To be Beautiful is Human, to be Unique, Divine

Those of us of a certain age remember the "perfect 10." It was Bo Derek, running down the beach in an impossibly small bathing suite covering an impossibly perfect body.  The movie Ten was released before I was even a teenager, so I didn't watch it.  Yet the inescapable images were everywhere and managed to worm their way into my impressionable brain.  By the time I was 16 I was keenly aware that I was not a perfect 10.  But the reality that I would never be a perfect 10 had not dawned.  I still had such hopes.  I subscribed to Seventeen Magazine, devouring every make-up and fashion tip.  I roamed the mall with girlfriends, scouting for the latest styles.  Then I went to college and saw literally thousands of girls more beautiful than I, better clothed than I, more graceful, trendy, and hip then I.  It was enough to discourage the most determined fashionista.

Fortunately as I have matured my understanding of beauty has changed.  I once had a young piano student from a rather exotic ethnic background.  She had, by Western European standards, a large nose.  But her nose perfectly balanced her strong cheekbones and her dramatic, deep coloring.  She was beautiful.  After a month off from her lessons, she walked into my home one day with a different nose.  It was petite, trim, and turned up just the right amount at the tip.  At age 14 she succumbed to an impossible standard and had plastic surgery to "fix" her nose.  I went to bed that night nearly in tears, thinking that my stunning student was now quite ordinary.  I mourned the loss of an imperfect feature that made her unique, and therefore, beautiful.

Perhaps that is why I like the music of Sergei Prokofiev so much.  His compositions are flawed in many ways.  He can be sloppy with structure, monotonous with melodic development.  A critic reviewing a Prokofiev work in 1918 wrote, "Mr. Prokofiev's pieces have been contributions not to the art of music, but to national pathology and pharmacopoeia... They pursue no esthetic purpose, strive for no recognizable ideal, proclaim no means for increasing the expressive potency of music.  They are simply perverse.  They die the death of abortions." One of the most persistent Prokofiev criticisms is his orchestrations.  They are often called thin and amateurish.  Yet his orchestrations are the very thing I love most about his music.

Listen to this excerpt from the ballet Romeo and Juliet.  This is Juliet's death scene.  I can't conceive of a better depiction, and it is precisely the "thin" orchestration that creates the mood.  Soaring violins in octaves with flutes and clarinets, a lone horn counter melody in the background, this is epic, this is genius.  Prokofiev's greatest shortcoming gives him his expressive power.  And it is so very beautiful.

 I'm not a perfect 10.  My forehead is too high, my lips too thin, my chin too prominent.  Perhaps I am something even better, a perfect 47, if you will.  My many friends are perfect 32s, perfect 50s, perfect 64s,  We are all flawed.  Some of us might even be damaged.  But those little blots and smudges make us unique.  They make us who we are.  And we are beautiful.

Bo, A Perfect 10

Sergei, A Perfect 100