To the Unattainable, Unreachable and Intangible
There is beauty in everything in the world, as it is, but also there is more than what’s on the surface, there is more than what is apparent. That is what great art is trying to tell us, show us, and more importantly tell and show itself.
This something else does not have to be literary there in some sort of material or even “spiritual” essence. But it is there. It’s all fine to internalize the revolutionary pathos of the enlightenment and discard such imprecise and contradictory thinking, and I do value rationality as an atheist from an early age, but there is more, there has to be more, and that more is not religion, or spirituality or something we can dissect and touch and feel and ultimately reason about.
There is something in the sum, something intangible, that is greater than the parts. Only its on the tip of our tongues, unreachable, unattainable, but we feel it deeply.
We are not just biological machines with a mechanism in the brain where self awareness emerges, that slowly decay and die. Well, we are exactly that, in one way, but we are not JUST THAT.
There is more to a Beethoven symphony than a string of pleasing notes and harmonies. Like that elusive memory in the back of your brain and it's just beyond your perception.
That is what all Art (with a capital A) strains to communicate in all the masterpieces, so sincerely, so honestly, and I admire it so much for that ... There is something there, and if we ever perceive it it will vanish.
There is a scene from The Green Knight , this one:
Gawain: Wait! Is that it? Is that really all there is?
Green Knight: What else ought there be?
And it is fine accepting this mantra on the surface, but it's not as simple as that, there is something, call it the imagination or anything else , it's real, we feel it sometimes, that both exists and doesn’t and will never be neatly analyzed by any philosophy.