Editor's Note.
In Idyllic (or IDLE-ic) Vermont, as the case may be, I spent a summer reading seven volumes of Proust and writing poetry. Why? I was asked by many. At my surprised glance back, the questions became more detailed: I mean, what is this for? What do you get out of it? Forced to answer, I resigned to the perfect eye-roll inciter: For the soul. Some appreciated the word's inherent lack of meaning and realized that I was purposefully (and paradoxically) taking time out to read for the sake of reading, to stretch time across a lake, leave it on a page, stuff it into a traffic cone. Others rolled their eyes.
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By Veeranganakumari Solanki, Issue 11, Beauty And The Useless, September 2012
If beauty is a “combination of qualities that pleases the intellect or moral sense”, it is also the oft abandonment of reason. The things we do for the sake of Beauty! Art frequently utilizes everyday objects and renders them utterly useless. Art also comments on the ultimate ephemeral nature of both the object and the beauty that it attains. Here are some instances.
Perfectly good cloth, shredded, stitched together, dyed. It is beautiful because it is associated with the natural rhythm of a woman.
A single red rose marooned in a vase surrounded by red rose petals. The rose will weep, wilt and perish like the other petals that once belonged to something as beautiful. Its beauty is ephemeral. The beautiful fragrance will rot and become the un-wanted. As it perishes, its beauty will be forgotten and it will die alone becoming a Fragrance of (the) earth. It will no longer please, impress, woo.
The birth of a child is a Gift toiled for and then rejected and dumped when it is an un-wanted female foetus. This will grow up to feed on hard-earned bread, thirst on knowledge gained from stolen time, celebrate the joy of going into another family, only to leave her own to toil. Gift, an overpowering skull of a female foetus, made of sparklingly repulsive bags of urine, sweat and tears, attract and revolt at the same time. They empower the cannons of inner beauty that have stood the test of time.
A toothbrush and comb: objects of routine that allow us to look at ourselves in the early morning and impose order and convention onto our appearances. Now un-useful, they have been discarded and are full of mould – no longer an object of beauty, no longer an object of desire. Nothing is permanent. Like beauty, the products that keep it alive are transient.
Beauty was made timeless through photographs, images and fashion cycles. That never changed, but the definition of what was beautiful did. The old will always be precious and everything that is precious will always be beautiful, and if it’s not, it can be photo-shopped! This is not necessarily a solution and often leads to a marred, pixellated notion of beauty where and if things go terribly long, you can photoshop yourself right or keep the hair, blank your face or distort recognition, but it is useless, they’ll never remember you timelessly...
The Potential of materialism to buy the most beautiful life is the most unsatisfying feeling, but it is also the best answer to making the needs and boundaries of perfection limitless and the illusion of Total Knowledge complete.
Botox and plastic surgery are the answers to keep with the times of high cheekbones, almond eyes and button noses... The needles will feed your skin and provide eternal beauty – like that of the beautiful butterfly, but it will be fragile, it will burn, it will perish.
Beware! Do not smile too much; you must control facial expressions to keep your skin taut or else your treatment will be quite un-useful...You must spend again your time and efforts to conserve this bought beauty.
Beware! Do not smile too much; you must control facial expressions to keep your skin taut or else your treatment will be quite un-useful...You must spend again your time and efforts to conserve this bought beauty.
There is no longer anything natural. Not even Leaf Fall. Someone must assist nature to realise autumn is over, and that the tree must shed its leaves – make it understand that it will grow back to be beautiful again. But, to be beautiful, it must shed the old leaves, with help, if not naturally.
This was not very useful – the tree did not adapt...
The Tree can now only be recognised through its other forms. They once created an object called planks. Planks were made by cutting down a tree and filing the surface until it was smooth enough to create your bed to let you rest on. You cannot see a natural plank anymore – there are no more trees. This is a set of canvases painted to make you understand what a real wooden plank once was. You cannot rest on it any longer, it is rare.
The Tree can now only be recognised through its other forms. They once created an object called planks. Planks were made by cutting down a tree and filing the surface until it was smooth enough to create your bed to let you rest on. You cannot see a natural plank anymore – there are no more trees. This is a set of canvases painted to make you understand what a real wooden plank once was. You cannot rest on it any longer, it is rare.
How can one rest? They are at war where everything is white and chaste. He’s (the soldier) counting his days in the snow. “Sixty-five days more to go...” before the next one begins to count. The snow keeps taking over the count to go back to its pure form. There is no use of counting...the snow knows better, it keeps erasing the days by coming together – the only form that will stay together here after everything divides. One day, the war will win.
This ephemeral nature of beauty keeps it alive and Purified. It cannot be marred for too long. When it begins to be disgraced, it will fade away gracefully, only to revive itself in another form and face the same challenges before it cycles itself – just like water and ice, the tangible and the intangible.
Also in this issue
Illusion: Seeing Beyond Seeing
Meaning: In Search of Significance.
Melody: A Different Tune
Rhythm: Ordering Time