Beauty by the Books

It’s been one of those days. Driving four hours home on three hours sleep, then another hour and a half towards DC, before switching seats with my stepdad. That drive home is where I get most of my thinking done, and as much as I hate it, I can’t deny that it’s an almost invaluable resource for brainstorming or just mulling over life. Adding my lack of sleep into the equation negates the possibility of any intentional thought, meaning my mind had four hours to itself while the rest of me busied itself with the mundane process of adhering to traffic laws.

One thing I have come to realize after a lifetime of scattered introspection is that I am an analyst. For better or worse, I have a natural inclination to break down and pore over every aspect of anything I leave in front of my thoughts for too long. This would be an almost eternal process if I allowed it to be, but over the years I’ve learned to keep these habits restrained. The reason this precaution is necessary is because a mind left unchecked is like a curious toddler with a screwdriver. Quick to disassemble and examine anything put in front of him, leaving petty concerns such as whether he can put it back together as an afterthought.

Now that I’m in the passenger seat, and have an hour or two to kill, I’m going to try to commit my thoughts to paper. I probably won’t be in this car for the entire blog, in fact this trip will have probably happened last week by now. Probably written at six different times in different places and patched together from different states of mind. Before I begin, I’ll go ahead and apologize if my transitions aren’t all there, I’m going to try my best to map out my stream of consciousness in a coherent form, but sometimes that’s not always possible. I also want to preface my thoughts with the disclaimer that very few of these are actually new ideas; I’m probably going to hit a range of topics as I go through, but don’t expect to be blown away by some new epiphany. I’m probably going to ask more questions than I answer, and I’m probably going to look into some pretty cliché approaches for validity, so if you’re still interested, I ask you to bear with me. This is another of those times where my main purpose for writing is to put the ideas in front of me in a physical medium, so that I can actually focus on breaking them down with a little more concentrated effort. I’m posting this here because I’d like to include anyone who may take something from my ramblings or shed some light on some areas that are a bit dim to me. Any opinions on anything, positive or negative, are welcomed.

Anyway it’s so late that its early at this point, and some of these topics may seem kind of emo. As much disdain as I hold for all things emo, I believe it is acceptable to briefly inhabit a state of “constructive emo”, for the purpose of resolving these conflicts, as opposed to retaining and reinforcing them as the face of a social identity. I would also like to point out that MacWord does not recognize “emo” as a word. I am eternally thankful for this, but I digress. If you haven’t noticed I also have a habit of prefacing in a rather lengthy and distracted fashion. So, moving on.

The first lucid thought to emerge from the inevitable fog that sets into an idle mind was the image of the road before me. I was on a two-lane road, with miles of trees stretched before me on either side. The leaves were changing, a mesh of beautiful earthy tones on a stark blue backdrop. The sky was so clear and perfectly shaded that it felt unnatural. I felt like I was only moments away from crashing my car through an airbrushed movie set. It was beautiful, but naturally I can only be preoccupied by one notion for so long, so inevitably the scene had to be broken down. I was trying to dissect the panorama in search of beauty. The following is a rough sequence of thoughts, and this is where my writing may become slightly lacking in the relevance and transition departments.

What specifically was beautiful in this scene? The leaves change because the trees are deciduous and winter is fast approaching. The sky is always blue, but perhaps the lack of clouds makes it beautiful. I suppose that would signal a low chance of rain, and more sunlight, meaning more vitamin D. But vitamin D, isn’t widely considered a thing of beauty, neither is the increased risk of skin cancer, multiple sclerosis or having to squint your eyes while driving. So it must be the leaves. The leaves were originally green because of the abundance of chlorophyll which absorbs and processes all but the green spectrum of light. The leaves are changing color because their chlorophyll supply is being allowed to dwindle in preparation to fall from the tree. Is it a fact that the spectrum of reds and yellows is more beautiful than green? Is beauty located in a specific hue? Just our eye's perception of a few key wavelengths? Of course this isn’t the case, but perhaps specific patterns of hues, certain contrasts of colors. If so, can beauty be broken down into a formula? A set sequence or position of color that results in a beautiful image?

Given that blue (~467 nm) is the backdrop and green (~505 nm) is the grass, Hollowell Postulate 17 would dictate that a scattered midground of reds and yellows (575-700nm) on dark brown lines, and lit from a 75 degree angle will result in beauty.

If this or similar theories were ever presented to me in school, I would cast down my pen and storm from the room. I would lock my door and wait for the world to end. But even as I say this, I know I have a couple film/photography buffs for friends that could probably teach me all sorts of ways that shades and lights can be manipulated to make any image aesthetically pleasing. If this were the case however, would that not make beauty objective? Universal? Our own well-worn axiom would disagree and say that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, subjective, arbitrary. For this to hold true beauty must not lie in the formulaic distribution of colors and light, but in the objects themselves. And not just the objects, but in what these objects evoke, what emotion these colors conjure. But is this even completely true, if this were the case then a vast majority of the subject matter taught in film and photography classes could be called into question. Are there just some things that are unarguably beautiful, while some others depend on the individual? Is the sun setting on a coastline, or sifting through the edges of a cloud beautiful regardless; whereas a park bench would only be beautiful to someone who is reminded of sunny conversation with a loved one, or particularly fond of sitting down? Do certain colors innately correspond to particular emotions? Or maybe they’ve been ingrained to do so. “Warm” and “cool” colors, “feeling blue”, “green with envy”, “red with anger” et cetera.

Even if their beauty lies in the emotion they evoke and not necessarily in the colors or images themselves, most of these things carry a universal beauty. While it can’t be precisely described or put in so many words it is widely accepted as beautiful. But why? Why when broken down can we not find beauty in the specific details? Why isn’t beauty a factual occurrence? How is it that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts? Why can the same scene be described as beautiful or not beautiful? The sun sitting lazily on the horizon, as last light peeks over the edges of a cloud. The light given off by a perpetually burning orb 93,000,000 miles away is being partially blocked by an accumulation of water vapor in the lower troposphere, as this location on Earth is slowly rotating away.

One thing I have noticed is that in different people beauty is ascribed to things below the physical and finite. Even people who have an aesthetically pleasing phenotype may not be considered beautiful. Pretty, yes. Attractive, yes. Beautiful, not necessarily. This may be debatable depending on your personal definition of beauty and how lightly you use the term. In a similar vein to the differences in the way you “love” your mother, your significant other, orange soda, and lamp. In my personal experience “beauty is more than skin deep” as They’re fond of saying. Someone can be physically attractive but be personally unattractive to me. General demeanor and the attitudes with which people hold themselves can bolster the physical form into actual beauty, or undermine it completely and turn me off to some people. These things are purely subjective, completely preferential and may in many ways be an imperfect method of categorization considering it only furthers the intangibility of beauty and leaves it even more ill-defined. When it comes to people, I feel beauty becomes almost circumstantial in some cases. That’s not exactly the word I want to use, in fact a few of the words I’ve used thus far have seemed ill suited to my meaning. By circumstantial I mean that people aren’t always at a consistent demeanor, this applies to both the beholden and the beholder. A person that I meet, with qualities that I would see as beautiful, may be having a bad day or at an uncommonly sour temperament, which inevitably affects my perception of them and how I judge them. I use the term “judge” because as much as I try to keep an open mind about people I won’t lie to you, or myself, and say I don’t judge on first impressions. I like to think I give everyone ample opportunity to prove themselves otherwise, but I’ve found that my initial impressions of people are generally accurate to a close degree and it would be foolish to ignore them for higher ideals. This is a bit of a different topic but it does bring me to another point, that my mood and current state of mind affect how I see people, and how I perceive beauty. The biggest example of this that I can think of is this entire blog. If I had been in a different state of mind, the sky and the trees and the sun would have all been beautiful, plain and simple, but I was feeling more pensive, and needed to digest the scenery rather than just accept it as beautiful. While I’m none too proud of it, I do sometimes take an inclination to the pessimistic. While I acknowledge this and try to counteract it, occasionally my self-diagnostic senses relax and my outlook on life and the world around me is affected. My pessimism generally manifests itself in a way very similar to this blog, I breakdown happiness into baser elements where flaws in perception or lapses in logic become much more evident. This undeniably affects my analyses of people, both strangers and acquaintances alike. Good friends are generally spared from these moods because I’m more comfortable with my relationship to them, and when they enter my mind or my life I become more aware that I’m looking through a darker lens and adjust my view. This leads me to another point, that people I’m already more comfortable with are easier to see beauty in. I can only assume the same applies with everyone else, the way little personality quirks that could be called irritating by the unattached passerby are dubbed endearing by close friends or loved ones. Or the way people can probably list off their physical preferences in the opposite sex, yet will often settle down with people who may have none of these features. Anyway this is just another day in my mind, I probably only thought about this for like an hour on the ride home, but I’ll probably comb back over it soon and add more. I apologize for the abrupt end, but this has been waiting patiently on my desktop for almost three weeks and I feared it was growing cold.