Today, on the same social media pages where, for years, I usually have
only shared the best and happiest inspiring events from my artist’s life and
creations, I shared something new and different. Here, let me paste it for you:
“I’m tired of the fictional perfection of social media
where everything seems to be going well for everyone every time. But don’t we
want to stop this thing and be more human and imperfect? Ps all is well”
This read the caption for the photo of my own legs, one of which shows a large Band-Aid,
and iodine tincture stains all over its hairy skin. Now, if “for every action,
there is an equal and opposite reaction”, for every new action, one might
expect a new reaction. And it came indeed. Besides to shows of support, hearts,
hugs in emoticon form, there was something new. There was aggression and
reproach towards my obviously misread intentions. I had hit something.
A little flashback. I have been “a daily full-time creative” for about 10 years
now, and all I have been striving to deliver has been a message of… good old
good mood. You know, happy vibes? Colours! The guy from South of Italy, he’s
always happy, sharing with us an empowering message of foolish utopia of a
rainbowy harmony. Well, those days are over! Today, I showed my “bleeding
wounds” and my equally empowering message was: “show, integrate, communicate,
accept, love and exhibit the imperfection”. Some people took it as a twisted
dramatic form of self-advertising. I had not seen that coming. This is why I
hurried to write this article down. I touched something and I want to hear more
about it from more people.
In-perfection, imperfection. If, too often now, the
message dripping from a lot of people’s social media makes you conclude that a
perfect life is “normal” with all this posting about celebrations,
achievements, smiles, and "best of’s”, there is going to be necessarily a
part of the audience which, by comparison, will feel bad, imperfect and never
good enough. Because a lot of people know themselves also in their bad, weak
and imperfect moments. “But that’s your shit!”. And nobody wants to see your
shit, it seems.
So, my beloved sister, and brother, next time you feel
imperfect because someone makes you feel so, please shout to them to the top of
your lungs: “You know what imperfection means?!? It means “in perfection”. Yes, I am imperfect. It means I am “in perfect”, I am getting there. I am on my way towards
perfect. I don’t know if I’ll get there. And I don’t know whether that’s the
most important thing to strive for.
Actually, if we only just stopped to read the ancient
meaning deep inside the word “perfect”, participle from the Latin verb “perficere”,
it means “complete, completed, done, ready, accomplished”. It did not mean
flawless or problem-less! Today’s “perfect” is a rather foolish idealization of
that term. And in arts, just like in life, it creates more damage than good.
Let me give you an example from art school. In a
classical and generic sense, art school implies that you become “perfect”, a
master at something. But a master at something means that she is completely,
fully knowledgeable and experienced in that topic. It doesn’t mean that everything
will always come out of her hands, brush, or violin perfectly perfect. It means
that a master is so complete that she accepts and integrates the entire
spectrum of the experience as a creator. She has made so many mistakes, so many
more than anybody else in that field or discipline… that she can now be called
perfect. Complete. A master has had
so much courage to make mistakes that eventually they are to be called perfect.
Let’s be perfect. Let’s be complete, but one day, not now. All our innovations,
visions and creations precisely exist not because they are perfect but because they
are “in perfect”. I’ll see you on
our ways to our perfections. I’ll see you in
perfections.
Meet Matteo Sica The Colour Wave on
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matteocolourwave/
