Word up Platt.
----Original Message Follows----
From: "Platt Holden" <pholden@sc.rr.com>
Reply-To: moq_discuss@moq.org
To: moq_discuss@moq.org
Subject: MD Beauty & DQ
Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2001 08:41:58 -0500
Hi All:
Once in a while I run across a passage from a piece of contemporary
writing that so closely parallels what Pirsig wrote in LILA that I feel
compelled to share it with you. The following is from an article written
by James Elkins entitled "The Ivory Tower of Tearlessness." See if this
doesn't remind you of LILA:
"Robert Rosenblum, an art historian, wrote me a very straightforward
catalog of his reactions to paintings. 'I have truly gasped (jaw dropped,
breath caught, etc.) from the sensation of what I guess we might still
call Beauty, or some other kind of magic in art.' He lists a few works of
art that took him aback, and then he notes -- a little sadly, but only a
little -- that he never felt that way the second or third time. 'In each
case,
it was a response to my first view of the work. By the time of the
second, I was already invulnerable.' "
Isn't this very much like the passage in Chapter 9 where Pirsig
describes hearing a tune for the first time that "stops you in your
tracks?"
In the same article there's another comment dear to my heart:
"But if you can see the picture just for what it is, without restraining
yourself, you might be overwhelmed by its beauty, which breaks all the
resistance and tears down all the walls between the object and the
observer -- even 'inner walls.' In that case the painter and the observer
grow into one another. They are united, like Siamese twins."
There's always lots of schmoozy talk among the New Age crowd about
becoming "one with all." It's my contention that to enter the
"transpersonal domain," become spiritually awakened or experience
"oneness" you don't have read books by Ken Wilber, attend lectures by
Deepak Chopra or spend several months at a monastery in Tibet, but
simply go to your local museum, symphony hall or trout stream where
Beauty is likely to be found if you can't discover it in your own back yard.
I also believe there is no greater calling in life than to create beautiful
things. Which is why, long after the politicians are gone and forgotten,
the artists and their works will be preserved and revered. I consider
Pirsig to be a first rate artist. I'm drawn to the MOQ again and again
because of its wonderfully lucid, harmonious and elegant intellectual
pattern, especially compared to the degenerate, postmodern, anti-
rational rubbish being propagated by humanties professors at today's
universities.
Platt
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