pulling beauty closer

don't turn away from feeling

Jun 27, 2024

I hope that you’ll forgive me if I let myself be too sentimental here. I may be as seasonal as the migrating birds in the way that summer hits me; the longer days unlock something within me. My hands vibrate with an electricity even as sleep eludes me. I google whether we need less sleep in these months, whether science can explain why I feel so moved to move, why I want to bite into each second of the day more than ever before. Every time around this year, I feel an insatiable hunger for feeling; I pull beauty towards me, ask for it to strike me. I wonder why I can’t always feel like this, I wonder if others feel like this, if it used to be easier to feel like this.

So I was delighted when I learned about Charles Taylor’s new book, in which he writes about the human need for “cosmic connection,” the way a being can be connected to the surrounding world in a way “shot through with joy, significance, inspiration.” This resonated with what I had been feeling, what I wanted to understand better. To Taylor, this experience was more accessible many years ago in a world that was enchanted with the divine (religion, etc.), one that was undermined by the rise of the Enlightenment and the resulting scientific and technological world that we inhabit all these years later. Now, we thirst for connection while leaning into the individualistic world that has been built around us. But could we resurrect the feeling of cosmic connection, find the enchantment that has been lost, keep our eyes from growing dull and hollow?

Adam Gopnik, in his review of the book for the New Yorker, summarizes Taylor’s approach to the problem this way:

The best way to heal the wound is through poetry and music, of the sort that doesn’t offer propositions but casts spells and enacts rituals. The arts are not subsidiary places of secondary sensations but the primary place where we go to recall feelings of wholeness, of harmony not just with ‘Nature’—the craggy peaks the Romantics loved and the Italian lakes they lingered by—but with existence itself. Poetry and music do this by escaping the constraints of intellect, by going at things atmospherically rather than argumentatively.

This makes sense to me. I spent years before dabbling in self-help and attempting to grow myself through meditation and spirituality in hopes that they would help me to live with less anxiety and to be a better person. I found small improvements in my life but found what I was really looking for — to feel more at ease in the world, more connected to what lay beyond me, to be softer — when I re-focused my attention on consuming great art. Seeking the great films of the past, or trying to really listen to albums that people loved, or discovering poetry, old and new, or going into the art museums and seeing paintings and video art that seemed to move my soul around my body: these drew me into the world and made me feel whole more than meditation or books on Buddhism did.

As someone who regularly is pushed to the verge of tears by music, by film, by words, by food, and sometimes even by a beam of light that shines just right, this feeling of wholeness seems easily apparent. However, I wonder if there are those unfamiliar with these sublime experiences of art, when the body seems to forget how to be a body and your senses perceive in new ways. Have you seen something with such immense beauty that you feel like it has changed you in some way, brightened some indescribable part of you? Or maybe you haven’t let yourself attend to the significance of a work of art, let the tears in your eyes linger for long enough to realize that you’ve forgotten yourself in the experience of the work. It’s so easy to turn away from feeling, to apply a digital analgesic rather than confront what can be unlocked.

Here’s one thing that moves me: an artist collapsing into their work, their humanity too human and too big to stay at the sidelines, the artist turned art. As I sat on my couch on Sunday, I let YouTube recommendations guide me through classic jazz performances. Suddenly, it’s 1976 in Montreux, Switzerland, and there sits the great Nina Simone with short hair and a black dress, her hands on the piano. She begins the final song of her set — “Feelings” by Morris Albert. Of course, her voice is brilliant here, it always is, but what’s surprising is her commentary that she adds in, mournfully considering why someone would need to forget their feelings of love (as the song goes). “What a shame to have to write a song like that,” she considers, effortlessly moving between her speaking voice and singing voice, just before performing the song better than anyone ever performed it, an expression betraying a connection the intent of the song, fingers gracefully moving across the keys, her contralto shimmering through the original song before adding in new lyrics to devastate further (”oh Lord, I wish I never lived this long”), a voice-cracking improvisation imperfect enough to remind you of the humanity in greatness. And tears threaten to cloud my vision, wet my cheeks.

Before I knew it, the performance was over, YouTube was ready to show something else, I was swallowing the lump in my throat, and the moment, the feeling, had passed, even as “Feelings” lingered in my mind. Another video played, I was frozen in my seat until I went to my watch history to look at the performance again. I wrote down the name, I knew it was important, but my day continued with a bit of light in my chest.

Later, at my writer’s group, I watched the performance again, only to remember that weeping at my laptop was probably in poor taste. I shut my laptop and drained my glass of water, trying to dilute the emotions. And it worked, soon I was back on my computer, attempting to write something cogent and logical. Before I knew it, I was back to “normal” after that — scrolling Twitter, raising my eyebrows at confusing takes, and shaking my head to let everyone know that I disagreed with stupid ones. In this way, I understood Taylor’s thesis — even as I had this miraculous work accessible, the numbing was easier and more convenient. It was almost second nature to avoid confronting the unfamiliar sensations, preferring to immediately engage my intellect. It’s effortful to commit to returning back to the feeling, re-encountering what strikes you and not turning away from it. This must be where the connection comes from.

But even now, as I think about this performance, even in my description of it, I wish to try and be logical here, explain why I love it. Could seeing the vulnerability of Ms. Simone be connected with my own desire to be vulnerable with others? Could my love for piano keys and meandering vocals stem from something from my childhood? Could I come to understand it all with my silly little brain? I can continue to try and look for answers, gesture at any number of small details that might provide a hint, but where would it lead me? Her performance wasn’t trying to prove anything or convince me of something new, and yet, once I let myself face it, it changed me somehow, energized me and filled up my cup, let the feeling of this season expand.

When I try to intellectualize it all or when I try to turn away from the experience, I have to stop myself, let the feeling stay and let her voice reverberate in my head, “here in my heart, you'll always stay here in my heart.” And she will, and others will, so the summer won’t ever end.

💧 Drops of the Week 💧

PLAYLIST - june 24 - some jazz, some electronic, some hyperpop, some rock
POEM - “Making Love To Myself” by James L. White - another piece that devastates me, connects me to the world and where the artist collapses into the poem