Messy Magic

On Making Space for Imperfection

“They made a statue of us. 

And later say it’s all our fault…?”

The next line of lyrics she mumbled with a look of confusion. Her piano and voice halted.

“Is that it??? Shit. I got excited about playing with Kishi Bashi and now I forgot my words.”

Everyone laughed. Then she invited the crowd to hold an election and nominate one person to tell her the correct words. The clapping and cheering grew. She leaned close to the piano, scoped the scene, and listened until she landed on someone shouting the right words loud enough.

“OH. Okay. Thank you!... I’m gonna try one more time. If I really can’t do it, do you promise to forgive me?... Sometimes my mind does this. It’s like an Etch A Sketch. It just deletes!” Chuckles trickled in the air. Her fingers continued their dance along the keys until she got distracted.

“Is that a bug or a bat?! Ugh, fuck,” she said lightheartedly, forgetting the words, but beaming with a big toothy grin.

I imagine the last thing any seasoned professional singer and performer wants is to bomb the words to their own song on stage. But when Regina Spektor fumbled her lyrics to the popular “Us,” it didn’t feel like a failure to me.

During that performance, I looked around at the audience in the amphitheater; Everyone had a smile plastered on their face. Maybe it’s just that there’s something about the summer air hitting just right, under a shimmering purple sky, because between sips of whiskey on ice, even a lyrical blunder felt romantic. Or maybe it’s simply how she moved with gravity through her mistakes. The lightness. She was charming, and playful, and made the moment memorable. 

Witnessing someone as accomplished as Regina Spektor mess up on stage and just roll with it so endearingly, like that, lit me up. It dawned on me that mistakes don’t have to be life or death, even if they sometimes feel like it. All eyes on you, or not, mistakes are an opportunity. She acknowledged what happened. Then used that moment to give the crowd a chance to engage with her and help. They contributed to her performance; a spontaneous moment of creative collaboration. 

And so, mistakes can sometimes be special. Or at least, not completely awful. We, humans, are destined to make infinite mishaps. If we’re going to make them anyway, why not move through those moments with acceptance and playfulness the way she did? 

Imperfections can be leveraged, especially creatively. But I know most people actively avoid making mistakes, or rather, avoid being seen making them in their creative work. Nobody wants to be witnessed as being imperfect. It’s as if imperfection not only reveals you’re not good enough, but you never were, and may never be. Like, you’ll never live up to how good everyone thinks you are, or it signals the possibility that you’ll never live up to the potential you’ve built up for yourself in your own head.

And I get it. I sometimes share this feeling when I forget that mistakes are entirely human, part of the process, and part of a work in progress. And I guess by that I really mean, I sometimes forget that I am also entirely human and a work in progress. 

But in resisting mistakes and glorifying perfection, opportunities are lost. We deprive ourselves not only of the chance to build the evidence we need to see that we can be imperfect beings, we can screw up and survive, but I think we miss out on how to live with a sense of play when we don’t move through the messy. And how insanely unrealistic is it to expect ourselves, or anyone, to never slip?

I’m not suggesting to live carelessly or be sloppy in creative pursuits. I’m only saying, assuming our mistakes and imperfections aren’t hurting anyone, why not give a little grace? Or better yet, why not adorn our mess-ups with embrace and treat them like play?

Salvador Dalí understood this: “Mistakes are almost always of a sacred nature. Never try to correct them. On the contrary: rationalize them, and understand them thoroughly. After that, it will be possible for you to sublimate them.”

So what if we flipped the script? We can swap our desire from craving and chasing perfection towards something more fulfilling and useful like cultivating a robust desire for what actually is, a world of imperfection, and a deep affection for all the mistakes the reality of our humanity brings. We can treat mistakes like they’re sacred. We can choose to play.

As the song came to a close and the line, “and it’s contagious” repeated again and again, in melodic magnificence, I looked up at the sky, a perfect shade of purple. Up in the mountains, it was dark enough to actually see the stars shine.

In thinking about this, I’m reminded of how every constellation, scattered across the sky, is its own unique formation, each unlike the other. A messy magic.

Maybe in daring to be imperfect, and make mistakes wholeheartedly, we can be like the stars. Because if something as beautiful as the cosmic canvas can make space for such perfect inconsistencies, why can’t we?

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Thank you for reading Messy Magic!

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