Previous | Main
| Next
Beauty
I recall a conversation with a friend once who decided to classify people in to two categories "what people" and "why people".
"What people" were the most common element of society, the worker bees, the drones as you would have it. There were concerned with what was happening to them in the immediacy and tended to be obsessed with the illusionary surface of the world.
"Why people" were more rare, they were inventors and leaders, the people that look underneath, shatter illusions, they're concerned with why things happen and how things work.
Now, while I think it's quite impossible to classify humanity into only two categories, I also know that the second definition very much describes a large part of my own personality. I've always taken things apart to figure out how they work, I never take anything in life at face value; I always have to ask why.
To a certain extent I'm convinced that while I'm enamoured with asking why, it also makes life more complicated, as a good part of each day has to be spent processing data internally, both input and output, or as my mom was apparently fond of saying GIGO! (Garbage In, Garbage Out)
The other day I found myself in an oddly disgruntled mood, I couldn't figure out what was wrong for the life of me. I processed my feelings over and over, trying to locate the anomaly. Not that repairing the error was even necessary, I was just driven to discover what it actually was, in other words, I needed to know why.
I finally decided that the best way to figure out my conundrum was to just follow my instincts, what did I most feel like doing? (No, not that, get your minds out of the gutter people!)
After a quick analysis of my current list of desires, I found that the thing I wanted to do most was drop by the little workshop I have at my dad's (my own house is far too small to house an actual workspace) and work on carving some pendants from some ironwood that I harvested after the huge storm back in early 2006.
One of the stranger creative projects I have ever taken on was hand carving wood "earrings" (for lack of a better term) for folks in the body modification scene. They were usually in the shape of large, tapered claws. The carvings were designed for stretching extreme piercings and long story short, it was another consignment deal with yet another store owner, which ended in a completely predictable manner. (This is probably why I have now completely abandoned consignment arrangements. These days it's whole sale, cash up front, or it's nothing.)
This meant that I ended up with a few claw-like carvings left over, I promptly converted these carvings into pendants and they sold almost immediately after placing them on display at my local market table. Since then, I had always meant to make more pendants, but never seemed to find the time. Carving a hardwood like Ironwood (aka Hophornbeam - Ostrya virginiana) isn't an easy process; it requires the use of a Dremel Tool and involves making quite the dusty mess.
However, I was smart enough to scout the Ironwood bush on the back of my dad's property after the big storm and hauled some nice pieces of fallen tree (no easy feat, since ironwood is about twice the weight of oak) back to his place to dry, so that I could hopefully play with some carvings this winter.
I also needed to pick up a new Dremel tool, as our old Sears knock-off rotary tool had finally bit the dust a couple of years ago, which I did over X-mas as a mutual present for dad and myself.
Anyhow, what I felt most like, in the midst of my odd mood, was to go work on some carvings, so I drove over to Gore Bay, found the ironwood, found the Dremel, found our Belt-sender for initial shaping and set to work. After a couple of minutes of initial shaping I stopped and hunted around until I turned up dad's good dust mask, as ironwood dust just doesn't taste that good!
As I settled into the Zen of carving and tried to remember all the tricks I used to know from my short stint carving for the body modders a thought occurred to me (Satori! Sproing!) and I finally understood what had been going on in my brain.
I'm a creative person through and through, but in the past few weeks I hadn't really created much, well, not much that I was really happy with, I hadn't made anything "beautiful".
And why is creating beautiful things important to creative mind, I thought? Because the world today is just filled with far too much ugliness. Listen to the news, it's always negative, listen to corporate attitudes, Sony, filled with sour grapes, is slandering Nintendo, Microsoft and Apple, the great old rivals, are back at taking pot shots at one another with the release of Vista. People have been blown up, people have been hassled at airport security, people have had their identities stolen, people have run into trouble with overzealous website security, people are blaming other people, people are angry, people are protesting, people are being spied on, people are losing rights, people have to fight with DRM, people are being lied to so that corporations can make money and the spamalanche is worse than ever… The ugliness of North American society just goes on and on.
This is not to say that there is no beauty in the world, because beauty can be found in just about every corner of our world, both natural and unnatural, however, it's like we're being forced to view the world through some sort of coke bottle glasses (or whatever the opposite of rose-coloured glasses are) and everything is distorted and ugly.
Part of this could be because North America just has no appreciation for the arts, just look at the way the current Canuckian regime is slashing arts funding.
But, there it was, my golden answer, I'm a creative person and I'm being exposed to a constant shitstream of ugliness, the only reaction that could possibly be natural is to rebel! And how does a creative person rebel? By creating something beautiful!
And what happens when a creative person runs into roadblocks that prevent the creation of beautiful things? Whether it be circumstance or just a little dip in the road involving a low period creatively. Why, we get incredibly frustrated! Angry! The need to rebel grows and grows until we can't stand it anymore and we simply have to, absolutely must create something beautiful!
Now, how does one define beauty? Well, I'm here today to say that it's certainly not 90lb models wearing Tommy Hilfiger!
Beauty is a natural force of the universe, beauty cannot be invented, beauty is, beauty can only be re-discovered and interpreted, this is the true function of artists and when we're not connected to the source of universe beauty, it can drive us insane.
So, what is universal beauty then? I don't believe it's my right to even speculate, because honestly, like everything, beauty is also a matter of perspective. I know what is beautiful to me: natural curves, the fractal design of trees, galactic spirals, certain pieces of music and voices, certain combinations of words, certain paints and colours on a board, patterns, chain patterns, polished stones, grandmother ocean and a lot more…
No, the point is that I just felt like I needed to (in my predictably verbose way) pass on my satori and hopefully encourage fellow creative people to just reach out, touch the universal beauty and please, just bring a little piece of it back into our world, the ugliness is becoming stifling.
Posted by Dylon on February 13, 2007 3:49 AM |
Permalink
Comments
Wow, Dylon! I totally wasn't expecting to find a post like this so early in the morning. It's quite refreshing, actually.
John was going to make me a ring out of ironwood. He used to do a lot of woodworking. He's made quite a number of beautiful wood creations. Anyway, he never did get around to making the ring. I think he didn't have the right tools at the time. I could see how making a ring out of wood would be a challenge!
Hehe, ya, it's funny all the things that I have like this floating around in my head, I seldom seem to find the time to get them all down on electric paper, however. And then I'm never sure if I've conveyed my thought or idea properly!
Funny, just the other day I was looking at the Etsy page of a really excellent wooden ring maker.
June 2010