The Ugly Side of Beauty

I just finished reading a book about finding the spiritual in the mundane and being fully engaged in life, every moment of every day. No one lives their life soulfully from one moment to the next because, frankly, its impossible to do, and while artists are for the most part the same as everyone else, I do believe that we have a tendency to very often see things from a more soulful perspective than others. It comes with the job. I have frequently said that the reason why I have such a hard time selling my work and seeing it forever go away is because every piece carries in it a tiny piece of my soul, the essence of who I am, and to let that go is difficult at best. But seeing the soul of even everyday objects, seeing the poetry in something generally thought ugly (or not even thought of at all) is a gift for which I am truly thankful.

Paper bags. Utilitarian and plain, yet beautiful all the same. They aren't just brown, but carry woven within them a multitude of colors from the pulp fiber used to create them. Their cheap little hairs poking up and out from their surface, the little ruffle on the bottom edge where they have been glued together and the inexpensive ink that's used to print the shop's name that sits lightly on the surface of the paper, not rich enough to penetrate and seeming to want to keep as much distance as possible between it and the bag itself, as if the ordinariness of the brown paper somehow embarrasses it to be seen there.

Old flyers posted on lamp posts and trees by the residents of a town. Sheets of colored paper flapping in the breeze, their tape and tacks now barely holding them on, faded from the sun and the rain, and contained within them a stranger's hopes and dreams, joys and sorrows. Directions to a party, a yard sale, a lost dog or cat. Have their happiness and sadness, their aspirations and celebrations faded away like their long-past announcements? Or do they still feel the shadow of happiness that party warmed in their hearts? Are they wistful about their prize possessions, sold to strangers on a sunny morning? Has their sorrow yet healed at the pet that has forever disappeared or even better still, are they still reeling from the joy of the pet's miraculous return? Are their feelings as transient as those posters abandoned on public street corners?

Rusty pieces of metal. There's a metal junkyard in my town and it sits on the "bad" side of town, where just about everything is ugly and full of unhappiness: row houses with peeling paint, children without proper yards playing in the streets, noisy traffic, people shouting at each other. But the pyramid of rusty metal that towers behind and high above the fence that surrounds the metal dump calls to me and so I drive by there regularly, watching its metamorphosis from one week to the next. Car parts, tools, fencing, poles and appliances, building materials and the skeletons of old metal furniture that all used to have individual identities but are now all the same shade of sunset orange, all with a previously useful past and now equally forgotten and discarded. It's one of the most beautiful things here in town. The neighbors around it complain about the ugliness of it, but they simply can't see its soul, see the poetry in its existence.

A pile of bones left on a harborside rooftop. Old cigarette packets, ballpoint pens, candy wrappers, stones, bits of tar from the roof itself, shells and bones, all washed clean by the elements and blown by the wind into one corner of the roof where it sits in a canted pile resembling a tiny sand dune comprised of little pieces of garbage transported here and dropped by the many swooping, screeching residents. Now bleached mostly white, but with some small yet startling bursts of color from a scrap of paper or a piece of tin not yet faded to obscurity.

The aisles of a supermarket. A relentless visual attack by a million different products all screaming for absolute attention, a cacophony of color, a symphony of sizes and shapes. Our cupboards at home the bastard children of what the grocery store has to offer our hungry eyes and stomachs. Ever look in someone else's shopping cart as you pass them by? You can usually read a bit of the soul of that person by what they are pushing before them, a story that is sometimes lovely to read and sometimes terribly lonely and sad.

It's important to really see the world we live in, not only its beauty but also its dark underbelly, the side seldom considered pretty or worthy of our attention, because there is just as much soul to be found in a pile of garbage as there is in a Monet at the museum. See the world through an artist's eyes for one day and you'll be surprised what you find. All you need to do is look for it.