on beauty
This note was originally in the blog I began last Summer (http://jonatjoybells.blogspot.com), writing about my experiences at Joybells orphanage in India and the crazy antics (not so much) that followed in my trip around Southeast Asia.
Anyway, I was reading through some of the stuff I wrote, and this one, because of it’s pondering references to the future, stuck out the most for me.
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In my experience, I’ve found that the most potent aspect of beauty about music has much to do with memory: when I am carried away by a certain song, it is often because it takes me back into myself, re-presenting a certain ethos, or character, that might be a simple (though encompassing) feeling, or an entire memory associated with the song.
I’ve been thinking about this because my parents just sent me two data discs full of music that I had burned for India and summarily forgot at home. It has all my favourites—Wilco, Iron and Wine, Nick Drake, Pat Metheny—and all my favourites have that one particular characteristic of beauty in common, of bringing up and unifying present experience with memory.
I’ve also found, in my nearly-twenty-two long (short) years of life, that beauty has this same way of showing up in regards to a long and deep experience you’ve had, or a place you’ve spent some time in. And the interesting thing is that it is almost always not just a playback of the moment, experience or place—i.e. it is not the same thing as experiencing it the first time—but instead, it is re-presented in such richness and fullness that is generally impossible to feel when truly living directly in the moment. It is, as I said, a unique unification of past and present where the landscape of your past experience envelopes you; you re-experience it, but this time (if I may), with perhaps a sense of meaning to it all—where, now that you’ve experience it all, it comes together for you, generally not intellectually but instead viscerally, from deep in your chest. This is what I mean by ethos, or character. It is not the pathos of momentary emotional stimulation or the logos of intellectual understanding, but the unified character, ethos, of a certain place or situation. (For me, this has much to do with God, but I don’t think you need to believe in one to necessarily understand what I’m talking about.)
For this reason, I wonder what India will be like when I return. I’m not so naïve as to think that I’m missing something—I am thoroughly enjoying the moment here—but at the same time, I wonder at what sort of character India will have for me when I return, how it will have changed me and the way I look at things. Because I’ve very much fallen into an Indian mode here. I’m still surprised every once in a while, but the “THIS IS INDIA!” moments which slap you in the face with varying degrees of gentleness have slowed. I’ve settled into the school rhythm quite well, I’m completely comfortable when I visit the cities, I’ve come to love chai almost as much as coffee. Basically, my in-the-moment mentality has adjusted significantly to where I am in-the-moment, leading me to believe that when I am no longer in this Indian moment, when I’m back home, that I’ll be in for some pleasant surprises when I’m taken back into my Indian memories.
So, what music will remind me of India? What moments will stick out particularly large in memory? I have ideas, but I’ll let it alone for now. The surprise of beauty, or joy, is one of the reasons why I love life so much, and why I’m so keen to plunge into the moment: a miner for glimpses of beauty.
