way back to the minuscule traits of its units, the way you’d do a close reading of a poem that seems impossible to understand. You look, in other words, for cracks to hold on to and stick your feet in, one at a time, so you may slowly begin the climb. Sometimes for no reason other than being able to tell yourself that you tried, that you cared.

Looking at art, I’ve learned, is a lot like looking at the world: if you pay enough attention, it will tell you something about yourself.

It will also remind you that every fragment is a whole, every detail a history, every moment an eternity. What’s immediately present, however broken, however dependent on what came before, is the only thing there is. Or so it seems.