Every beauty which is seen here by persons of perception

Host: The dawn had just begun to bleed over the horizon, washing the city in soft gold and ash. From the rooftop of an abandoned art school, the world looked like a half-finished painting—cranes hanging still in the morning fog, windows catching the first light, and a single pigeon perched on the edge, feathers trembling in the breeze.

Jack stood near the railing, a cigarette between his fingers, the smoke curling like a slow prayer. Jeeny sat cross-legged on the concrete floor, sketchbook open, her pencil moving with delicate precision, tracing the curves of the skyline. Between them, the faint sound of a church bell drifted upward, echoing through the mist.

Jeeny: “Michelangelo once said, ‘Every beauty which is seen here by persons of perception resembles more than anything else that celestial source from which we all are come.’”
She looked up from her sketch, her eyes deep and dark as wet earth. “Do you believe that, Jack? That beauty is a reminder of where we came from?”

Jack: “No.”
His voice was flat, husky, tired. “I believe beauty is what we invent to survive. The universe doesn’t care about symmetry or proportion. It’s chaos. We paint beauty onto it so we can stand to look.”

Host: A gust of wind swept across the roof, scattering a few pages from Jeeny’s sketchbook. She reached out instinctively, but Jack caught one before it flew over the edge. He looked at it—an unfinished drawing of a woman’s face, soft and luminous, almost alive.

Jeeny: “Then how do you explain this?”
She nodded toward the drawing in his hand. “Why do you think your heart beats a little faster when you see something beautiful? That’s not survival—it’s recognition.”

Jack: “Recognition of what? An ideal we created? Beauty is a lie told well. It sells perfume, architecture, love stories. But it’s still a lie.”

Host: The sunlight grew stronger now, turning the edges of the clouds into threads of fire. Jack’s shadow stretched long against the wall, like a figure caught between two worlds—light and dark, faith and reason.

Jeeny closed her sketchbook and stood, brushing dust from her jeans.

Jeeny: “You think beauty is manipulation because you only see its reflection, not its source. Michelangelo wasn’t talking about paintings or faces—he was talking about the divine echo in things. About how everything that moves us points back to where we came from.”

Jack: “And where’s that? Heaven? The stars? Or some biochemical spark in a soup of atoms?”

Jeeny: “Does it matter? Call it heaven, call it stardust—it’s the same thing. The same light, just refracted differently.”

Host: She stepped closer to the edge, the wind tugging gently at her hair, her silhouette outlined against the swelling sky. Jack followed her gaze, his eyes tracing the waking city, the smoke, the faint glow of life returning.

Jack: “You know, Michelangelo carved his ‘David’ out of a ruined block of marble. It had been thrown away by other sculptors. Maybe beauty isn’t from heaven—it’s what we salvage from imperfection.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. And that salvaging, that act of turning ruin into grace—that’s divine, Jack. That’s what he meant. Every beauty, even the broken kind, resembles its source because it creates light out of stone.”

Host: The air grew warmer. The sky opened. Below, the city began to breathe—the sound of distant traffic, a child’s laughter, the hiss of a bus pulling away. The world waking, unaware it was being contemplated like scripture.

Jack exhaled smoke, watching it twist into the light. His voice softened.

Jack: “So you think when we see beauty—when we feel it—it’s not just emotion. It’s memory.”

Jeeny: “Yes. Memory of something we’ve lost. Or maybe something we never stopped belonging to.”

Jack: “You sound like a mystic.”

Jeeny: “And you sound like a man afraid that beauty might be real.”

Host: The words hit gently, but they landed deep. Jack looked away, down at the streets below—tiny figures moving like particles in a grand experiment. He flicked his cigarette, watching it fall, a dying spark swallowed by the fog.

Jack: “When I was a kid, my mother used to take me to the museum every Sunday. She said she wanted me to learn what ‘real beauty’ looked like. But all I remember was her standing in front of Botticelli’s ‘Birth of Venus,’ crying. I never understood why.”

Jeeny: “Maybe she wasn’t crying at the painting. Maybe she saw herself in it. That’s what beauty does—it reflects the divine back through human eyes. The celestial source Michelangelo spoke of isn’t out there somewhere—it’s inside us, hidden beneath the noise.”

Jack: “Then why does it fade? Why does beauty decay?”

Jeeny: “Because we stop seeing. Not because it stops existing.”

Host: Silence bloomed between them—full, golden, alive. The sun had now cleared the horizon, painting their faces with light. Jack’s eyes, usually cold, caught a faint shimmer of warmth. Jeeny’s lips curved in something like peace.

Jack: “You know, you sound a lot like those Renaissance philosophers. They believed beauty wasn’t just aesthetic—it was moral. To see beauty was to remember goodness.”

Jeeny: “And maybe that’s what the world’s starving for, Jack. Not more truth—just more perception. To look at a stranger and see something sacred again.”

Host: The wind quieted. The bells rang once more from the distant church, softer now, more intimate. Jack turned toward Jeeny, his voice barely above a whisper.

Jack: “Maybe Michelangelo was right. Maybe beauty is a message—written in the language of stars, carved into skin, whispered through color and sound.”

Jeeny: “It’s not just a message. It’s a reminder. That everything we touch, everything we see, is a fragment of where we began. And where we’ll return.”

Host: The light broke fully across the roof, spilling over their faces, their hands, their shadows. The city below gleamed as though washed clean of every sin. Jeeny closed her eyes, breathing in the morning; Jack, for once, didn’t look away.

Their voices softened, carried away by the breeze, blending with the bell’s echo and the hum of life returning.

Jack: “So maybe beauty isn’t survival after all. Maybe it’s how the universe remembers itself.”

Jeeny: “Yes. And how we remember that we’re not separate from it.”

Host: The camera would have panned slowly upward then—past the rooftop, past the glowing buildings, up into the widening sky where the first light of day unfurled like a divine breath.

And as the world filled with that gentle, celestial brightness, it would become clear what Michelangelo had always meant—
that every curve, every color, every face, every fleeting moment of beauty was not the end of sight, but the beginning of remembrance:
a mirror through which the divine still recognizes its own reflection.