445. The Perfect Artwork

The perfect artwork would show us everything we need to see in both the world and the self. Its incredible beauty would offer us the truth in whole, through a display of overwhelming honesty. It would be so free of flaw that it could be examined for an eternity without ever finding any means of improving it. It would be in every aspect as dynamic and vital as the creation it represents. It would, in this way, be a perfect being.

Were we to encounter such a being, we would not recognize it. It would seem to us far less than it actually is. We might appreciate it in a limited way, but we could not fully understand it. Our lack of understanding would cause us to take it for granted. We would give it only some of our attention before cordoning it off to one corner of the mind. Its impact would be limited not by its flaws but by our own.

We would not be capable of giving such a work the attention it needs, for it would seem to ask too much. It would seem to ask for everything, for our complete attention and devotion, and we cannot give it that. We cannot give it because there are so many things that we want, fear, and believe. We cannot imagine that an artwork would be capable of meeting our many needs. We cannot grasp that it could elevate us towards a more joyful life than we have ever experienced.

We cannot give it our full attention because that would deprive us of the attention we deserve. We cannot see that the perfect artwork would give us not only the entire world but also the entire self, that such a work would be the amalgam of the two into a single, transcendent harmony. We cannot understand that nothing could be neglected in it, for it would be complete in every possible way.

Surely, such an artwork could never exist. Even as you read this, you doubt that anything so perfect could be possible. You think this text describes only a theoretical entity, something that could never be made. But its creation is already under way and its completion is only a trivial matter of time. For the perfect artwork is nothing other than the universe itself.