What is Beauty?

Fun times, all 3 people who actually read my blog beforehand: I get to use it for two classes this semester! For assignments and everything! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!


First thing we were asked in Visual Communications is to define what we appreciate as beauty.

Boy, that's an unfair starting point. Haven't poets and theologians and artists and philosophers been arguing what beauty is since the dawn of recorded man? It's a good thing there's the caveat of what I find attractive, because we could be here all day otherwise.

As opposed to just 23 and a half hours.

The first order of business for me is to make one of my famous proclamations. As anyone who's into English as a language in the slightest degree can tell you, the most powerful thing in our language is the simple declarative sentence. So here it goes:

Beauty is.

I realize that's rather abstract and vague and grandiose, but so then is my concept of beauty. Everything is in it's own way lovely. I suppose the only extra information I need to add is "as long as it is not destructive." And I suppose even then, that's not entirely true. As a fan of MythBusters, some of my favorite things are large explosions, taking matter and then scattering it elsewhere in tiny, small pieces.

At the end of the day, out of all the things that interest me most, the thing I always come back to is women. Am I sometimes misogynistic? Yes. Am I sometimes resentful toward the fairer sex? Yes. I am many unfavorable things in the subject of gender relations, but at the end of the day, I believe I see deeper into people than they see into themselves. I have a gift of summing up a person's character upon moments of meeting them. I am very rarely wrong in these assertions. What this has to do with women: I see marvel in just about every woman I know. A get up and go attitude, or a desire to maintain pleasant physical appearances, or the thirst for knowledge, or motherliness, or maybe just the depth of soul behind beautiful eyes. Sexist? Probably. I prefer to think of myself as the hopeless romantic jaded by my own failures.

I also find beauty in grand schemes coming together. It's probably why I'm such a huge fan of football as opposed to the other major sports. Most people probably just see the big pass or the great run. I see the blocking, the distractions in alternate route-running, the simple play calling, the way that team drafts new players. The whole thing. It's all amazing and wonderful to me. It's why I love the music I do. Often discordant, it still works when tied together with a funky bass groove or an off-beat syncopated drum beat.

Oddly enough, I also appreciate simple. I know that seems like a direct opposite of what I just listed, and I suppose to a great degree it is so. I suppose we'll classify this dichotomy as "harmony." Not bland. Not exquisite. Just right. I suppose an example of this is my taste in clothing. If I could wear the same thing every day, it'd be my brown chord pants and a plain white T. I don't need patterns, but there is just enough texture in chords so it's not flat. Both are rather neutral colors, too. I like earth tones. You won't see me wearing bright oranges or yellows as I prefer darker greens, clay reds and brown.

I could go on and on, I'm sure. Let me just sum my tastes up this way: I have many of them.