TRUTH AND BEAUTY

I met with my old friend David at our usual haunt, the IHOP in Petaluma. We have been friends for close to thirty years and thus we rarely discuss the superficial any longer. We used to spend time trying to figure out a solution to the apparently inexorable decline of western civilization but have finally thrown up our hands in failure. So we are left to discuss the vital matters of truth and beauty.
David was telling me of a film that had moved him to tears and it got me thinking about the works of man that had moved me in a similar manner. When I returned home from my time with David I went to my bookcase and pulled down BELLE CANTO, by Ann Patchett. I plopped myself down on the couch and started reading. Within the first five pages I had goose bumps on my arms and tears in my eyes.
This was art.
There is a room full of 18th & 19th century artwork on the second floor of the Musee D’Orsay in Paris. When I walk in there my heart skips a beat and my jaw goes slack with awe. Down the street and across the river at the Louvre there is a gallery devoted to sculpture. I wander around it in a daze, lost among the marble figures and wondering at the grace and splendor around me.
Around 2001 I went with 4 others to see the musical AIDA on Broadway in New York. We were all weeping by the intermission, and the truly tragic events hadn’t even unfolded yet. It was the staging, the voices, the music, the passion; the sheer inventiveness of humankind that had struck us dumb and weepy.
Occasionally I will rerun one of my favorite movies -- MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, SHAPKESPEARE IN LOVE, ROMEO AND JULIET, LAST OF THE MOHICANS, KEY LARGO, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN -- and inevitably I end up sitting alone in a dark room sobbing into my hankie; moved to tears by the tragedy, the comedy, the folly of man, and the truth and glory of our ability to stage and present these emotions.
Long ago I memorized the T.S. Eliot masterpiece, THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PROOFROCK. At moments I will recite to myself the immortal first stanza, beginning;
“Let us go then, you and I
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table”
And my stomach turns over and my arms dimple with goose bumps.
What is it that causes this reaction in me?
Perhaps nothing more than being human, and being able to recognize what makes humanity so great. Our emotions, our caring, our love, our feelings. Our innate ability to express ourselves to another, and thereby reveal something of who we are. To pull the curtain aside on our own self, our pain, our sorrow, and our joy and love.
And when presented truly, and artfully, this engenders in others a truthful and beautiful reaction.
So that’s what David and I talk about now. We can’t prevent the ongoing destruction of our environment, or the folly of our leaders. But we can take a moment to revel in the seemingly indestructible and everlasting ability of mankind to write, sing, paint, act and otherwise tell the truth of our kind.
Man is a glorious beast.