The Man with no Pride

For me there’s always times
when words can do no better:
The laughter in your eyes,
the pattern on your sweater.

I don’t pretend to know
the places we could go
	for warmer weather.

For me there’s always times 
when words can do no better.

To the man with no pride,
Nothing could be better;
For the man with no pride,
Nothing can go wrong.

For me there’s always days 
of happily ever after:
To smile for its own sake,
to lie down with disaster.

If I could ever know
	the places I will go,
I might move faster.

But for me there’s always days
	of happily ever after.

To the man with no pride,
Nothing could be better;
For the man with no pride,
Nothing can go wrong.

The verses above are actually the lyrics to a song that I wrote during my junior year of college, about 7 years ago, which I re-discovered today while looking through my old music catalogue.

Speaking of music, I am thrilled to announce that I am joining the band State of Nature, which my younger brother Stephen and his friends started during their time at Brandeis University. You can check out their (our?) music on Spotify, here!

Like this blog, my involvement in the band is really an effort to create beauty and to cultivate well-being in this part of the internet (and maybe even the “outernet” as well).

It is often said that one should do something like make music “for its own sake.” By this is usually meant that one shouldn’t do it for any sort of ulterior motive like fame or validation. But we don’t create beauty for “its own sake.” What is beauty to itself? We create beauty for the sake of everyone who will witness it, including ourselves, and because the creating itself leaves us changed.

To me, “beauty” is an experience, rather than something which an object “has” intrinsically. The experience of beauty is a confrontation and an exchange: it is an encounter with the Other as such. I say it is a “confrontation” because the beautiful calls for one’s immediate attention. It says, “Heed me! Now! As you are.” And I say that it is an exchange because there is a conversation in the perception of beauty, whereby the beautiful triggers a conception in the viewer, which prompts a reframing or re-viewing of the beautiful, which prompts further conceptions, and so on. This is to encounter the Other (a catch-all term I use to mean broadly “that which is not me”) in its radical otherness—to stop a while for a conversation with Other before allowing the not-me to fall once again into the background.

On the other hand, creating a work of art is an act of love. There is no better word for it, and I experience it as such. It is a giving of oneself to the Other: of iterating and reiterating and reiterating to birth something that can encounter people on its own and hold a conversation. This pouring-in of the artist is exactly what gives life to the exchange between art and observer.

Whether I’m writing poems and reflections here or jamming psychedelic rock music with my new band, my focus will be on creating beauty for all of our sakes. Thanks for reading!

Here’s a picture of a tree down the street from me.