I'm sure you guys can relate to the kind of rapid clicking that whatever chosen method of internet-surfing has created in us. It's pretty well known that if a youtube video is over about three minutes, your average viewer is going to click away. Plenty of folks are concerned with this shortening attention span. How much it hurts us and whether or not it helps in other ways (like multitasking) is something we should talk about, but not tonight.
Tonight I want to talk about something that has become more rare and valuable to me because of all this stuff. I want to talk about beauty. Arresting beauty, to be specific. Something so damn pretty it stops you in your tracks.
I got thinking about beauty when I stumbled across this painting the other day. I don't care if it was because of the subtlety of the lighting in the foreground, or the absurdism, or the simplicity, but the thing killed my redditbuzz and I couldn't help but close my other tabs and stare at it. For a while. Like longer than I had good reason to.
Just this one painting lifted me out of the rapid-clicking, instant-gratification mode I was in. No gimmicks, no drama, no comedy. Just. Plain. Damn. Beauty.
And it didn't leave me dry afterwords. You know that feeling you get in the last few seconds of a youtube video, when you start scanning for the next thing? Trying desperately to find some other little crumb to entertain your(big dumb stupid)self? None of that. Nada. Just a little itch to do something, make something.
I can't speak for you, and I'm sure that it does a whole bunch of nothing for some people. But the feeling is true. That painting feels bigger than me. It's humbling. It puts me in my place. It makes me feel small and inspires me at the same time. I don't get that feeling very often, and its probably because with so many things competing for my attention, I don't give any of them the chance they deserve. The ones that knock me on my ass really stand out.
That's why I love this video.
If you can, please watch it. Only. Close the other tabs. Turn your phone over. Watch the whole thing. Don't click away.
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ps. If you have some extra time on your hands and want to get kicked around a little more, this short story by André Dubus will do that.
This is, really good. Is this kind of "arresting beauty" something we can find though? Or is it by nature something we stumble upon when we need it?
ReplyDeleteI finally sat down and watched the whole video and I realized that I've seen this before sometime somewhere, but i can't place it.This makes me think about the famous violinist who went into the new york subway and played like a street performer and was completely ignored while the night before people were paying hundreds of dollars to see him play. The beauty that's always around us and without the time and eyes to see it is largely lost.
ReplyDeleteI was also struck with how haunting the song is, these two people wandering a city in japan playing music some how brought up images of a dystopian future, like perhaps the only futures where this is possible is where all the urgency of life has been removed by the halting of progress. That might not be quite it but something along those lines. Thanks!