Anaesthetic vs. Aesthetic Experience

Daryl Chow

Mar 26, 2020

Updates from

Full Circles

Reflections on Living

In the 03/14/2020 edition:
*|MC:TOC|*

Anaesthetic vs. Aesthetic Experience

By Daryl Chow, MA, Ph.D. on Mar 06, 2020 08:00 pm

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. If aesthetic is numbness, 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:

* If I can say anything about poetry, reading a poem is like listening to the the truth, told “slant”.

Photo by Mr TT

The post Anaesthetic vs. Aesthetic Experience appeared first on Full Circles.

Read in browser »