The Arts of the Beautiful

"In an order other than that of knowledge."

A few following notes triggered by the above extract from 'The arts of the Beautiful' by Etienne Gilson (introduction)

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Several discussions around consciousness, around simultaneousity of experience, and the linearity of narrative and logic. One way to reduce that distance is to break the chain often. Look afresh at the same flow of logic, and begin afresh building the chain. Perhaps by beginning often, we stay close to the simultaneousity of experience.

My words struggle. But say, people like Kawabata express it in their art. By the restraint of their art. Or people like Heaney, who seem to assume all art and poetry as given, and at that plane, perhaps say a thing or two, simply, quietly, clearly. Like when he says, he trusts contrariness. 

When we are closer to paradox in our logic, or in our narratives, perhaps we are closer to reality. 

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The way we change, the being changes in becoming. The state changes, the plane changes. And each plane seem to have its own metric of values attached to the cluster of emotions, thoughts, ideas that surround us. Somehow being one with our physical self grounds us, makes us sensible, straightens us in some way, brings us back to level to consider all values appropriately. Removed from that physical oneness, even artists see and say things which seem unhealthy, deprived of air, life...somehow one has to be eternally optimisitc, anything less is like being an unkind guest, life harbors us, we are of life. 

And having said all that, one has moments when one questions everything, is overwhelmed, detached from that oneness, one has to somehow get through, keep telling oneself, that this too shall pass, the only thing that endures while we live is our breath, our life. We begin from there, our breath, our life, take care of the self, of the self's surrounds, in slowly expanding circles to the extent we can sustain it. And then again, begin back at the level of breath. There seems to be little else a being can do. There seems to be little else a being can become. 

(On thinking further, later: at times one aims for expanding circles far away, the ideal... still, one begins at breath, and there is harmony if self and surrounds are taken care of, there is sustainability to the endeavor to even aim for the stars. One person's thoughts. Happy to be contradicted, corrected).

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Breaking the thought here. 

Art as a becoming, because in making, we make something in ourselves too. Playing in one linear dimension, we are absorbed in linear logic, and try to retrofit everything to that logic. But such is not life, it is not linear and doesn't respond very well to tight confines of narrow logic. When we make, we forget the self, and engage with a wholeness which is beyond the conscious logic seeking narrative focused linear mind. Perhaps hence, perhaps hence it leaves us quiet, in contemplation, with nothing further to say. One thinks great artists find that place, rest of us keep struggling around words, materials, yet even in our stumbling fumbling ways, we do find joys of a maker, be it of an apprentice, if not a master. 

If the making for other arts is quite obvious, in words, it is in writing. Writing in what Nabokov says non-utilitarian art, or what this person that sent me here says. One looks at a sketch, or at nature, and picks up a pencil, or a sculpting tool, or a brush, or perhaps a pen and blank paper. And there the making begins...

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Part of the joy of making is sharing, sharing something fundamental with the universe. Sharing the wonder we feel at being here, on this planet, amidst stars, living the life granted us, breathing, smiling, laughing and reading, reading, reading, communing with minds beyond the current time and space physcial belonging, but the fundamental wonder which needs to be shared, or compels us to share it, just bursts forth as art. As expression, as sharing, as making as a way of knowing which words cannot do, the way reading about workout does not help, one actually needs to work out. So with these words, what I wish to express or what I am perhaps reading in G is that it is in the doing, in the making, in the becoming, all other sayings are redundant. Yet, yet, yet, since words are a medium too, are a sort of brushstroke to the blank screen, one makes oneself here, one wishes to. Whether one succeeds or not depends on how good an apprentice one can be. Practice grounds. Rough notebook....

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There are certain fundamental things about this universe, which our day to day life somehow does not highlight.

One is arrangement. An artist perhaps appreciates composition in a very different way than perhaps rest of us. At the level of matter, arrangement is such a thing. It is one of the places where one finds oneself as if in an alien universe. As in the universe of matter is careful arrangement, while the universe of mind seems to be connection, the in between zones. The 0 to 1. Neither 0, nor 1. How is it to be explained? 

When we try to arrange our words carefully, so that they create what we wish to be created, even then we are not close to matter's view of arrangement. There is an intense discipline. Our meanings merge, morph, are quite malleable. While matter at the level of elements, molecules, a single change in arrangement creates a disparate output which do not even appear similar. Perhaps it is the scale of our understanding. But there is a level of forgiveness, or perhaps mind is all about emerging. While matter is the rails. Arrangement is sacred there. In mind, it is a different world the way it seems to look like, much more haphazard, in the slush zones of meaning, which are morphing wonders. 

I find it quite fascinating and wonderful. Matter itself is so alien to us, because we see only through mind?

No output can share the knowing that comes with becoming. Output of any kind is static. Perhaps why Krishna said, keep working, without attachment to the fruit. Fruit is of a lower plane than where the work is here to take you. But static minds, narrow logic can't hold it all well. Hence, this breaking of chains, again, and yet again. Beginning anew often holds one in good stead.

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Matter although crafted out of uncertainty at the core of quarks, is still relatively certain at our scale, or at the scale of arrangement of atoms. Mind doesn't seem so.

Perhaps our mind is like a quark in someone else's atom. All possibilities, but our observation freezes into relative certainty. Still, bounded within a being structure, the way a quark is bounded within itself, even though it stays infinitely uncertain.