Experience, beauty and art.
When I go for a swim in the morning and the water is glassy, very clear, the sun reflects off the waves, the offshore breeze catches the spray off the waves, I’m in the water, there’s no rip, everything looks beautiful.
I wonder what it is that makes it beautiful to look at: the colours, my feelings, the sensations?
The next day the sky is overcast, the water’s dull, I think about sharks, there’s a slight undertow, no offshore breeze, a wind rippling the surface, and it no longer looks beautiful.
Was it beautiful the previous day because of the way it looked and how I felt, or was it because it was good, as in non threatening? So I’m inclined to think that beautiful is something good, but I know that won’t work. Sometimes I’ve watched videos of men at war in Vietnam and there have been moments when I considered what I was watching as beautiful.
Secondly, why do I have the desire to capture that moment on the beach in memory even as I experience it, and to then remake it in some art form?
I wonder what it is that makes it beautiful to look at: the colours, my feelings, the sensations?
The next day the sky is overcast, the water’s dull, I think about sharks, there’s a slight undertow, no offshore breeze, a wind rippling the surface, and it no longer looks beautiful.
Was it beautiful the previous day because of the way it looked and how I felt, or was it because it was good, as in non threatening? So I’m inclined to think that beautiful is something good, but I know that won’t work. Sometimes I’ve watched videos of men at war in Vietnam and there have been moments when I considered what I was watching as beautiful.
Secondly, why do I have the desire to capture that moment on the beach in memory even as I experience it, and to then remake it in some art form?
Comments (24)
Yes, if it’s that good then isn’t it always good and so in a way the song’s lost us.
You’ve opened a can of worms there. What’s ordinary? Is sun, sand and water ordinary?
I swim almost every day and that experience of beauty, on those days, has never changed. By ordinary I meant the sun, sea and sand was about as elemental as you could get. Of course it could be a perfect combination. But still, why beautiful?
Yes, I see what you mean, because even at the beach I have, as I said, non days, which makes the good days special. So is beauty a rarity, or less common anyway?
I’m not sure if being rare or less common works towards beauty. I think there must be things we only occasionally see that are truly horrible.
I think rarity is a necessary condition of beauty. I think horrible things can be rare or ordinary.
I was going to say that I’ve seen some powerful storms I thought beautiful, but then I thought, maybe beauty isn’t what I was experiencing, just something similar.
Quoting Noah Te Stroete
But not beautiful because of that.
Yes, there have been moments at certain locations, which I remember experiencing as beautiful, that no longer had that impact on me.
Have you ever seen the movie, American Beauty? The drug dealing teenager with the Army dad found beauty in ordinary things, even macabre things. Maybe it’s a matter of seeing things with “fresh” eyes/perspective?
Yes, however, I ve got a bit side tracked, because I was trying to establish why “I” thought the beach was beautiful that day, when it was the same place I no longer thought beautiful on the overcast day. And is “goodness” attached to beauty?
Edit: the beach was no longer beautiful on the bad day.
Perhaps it WAS that ideal combination of circumstances that you prefer that hasn’t gotten old yet?
Yes, that’s a good point. Sorry to this, but what is ideal, why is it individually ideal?
Yes, memory is good. I’ll think about that.
Yes, I wish it was more like that, too.