Reading a book is like having a deep conversation.*
Watching a movie is like experiencing vivid dreaming.
Listening to music is like hearing the sound of emotions.
Viewing a photograph or a painting is like stopping time.
All forms of art, provides an opportunity to engage in an aesthetic experience.
A doctor applies an anaesthetic when she wants the patient to feel nothing. Anaesthetic leads to numbness. On the other hand, an aesthetic awareness is a door to wonderment.
So much of what we consume today is like anaesthesia. Yet, what is needed is aesthetics that un-numbs us, that provides us a “waking up” to the inherent beauty that is possible to be engaged with.
As Proust says, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” Engaging in art has a way of clearing the fog in our eyes and waking our senses.
Art might be “useless” in a conventional economy paradigm, but it is highly valuable from what it means to be human.
Footnote:
*Reading a poem is like listening to the the truth, told “slant”.
Photo by Mr TT
Love this, I’ve often been fascinated by the link between these words . Beautifully articulated
This is amazing wisdom! I apply this kind of “aesthetic pedagogy” in my teaching, and speak of it on a TV show I host and co-produce called Public Voice Salon. I mostly learned about it from my friend and mentor, Maxine Greene. Are you an educator Daryl? Thank you so much for this wonderful blog! And keep up your remarkable and important work.
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