Texture and Perfection

I was listening to music from Cirque du Soleil recently, "Alegria" to be exact, and I was struck by how the singer, in the higher registers, seemed kind of hoarse. Like she had a frog in her throat. But that must have been on purpose, because there it was on the recording - and if they didn't like it they would have gotten another singer or had her warm up differently or something. Right? So how come she sounded like that?

It was texture. That's part of what's so great about Cirque du Soleil, is the texture. The lumps and bumps and slight weirdness of everything. It's not polished, but it's emotional and perfect at the same time. This is a very French/French-Canadian thing. They see perfection in everything.

Not so in the U.S. We airbrush everything. We don't like people to have skin, we like them to have some flesh-covered coating that doesn't interfere in the "image." We take people who look perfectly fine the way they are and Photoshop them thinner still. Argh!!

Even in movies I find I'm spending a lot of time noticing how smooth everything is. Even when there's gore or something, it's all choreographed. Battle scenes must be a certain way or they are not "right."

And then we worry that we are desensitizing people to violence. Hm.

And, we stop drawing in 4th or 5th grade because we can't "make" our work measure up to some perfect thing in our head.

That's terrible! A drawing is fabulous simply because you made it. It's exactly what you did at that very moment. That makes it perfect.

I with we understood this better in the States, because we spend a lot of time eliminating what we view as "imperfection" when what we're really doing is taking the personality out of everything.

Draw stuff that's lumpy, and messy, and has texture. Please.