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Possessing Beauty
A comment from JK on a previous post which I thought deserved to be addressed in prime time:
But if you’re not trying to possess beauty, why try and create it thru music or art?
Simple, you’re not creating beauty or possessing it by doing Art, but committing yourself to Beauty, to a life lived in its presence, devoted to it at each moment and its communion with others.
Articles With Similar Themes:
- Beauty
- Me On The Bible
- The beauty of drinking till close
- A Precious Stone
- While passing the graveyard, I found a skull.
- Prev: Thanks JP!
- Next: Ingmar Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal”
June 21st, 2008 at 6:26 pm
An artist serves beauty and acts as a steward to the unveiling of it (the Gloria Dei) to the perceptible realm of the human senses. An artist doesn’t *create* beauty.
June 21st, 2008 at 7:10 pm
Yeah, I think you are right.
Artists reveal beauty.
June 21st, 2008 at 11:17 pm
All’s clear for construction of world’s largest elk:
http://www.thelocal.se/12506/20080618/
June 22nd, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Actually it’s a moose, but it’s still whacky.
Empire and deficiency of beauty arise from command lines.
Spontaneity and beauty arise from queries.
June 22nd, 2008 at 12:47 pm
In Europe they call moose elk
June 22nd, 2008 at 1:11 pm
ya, I figured that out after posting. Seems like a very American thing to do, and not European-like.
It’s like the giant ball of yarn, or a hot dog stand housed in a giant sausage on a bun.
June 22nd, 2008 at 2:10 pm
They have red deer in Europe that is related to what we call elk.
I had a past life memory of them from Ice Age Europe. When ever I see an ELK it triggers the memories. white tails don’t trigger anything. Because they don’t live there. Wild boars trigger something though.
They also had these big bulls called aurochs as well as reindeer. I hunted them with a 20 foot spear on an atlatl.
Not that this has anything to do with what you guys are talking about, but apparently, Tim had a spiritual experience associated with an Elk. I can relate.
Big trees trigger stuff too.
June 22nd, 2008 at 4:12 pm
There are buffalo in Europe too. Most were killed off but they’re being reintroduced to the wild.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisent
June 22nd, 2008 at 4:14 pm
me too
June 22nd, 2008 at 4:49 pm
bison in Europe, had no idea, that’s wild!
June 22nd, 2008 at 4:54 pm
> But if you’re not trying to possess beauty, why try and create it thru music or art?
Music (especially) is transient. It is recreated every time it is played. But all art is of this character.
June 22nd, 2008 at 5:35 pm
There is a Forest on the border of Poland and Belarus that has all these animals, bison, lynx, golden eagles, cranes. They have a buch of huge oaks too. All of Europe once looked this way. Big magical dark forest. I fel like I remember it.
I need to go. Except you can’t hike in it by yourself you need a guide.
June 22nd, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Bialowieza forest
June 22nd, 2008 at 6:42 pm
I think this is beautiful (posted as complementary to Big Elk Newsletter item)
http://www.spaceweather.com/swpod2008/...?PHPSESSID=dsja2e1vvrhhn3fq40aa00rkd1
beautiful and ephemeral
June 22nd, 2008 at 9:27 pm
First off, I was worried that comment would come off as dickish. Apologize if it did.
However, I disagree. By committing yourself to beauty, I think one also winds up “possessing” at least a little of that beauty just by dint of having access to it. Perhaps it is that one possesses access to it, which is the “hang up” here. Furthermore, and this could be construed as an apples and oranges type thing, but if one possesses a natural beauty, such as whatever it was I saw and many others like me saw in Elle McPherson say in 1990 — or better yet, the timeless, gender neutral beauty of an Audrey Hepburn — the person possessing the beauty has no choice but to commit to it. In this case, actual, physical beauty then is a possession. The person who is beautiful owns that beauty and can’t not only not share it, but with her offspring. That of course is when the rapacious controllers of all things come in and put a monetary value on said beauty and then distribute the beauty. An icon is born. Is it still beautiful? I do not know.
Dispensing with the possible apples and oranges side of things — I still think one who is “talented” possesses that talent, but also commits to it as well because that is what one’s “calling” is. Thus possession of said beauty is still in play. Someone could dedicate themselves to a life of committed ugliness and denounce beauty in all of it’s forms. An outside observer could call this act beautiful in all of it’s revolutionary ridiculousness.
It takes a kind and humble soul, some may say an idiot, to see beauty in all of the things there are — the trash strata as it were. So, while I do agree with your opinion, I also happen to think that we all in a certain sense, possess the entirety and the beauty of the Pacific Ocean, the planet Mars, the Solar System and all the landfills therein — though a foolproof case could be made that none of us have any personal stake in the beauty of any of these natural entities in the first place anyhow, we can, however, take possession of the beauty of the trash strata. Yet then again, we don’t have to. Isn’t that the beauty of it? But if the Universe is limitless and if just a portion of that universe is beauty and that beauty just so happens to be infinite as well, I do not see a problem with saying one can yes, absolutely possess beauty. As there is plenty to go around.
Not to mention, aren’t beautiful semantics all in the eye of the beholder anyhow?
June 22nd, 2008 at 10:25 pm
The artist is possessed *by* Beauty, but doesn’t possess it. This is all over the Tao Te Ching. Tao and what I mean by Beauty (maybe something like the celebration of the senses and the soul at following in God’s Law, Heaven’s Way?) might be good analogues here, as are the “master” of the TTC and the “artist” of our conversation and of the Western Renaissance/Alchemical tradition:
http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/taote-v3.html
Giving birth and nourishing,
having without possessing,
acting with no expectations,
leading and not trying to control:
this is the supreme virtue.
*
Other people have what they need;
I alone possess nothing.
I alone drift about,
like someone without a home.
I am like an idiot, my mind is so empty.
*
The Tao gives birth to all beings,
nourishes them, maintains them,
cares for them, comforts them, protects them,
takes them back to itself,
creating without possessing,
acting without expecting,
guiding without interfering.
That is why love of the Tao
is in the very nature of things.
June 22nd, 2008 at 10:48 pm
I think there has to be a spiritual component to seeing beauty. Its not neccessarily “out there” but internal.
June 22nd, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Its like its only perceptible at a certian wavelength. If you harmonize with that wavelength then you can see it.
June 23rd, 2008 at 2:07 pm
we see what we resonate with…..otherwise it is invisible to us. thankfully this is so, otherwise we would be staggered by the sheer pressure of the imput of all the information.
i believe that when we create art we are trying to access our own divinity….that is, our ability to be the one to create that which transcends….. to be the one who created the piece that the next person enjoys.