beauty in a time of bombs: some thoughts
why do i write things to make them beautiful? things are not beautiful, things are clunky and lukewarm.
is beautiful language dishonest? why do i glaze the truth to make it more appetizing in my writing? truth is a rare commodity. everything seems to be keeping something hidden from everything else.
i know these things, but i still feel like i have to dress up my writing [insert simile here]. is it because human brains use metaphors to function?
everyone should discuss this here.
10 comments:
"things are not beautiful, things are clunky and lukewarm."
Things contain the possibility of beauty. To make things beautiful instead of stumbling across pre-cooked beauty is to offset the general clunkiness and lukewarmth.
Truth and beauty are rare commodities.
So the exposure of beauty supports truth too.
how do things have the possibility of beauty? beauty is not truth. the truth is, things are not beautiful. beauty is an attempt to cover that up.
i should clarify myself. i don't know how to clarify myself.
why do we always strive to find this 'possible beauty' in things? it is impossible for me to look outside right now in the 'waning light' and not think 'that looks pretty'. i can't just let myself think 'the light is going away and you can see the light going away from the way it turns the hills yellow'.
it is interesting. i'm not saying i'm entirely anti-beauty. because i enjoy beauty (whatever that means. i think it means i like transcending the human experience or something). i'm just saying that i have an unrealistic idea of what is beautiful because of the 'pre-cooked beauty' that i have been force fed.
how do i get back to the place i was at before this happened?
You could work to find a lack of beauty in 'the waning light' and you could work to find beauty in something you would say is not beautiful.
To say 'things are not beautiful' is not really the truth; it's only part of the truth.
Someone running across a shelled-out city to steal tea and bring it back to his grandmother -- that is beautiful in a situation that is mostly lacking in beauty. Two meth-addict parents taking their kids down to some river to swim -- that is beautiful in a situation that is mostly lacking in beauty.
I'm saying things are conditional and beauty is contextual. Nothing is ever entirely lacking in beauty. That statement is a more fundamental "truth" than "things aren't beautiful," because it acknowledges more possibilities.
Carl Sandburg writes about poor people in Chicago having moments of beauty. Denis Johnson writes about losers and addicts having moments of beauty. Ken Kesey writes about ramshackle loggers having moments of beauty. Etc. To expose momentary beauty is to perpetuate the existence of beauty as a concept. I guess you could say you don't really need to do this, you can just stumble across beauty, but you don't really need to do most things, including stumble around.
i guess. i must sound stupid sometimes.
originally, when i posted this, i was more concerned with truth in writing rather than beauty. it somehow collapsed into a rant on 'how nothing is beautiful' blah blah i'm an idiot. what i mean is, i think it's disingenuous to try to convince people of something's beauty, it's like tricking them. we don't need to trick people, that's what governments and money are for.
mostly, iiiiii don't want to trick people. i'm confused and confusing. so i think i'll have to think about this a bit more before i say anything more to stick my foot in my mouth.
Some days, it's hard to find any beauty anywhere. I imagine a lot of people are feeling like that today.
So it's nice if we stumble upon it.
Tricking? Maybe sometimes. But is beauty always aesthetically pleasant? What about terrible beauty? Dictionary dot com will tell you that something beautiful can be something remarkably true.
Sure: there's a very flimsy difference between finding a dishonest and an honest way to make things look less wretched.
In other words, the thin difference between "convince" (to overcome through argument, rhetoric, etc.) and "reveal" (to unveil, to expose connections, etc.)
I don't think the gesture is categorically "tricking" someone. Tricking someone is like saying "your trailer looks so pretty! omg!" Finding beauty is like saying "you sewed a homemade hat for your lawn gnome."
Willie,
Something remarkably true, yes. It's also been called "the promise of [possible] happiness."
And lots of other things, of course.
Sometimes the best thing to do is speak. Or write. And not dress it up.
Beauty may not be Truth, inherently, but Truth is certainly Beauty.
It's hard to get past the purple bullshit beauty.
The bombs. I don't know how to think about them. I mean, I will probably enlist after I am finished with college, and. You know?
I can write about the bombs. Sort of. If that would help. I don't think it will.
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