Moonlight on the Yare, Oil—John Crome, 1816
As I sit at this machine keyboard, I can hardly think, much less write. I do my best to tell you each week what is going on in this topsy-turvy mind, what I want you to hear and understand. How do I do that adequately when I do not even know what it all means? I truly believe, as I said recently, that beauty will ultimately save the world. But perhaps after I, we, are exhausted by the effort to believe it to be true. It simply IS.
I do not even know whether I have mentioned finishing a book named about a small Southern town into which a mysterious stranger comes and affects the community in magical ways. My fondest wish is that we could read it together and share our respective reactions to the story and the inspiration and the wisdom therein (not hidden, not needing explaining or interpretation).
Now, at just this moment, I have become overwhelmed by the very first chapter of a “spare” volume written by one of our most gifted fiction writers. His storytelling and his brilliant and poetic prose made me want to go to my very knees since reading one of his most praised novels. I admired it but did not know what to make of it. Since, however, I have devoured almost all of his novels and short stories and, with only a few exceptions, held them in deepest esteem. There is simply only one other American author that I feel the same way about.
They write in a way that makes me want everyone to know and experience their respective offerings. That is when I have no doubt that true artistry is the heart of humanity. We practice art even when we are creating an essential tool. Even the creator of Apple computers famously said that he wanted his digital “machines” to be beautiful both inside and out. The native makers of spear points decorated them in ways unrelated to their utility.
Art, when we truly give ourselves to it, takes us outside our rational selves, and then takes us back in and, if we are fortunate, takes us deeply into yet a different place.
Please, sooner rather than later, explore your own version of beauty, be it music, literature, graphic art, pottery, or simply a little place you go to get away (forest, stream, an outcropping of granite that affords a view as far as the eye can see, or the rooftop on a dark, cloudless night). Become a part of that place and let it seep into your conscious mind.
To find out of whom I speak, look up the authors named Allen Levi and Mark Helprin and discover for yourself. Truly read them, engage the minds of the authors, and become someone you never knew you were. Proceed to build on that….
As I read this, it seems that I am incapable of expressing either my admiration for these “works of art” or the emotional state that led me to write the piece. Maybe that is the point. Perhaps that is the effect true art has on us—to take us out of our rationality and busyness and our conventional wisdom trap and, finally, wake us up from the state of believing that what consumes our time and devours our attention is what we call “the real world”. Why is that?!
Only we can decide that. Advice can be counterproductive. What I have written now smacks of “advice.”
Please ignore it if it feels that way. I would much rather you discover beauty for yourself than take my word for it.