The final segment of Bill Moyers Journal (http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04302010/transcript5.html) included a fascinating interview with the writer Barry Lopez in which he talked about, among other things, beauty:
"The things that make us uncomfortable in public are a person who wishes to speak of what is beautiful. That makes everybody a little bit nervous, because many of us keep this jaded, cynical separateness with the world, because we're cautious. We're cautious. How many people do you know whose crying out is for intimacy? They want to be known. They want to be touched. But they can't make that intimate connection without being vulnerable. You have to be vulnerable in order to achieve this exchange of intimacy. And you can't be vulnerable unless you can trust the situation. And what we're learning, many of us, is the world is not trustworthy enough for you to be vulnerable to it and gain that intimacy."
I recall reading some excerpts from Susan Sontag's journals, released posthumously, that talked about the same issue and I think most of us know that difficult dichotomy between our inner voice and our outer persona.
I wonder if our understandable but increasing caution in expressing our innermost thoughts and feelings about beauty and other equally subjective realms has negative consequences to our society?
"The things that make us uncomfortable in public are a person who wishes to speak of what is beautiful. That makes everybody a little bit nervous, because many of us keep this jaded, cynical separateness with the world, because we're cautious. We're cautious. How many people do you know whose crying out is for intimacy? They want to be known. They want to be touched. But they can't make that intimate connection without being vulnerable. You have to be vulnerable in order to achieve this exchange of intimacy. And you can't be vulnerable unless you can trust the situation. And what we're learning, many of us, is the world is not trustworthy enough for you to be vulnerable to it and gain that intimacy."
I recall reading some excerpts from Susan Sontag's journals, released posthumously, that talked about the same issue and I think most of us know that difficult dichotomy between our inner voice and our outer persona.
I wonder if our understandable but increasing caution in expressing our innermost thoughts and feelings about beauty and other equally subjective realms has negative consequences to our society?