no. 24: learning to see beauty here, too 📷
a visual journal
Hi friends,
Welcome to no. 24 - we’re happy to have you here.
We hope Kopi Club isn’t starting to become a dictionary, but we did come across another funny word we want to share with you: gruntled.
Apparently, this is a word.
Gruntled: (adj) pleased, satisfied, contented
We’re still trying to figure out how to use this in a sentence, but we would say that after powering through this past week – we’re feeling pretty gruntled.
N:
Capturing Fractions of Life
Readers, art has been on my mind. Since school’s begun, I’ve been steeping in my Art History lectures that bring me such knowledge and joy despite constraints of online format.
Paul Cézanne: “a work of art which did not begin in emotion is not a work of art”
Van Gogh: “I paint a lullaby in colors”
The work above is Van Gogh during the Post Impressionist period. The Post-Impressionists were a group of artists who believed that art needed to turn inward, to reveal emotion, to be symbolic and perceptive. They used splendid colors and dots and new forms of brushstrokes that made paintings come alive in emotion. This was very different from the Impressionists, those who put emphasis on accurate depictions of light in its changing qualities. The movement away from realism was an important one, setting the stage for other artistic innovations in art such as Cubism.
This got me thinking of a central question: What is innovation in art and in life?
You can see similar veins of thought running from 1932 to 1960 from two vastly different artists. Art movements look like drastic shifts away from the norm, but they actually return to different ideas across history, sometimes building off ideas left years ago. This evolving convergence and recollection of thought is beautiful, and integral to art making.
Like art movements, our creativity and innovation does not have to be linear, or stupendously new. Innovation can simply be incremental improvements or a scaffolding of things we’ve already experienced.
I am suddenly glad I have saved so many fractions of life in my journals: emotions, expressions of strangers, light-through-the-window, hot coffee on a rainy day, the mild smell of jasmine, thoughtful moments and thoughtless ones too. Some sentences aren’t fully formed yet, and need time to emerge like the ripeness of fruit. Creativity is collecting what lingers, only to find it again later.
J:
to taste in technicolor
This is how Dr. Sean Day describes his interactions with food. Mango sherbert is the color lime green; the taste of beef is a deep blue. For Day, his form of synesthesia - a condition in which sensory systems are linked to each other - combines taste with color. For other synesthetes, the condition takes on different and unpredictable forms: the ability to feel the sounds of musical instruments, or to sense words as textures.
I’ve always been fascinated by this condition. It reminds me of that scene in Ratatouille (classy references only), where Remy takes a bite out of the cheese and the strawberry. The simultaneous flashes of sound and color - as if life for the synesthete is constant poetry, or metaphor. I doubt this is the case, but I’m tempted by the idea nonetheless.
After finally stocking up on some rolls of film, I’ve been able to play around with my Canon SureShot again. I’d forgotten how much fun it is to shoot with an analogue camera. The slow whir of the loading film, the loud clink of buttons, the (obnoxiously) blinding flash. The entire process feels more involved. Both visual and tactile. I love the graininess, the faint scratch marks - indices of the human hands required to get these images developed. Glimpses into the world of synesthesia.
With that, here are some favorites from the latest roll.
J:
another study playlist?
we’re halfway through the semester and I have to be real with you...this is the only thing I’m listening to.
N:
This Week, I’m Obsessed With
Russian surrealist paintings by Platon Yurich
Paintings by Toni Hamel
J:
I Binged (and I Hate to Admit This) Emily in Paris
I watched the entire season in just over a day. The script = disaster, the acting = train wreck, the humor = non-existent. Still - I loved it*.
*the ‘it’ in question
N:
"There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient." — Marilynne Robinson.
J:
“Think... of the world which you carry within yourself... and set it above everything that you notice about you. Your inmost happening is worth your whole love, that is what you must somehow work at, and not [lose] too much time and too much courage in explaining your attitude to people.” - Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
N:
Louise Gluck Wins the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature and So I Share This Poem
J:
I am a recent Sara Hagale fan; her art inexplicably captures everything I’m feeling at the moment. You can find more of her work on her Instagram page (@shagey_), as well as her website.
A few highlights:
Hugs,
J & N