Spontaneous Beauty

Today I was at a Chinese restaurant, waiting to pick up an order so I could make a delivery. The food wasn’t ready yet, so I had a little time to look around. I spend the time examining a landscape painting on the wall.

(A copy, rather, not the original painting.)

In the image’s foreground a group of cranes gathered, some standing, some in flight, near a waterfall just to the right of the painting’s center. Hills covered in trees rose to the left and right — with a distinctive style in the way the trees were painted, highly stylized and almost resembling spiderwebs. Beyond the waterfall on the right side of the painting a mist thickened about everything, till at the very upper right could be seen only the vaguest outlines of a mountain range. To the left, cliffs, more trees, more hills, and at the very top more mountains veiled in mist.

In all this landscape, the only sign of humanity appeared in the form of a half-dozen tiny houses with smoke rising from their invisible chimneys.

It’s a common enough conceit: a vast landscape with only the tiniest hint of human influence. The underlying thought is to show us our insignificance in the vast unfolding of nature. (Or our participation in and non-distinction from nature, if you want to take perhaps a slightly more sophisticated view.)

I couldn’t help but consider my surroundings. A kind of run-down strip mall in the Shively area of Louisville, Kentucky. Look outside the window and you see nothing but parked vehicles and black top, at least until you spot the row of stores on the other side of the street. Here’s a Burger King. Here’s a gray Nissan. Here’s a couple walking slowly past the window.

The less said the better, probably, but it was an area of town where the local shoe store carried perhaps a greater cultural significance than it would in other parts of the city.

Anyway. Interesting contrasts.

It put me in mind of a friend in high school who said humanity was “the cancer of the earth.” And viewing that shimmering parking lot beside that gorgeous waterfall and those mountains shrouded in mist — how could I disagree?

But then again… what is that parking lot but another humble cottage, insignificant on a hill, putting off a little smoke and nothing more?

Situated in the midst of this artificial world, the middle of the city, embedded in what they call civilization, it’s easy to think it will last forever. I’m sure at one time it was easy to think Rome’s empire would last forever. I’m sure the dinosaurs never thought their time would come to an end.

I don’t want to come off as a cheap critic of civilization. I’m not blind to its advantages. But it has its costs.

Maybe that’s why I find moments like looking at a painting while waiting to deliver an order so precious. It’s a gratuitous gift from Being. Spontaneous aesthetic experience.

The spontaneity is key, I think.

Now, I’m the last person in the world who would knock art museums. Art is one of the handful of human activities that semi-reliably allows access to experiences of beauty and illumination. And yes, if we value beauty, it behooves us to seek out aesthetic experiences: read poetry, listen to music, visit art museums, and any of the countless other disciplines, devotions, and means of approaching the beautiful.

It’s only by regularly seeking out beauty that we keep alive that part of ourselves — dare I call it holy? — that is capable of being overwhelmed by beauty.

But there’s a paradox here. Because what we really want is for beauty to strike us so forcefully it’s like a burst of shrapnel to the chest — crushing, overwhelming, annihilating beauty. But for that to happen it must come to us. We can’t go to it.

But of course we have to go to it — to the art museum, for instance. Practice and hone that eye for beauty through exposure to it, through taking pains for it, and through making the effort of articulating precisely what we find beautiful.

But beauty is a variable thing, and there are days when she won’t speak to us.

Like the Trappist monks who sing their hymns every day whether they feel the presence of God or not, we have to continually invite beauty. To evoke or invoke beauty, even on the days when we can’t experience it.

All of this is a long way of saying it’s important, crucial even, to seek out beauty.

But the most intense aesthetic experiences come when you don’t seek them. When you’re walking down the path with your eyes on the ground and lift up your gaze to see a brilliant sunburst wreathed with pink cloud. When you’re annoyed at a sudden downpour, then turn the corner to see the rainbow stretched out across the clouds. When you’re waiting to pick up a delivery order at a Chinese restaurant and suddenly have a few minutes to study a painting you might otherwise never have given a second look.

In moments like that, even the ugliness of this world appears to serve the purpose of beauty. By serving as the contrast that sets off beauty’s splendor.