FINDING DEEP BEAUTY
I suppose what has always struck me -- and so many others --the most about the arts is simply the mindblowing beauty that can be achieved. Things happen in music, visual arts, words, acting, movement that seem impossible in any other context. I still feel chills and an inability to speak when I hear or see the myriad miracles which come from artistic expression. The heart-pounding thrill when I heard a Beethoven concerto or watched a thrilling circus act or glimpsed a famous person as a child is still there and it still feels just as overwhelming. Maybe that is why I think we artists are the luckiest people alive. Not only do we get to experience the same astounding highs of the arts, but we get to be an inner part of it.
That is also why we feel the deepest pain, the length of frustration and sadness, the sharpness of division and misunderstanding and jealousy which have wracked the human world since it began. So in times like the present, when the worst public health crisis in my memory becomes so complicated by human ignorance and tragedy and frustration, the only thing I can think of that will help is to find the deepest beauty....to escape the madness for a moment......to remind myself that there is a world full of love and healthy existence and hope. As a member of that very privileged class of people who are called artists, I realize there is an opportunity to find that indescribable beauty once again, and to share it with as many others as possible.
This does not need to be complicated. It does not require a lot of money or an insane level of genius to find the saving beauty and share it with someone who may be suffering. We do not need Beethoven or Andrea Bocelli or Monet or the power of a great Broadway musical to give us hope. For example, I found it over and over again in the past few weeks, just in the routine of my daily work and existence as an artist. I was able to reach out to a handful of gifted younger artists and offer them an opportunity which could prove to be the turning point, and perhaps the highest moment, they have ever experienced in their profession. I watched people dancing and singing spontaneously on the street or in a shopping center, blissful because they enjoyed the freedom and the passion that enables them to perform wherever and whenever they choose. I found it in a poem by Carl Sandburg, not even a well known poem or a profound declaration -- but simply a few lines which captured the essence of being a person on a planet full of people: to love, to be loved, to observe, to appreciate and understand.
We get so ridiculously spoiled by excess that we often lose sight of its magic. If we have a house full of beautiful possessions, or an electronic connection to the world that can show us billions of pretty pictures, we easily forget that what is most beautiful of all may be sitting in a chair across from us, or it may be couched in a tiny memory from our own distant past. But these tiny memories, these shreds of deep beauty, might just be enough to pull us out of depression, to free us from overwhelming grief, to give us a relaxing fresh breath which can still our fear.......if you are a spiritual person you probably believe, as I do, that when you extend a tender hand to someone else, you win back good and beautiful things a hundredfold. Even if you believe in nothing at all, you know somewhere deep inside that if you seek and find a tiny deep beauty, somewhere, you will emerge from that glimpse a stronger, better, more fulfilled and healthier person.
James Gibson
That is also why we feel the deepest pain, the length of frustration and sadness, the sharpness of division and misunderstanding and jealousy which have wracked the human world since it began. So in times like the present, when the worst public health crisis in my memory becomes so complicated by human ignorance and tragedy and frustration, the only thing I can think of that will help is to find the deepest beauty....to escape the madness for a moment......to remind myself that there is a world full of love and healthy existence and hope. As a member of that very privileged class of people who are called artists, I realize there is an opportunity to find that indescribable beauty once again, and to share it with as many others as possible.
This does not need to be complicated. It does not require a lot of money or an insane level of genius to find the saving beauty and share it with someone who may be suffering. We do not need Beethoven or Andrea Bocelli or Monet or the power of a great Broadway musical to give us hope. For example, I found it over and over again in the past few weeks, just in the routine of my daily work and existence as an artist. I was able to reach out to a handful of gifted younger artists and offer them an opportunity which could prove to be the turning point, and perhaps the highest moment, they have ever experienced in their profession. I watched people dancing and singing spontaneously on the street or in a shopping center, blissful because they enjoyed the freedom and the passion that enables them to perform wherever and whenever they choose. I found it in a poem by Carl Sandburg, not even a well known poem or a profound declaration -- but simply a few lines which captured the essence of being a person on a planet full of people: to love, to be loved, to observe, to appreciate and understand.
We get so ridiculously spoiled by excess that we often lose sight of its magic. If we have a house full of beautiful possessions, or an electronic connection to the world that can show us billions of pretty pictures, we easily forget that what is most beautiful of all may be sitting in a chair across from us, or it may be couched in a tiny memory from our own distant past. But these tiny memories, these shreds of deep beauty, might just be enough to pull us out of depression, to free us from overwhelming grief, to give us a relaxing fresh breath which can still our fear.......if you are a spiritual person you probably believe, as I do, that when you extend a tender hand to someone else, you win back good and beautiful things a hundredfold. Even if you believe in nothing at all, you know somewhere deep inside that if you seek and find a tiny deep beauty, somewhere, you will emerge from that glimpse a stronger, better, more fulfilled and healthier person.
James Gibson
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