I’m not embarrassed or disturbed that I’ve lost so much, anymore than a farmer would be embarrassed or disturbed that the wind has blown the chaff from the threshing floor and left only the wheat. You may not understand this until you’re much older, but to people of my age it’s given, if one will take it, that things become at once more beautiful, more intense, and more inexplicable. You learn to see with your emotions and feel with your reason. If at its end the life you’re living takes on the attributes of art, it doesn’t matter if you’ve forgotten where you put your reading glasses.
The character Jules in the novel Paris in the Present Tense by Mark Helprin
Jules is an aging, but still vigorous musician in Paris. He has had a full life and is considering suicide to help his daughter and grandson financially, which is especially important because the grandson is dying. Reflecting on his life, he makes the above statement. I found it apposite because I too am growing old and it is true that we seem to separate the wheat from the chaff at this stage of life; because we have so little time we don’t care to waste it on the daily crap we have to wade through in this postmodern world of ours. This also has the wonderful effect of revealing beauty in the world because its general properties are brought forward out of the clutter.
If you’ve been reading this blog, you’ll recognize a theme; my artistic purpose is to present an object, place or person in a new light, lifting it out of the data captured by the digital negative to reveal what I consider its truest nature. I also present it compositionally, in an ever so slightly odd way to momentarily force the viewer to actually look at the image, rather than prejudging it as some already known object: “Oh, that’s a tree.”
This makes my artistic process rational in that the image is planned to a significant degree, but it is primarily emotional because Jules is right, as you age you begin to “see with your emotions.” Or maybe this is just the growing childishness of old age.
Blog 82 Beauty Before Age
I’m not embarrassed or disturbed that I’ve lost so much, anymore than a farmer would be embarrassed or disturbed that the wind has blown the chaff from the threshing floor and left only the wheat. You may not understand this until you’re much older, but to people of my age it’s given, if one will take it, that things become at once more beautiful, more intense, and more inexplicable. You learn to see with your emotions and feel with your reason. If at its end the life you’re living takes on the attributes of art, it doesn’t matter if you’ve forgotten where you put your reading glasses.
The character Jules in the novel Paris in the Present Tense by Mark Helprin
Jules is an aging, but still vigorous musician in Paris. He has had a full life and is considering suicide to help his daughter and grandson financially, which is especially important because the grandson is dying. Reflecting on his life, he makes the above statement. I found it apposite because I too am growing old and it is true that we seem to separate the wheat from the chaff at this stage of life; because we have so little time we don’t care to waste it on the daily crap we have to wade through in this postmodern world of ours. This also has the wonderful effect of revealing beauty in the world because its general properties are brought forward out of the clutter.
If you’ve been reading this blog, you’ll recognize a theme; my artistic purpose is to present an object, place or person in a new light, lifting it out of the data captured by the digital negative to reveal what I consider its truest nature. I also present it compositionally, in an ever so slightly odd way to momentarily force the viewer to actually look at the image, rather than prejudging it as some already known object: “Oh, that’s a tree.”
This makes my artistic process rational in that the image is planned to a significant degree, but it is primarily emotional because Jules is right, as you age you begin to “see with your emotions.” Or maybe this is just the growing childishness of old age.