Nov 22

Nov 22 Beauty Notes – Wounds, Exhaustion, Holding Flowers Like a Weapon, and Doing Life Together

— I’m looking for a (new to me) way in this space to express things about beauty, at a time when we have to hold our anger and disappointment and fears in one hand, and fiercely attempt to hold joy and beauty and goodness and truth in the other hand. For now, I’ve the thought that writing notes is a way to open things up a little, to leave spaces. In bonsai there is the instruction to leave space so as to allow room for birds to fly through. So that’s what I’ll try for.

— A lot of people have written books in the form of notes. W.S. Di Piero was the first person I read who did so. I’ve been away from this space for a bit because of not just a holiday (I’d imagined I’d be doing my usual posts from Florence as I have on previous vacations), but because it seemed the internet was flooded with folks saying things about grief and beauty and joy and hope much better than I could. And also: I wasn’t feeling much hope, even while surrounded by the extreme beauty of renaissance and other art in Florence.

— Di Piero talks about living with depression and how for others it feels particularly hard before a long winter. For him, it’s spring that is difficult. He feels a “paralysis induced by flowerings and restorations; new green and growing things agonize and terrify me.” He says that “the heart can’t stand so much blessedness and bestowals…” It’s interesting to think that someone would feel so opposite to most and it helps me to keep this in mind. The way I feel about beauty isn’t necessarily how others feel.

— I’ve always been interested and soothed by beauty in the ordinary life. During the pandemic, it became clear to me that while I might have previously imagined that this kind of noticing of the beautiful, of the everyday astonishments, was available to everyone, I increasingly realized that not everyone has access to the “ordinary” life. I wrote about this in an essay in my book, Apples on a Windowsill, thinking about still life. I mean, I think I also always knew this, but it became a glaring fact. “The way we talk about ordinary life is very much a middle-class (and above) conversation,” I said in my book. In the pandemic, it became apparent how much class and race affected health care. And how can you notice ordinary beauty when your basic needs aren’t being met?

— In Saving Beauty by Byung-Chul Han, he says that “for Gadamer, negativity is essential to art. It is its wound.” He goes on to talk about how the beautiful is “smoothed out” these days, only wanting to please, in our culture of liking. He says, “Today, the beautiful itself is smoothened out by taking any negativity, any form of shock or injury, out of it. The beautiful is exhausted in a Like-it.”

— Byung-Chul Han also notes that in the age of “contagion” “not only the beautiful but also the ugly becomes smooth.” Lacking ugliness is not the best. He says that “Bataille saw in the ugly possibilities for overcoming boundaries and for liberation.” Ugliness offered “access to transcendence.”

— Another quotation to think about: “Essential to beauty are rather the secret correspondences between things and ideas that take place across vast spaces of time.” This seems to me a very human activity, an act of creativity and deep understanding. As in, not available to AI. And even if it is, it’s the act of discovering the secret correspondences that is a form of beauty, valuable because of the effort.

— A book that I keep returning to and which is life-changing to read, is Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe. Reading it, already I knew I’d be reading it again. Learning more. The complexity. If there’s one book you read this year, make it this one if you haven’t yet read it. I’m embarrassed by what I thought I knew about “the shapes of Black life” and what I have to learn. I kept thinking, I’ll do better, while reading.

— “They saw all of my brightness and they wanted to own it. Like furniture. Like an appliance.” (p. 121)

— “There is no set of years in which to be born Black and woman would not be met with violence.” (p. 331)

— Sharpe quotes the artist Glenn Ligon, who says, “ I agree that the question of beauty is a charged one for people of color.” He says, “…the discussion around beauty is often used as a way to preempt any debates about exclusion or marginality or privilege…” He says, “I love flowers as much as the next person, but sometimes you have to hold your flowers like a weapon.” And then Sharpe ends the note: “With beauty, something is always at stake.” (p. 201)

— In the Soul of Civility by Alexandra Hudson, she says that in writing the book she harnessed, “the healing power of beauty.” She talks about her book as a part of a continuing “longstanding conversation about the requirements and promises of doing life well together.” At one point she quotes Confucius, “One is inspired by poetry, strengthened by rituals, and perfected by music.” Beautiful rituals might help “even the mundane and menial parts of our day” to become “sacred and infused with beauty if we brought the appropriate mindset to them.” Civility is “a way of being that allows us to navigate life together amid deep difference.”

— I want to experience beauty but not at the expense of any other being.

— A member of the Ugly Club says, “Being part of the Ugly Club doesn’t mean you have to be ugly. You are part of the club when you understand why you don’t have to be beautiful.”