What paints are on your palette?
For the Romantics, the natural world was a place of depth and distance.
It was a place of the “sublime.”
This word held a particular notion, distinct from beauty.
Beauty is when you look up into the night sky and see a glowing parade of lights stretching to the farthest heights of heaven.
The sublime is when you look out into the night sky and see a void sprinkled with sparks that goes down and down in what seems like an endless abyss.
The sublime is that bigger thing than you.
The thing that imposes itself on you and bears down on you.
Beauty is, yes, still bigger than you — even in a simple dandelion, it’s bigger than you.
But it calls you up, like a gust that would elevate you into itself.
The sublime threatens you; beauty invites you.
So which do you see when you look at the night sky?
Do you see heaven? Or the abyss?
I’ve written some about this before with regards to how we see the world.
I have a friend who is deeply paranoid.
A lot of things, I suspect, play into this.
But there’s one thing I always urge him to take account of: how do you look at the world?
Is the yard free and open, something you, even as an adult, would leap into and run barefoot in?
Or is it insect-infested, maybe with a few rocks you’d step on and injure your feet?
These things, ultimately, are for you to decide.
You’re not fabricating some fictional world for yourself.
You’re not looking at the world through rose-colored glasses.
Why is cynicism the default?
Why aren’t we all allowed to be a bit more like Robin Williams’ Dead Poets Society character?
Can’t we climb upon our desks and see things a bit differently?
Again, you’re not inventing a reality of your own.
There are hot dogs and salads in the world.
Which of these you put into your body, that is your choice.
There’s negativity and there’s positivity.
There’s a world of problems and possibilities.
You get to choose which of these you put into your mind.
But you also can see ravishing beauty and the chilling sublime, all in one place.
P.S.
Auguries of Innocence, William Blake
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
Orange is the first color on my pallette since age 11, as I first recall. It was the t-shirt color I chose to have my horse's name "ironed" on. Red emerged later, even while my university color was blue. My creative compass guided me back to orange, in large part thanks to its presence with chartreuse and purple pervading Paris and a large gym bag in Central Park carried by a trio whom I serendipitously met at Club 51 later that night and my Amici Italiani they became!