Thursday, September 04, 2014

Gemlike Flame

The aesthetic desire is that for the perfection of the moment.


These are observations, transient and fleeting, of a kind of beatific vision, a realization of vast, perceptually comprehensible beauty and meaning, at the far edges of reason and beyond.

Intimations of this reality are continuously emerging, coalescing, and dispersing, and the artist seeks to express them in every medium.  In partaking of their representations, a listener or audience gains insight into depths of experience not usually within the general range of awareness that are, given the vicissitudes of modern life, difficult to sustain without the development of a contemplative temperament.

Yet, once experienced, these visions and sounds may spark the inclination toward a finer, more intense perspective and a more sustained expansion of consciousness, leading to personal, and ultimately cultural, attainments of lasting value.