EVERYDAY BEAUTY
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The pursuit of little beauties reveals harmony in life’s contradictions and everyday moments.
In 2012, contemporary sculpturalist and conceptual artist Tom Sachs released a video piece entitled ‘How To Sweep.’ The video opens with a man riding his motorcycle through the desert, arriving at a large hall, putting away his helmet, and picking up his broom. A delicate but sublime piano harmony begins as the narrator speaks: “When sweeping a surface, any surface, mentally divide the space into sections. Begin by sweeping one section. Concentrate on each broom stroke. Continuously refine your technique. Each broom stroke should be more effective than the stroke that came before it.” The directions are pithy commands. But when combined with the ethereal music and cinematic visuals, the experience is elevated. Sweeping, a mundane, proletarian activity, becomes something exalted, almost spiritual. The ability to treat common activities with reverence is difficult. It requires focus and mindfulness, an obedience to the world around us. But when we are able to appreciate those small, ordinary things in our daily lives, we cultivate an intimacy with it. When we flee the doubts and worries of our agitated minds and enter into the present moment, the world reveals itself as a vibrant, fertile realm teeming with a subtle but rich beauty.
Woman Sweeping by Edouard Vuillard (1899)
Appreciating these everyday beauties is critical for our well-being and our sense of order in the world. Most activities that we experience on a daily basis are done with pragmatic considerations. In our competitive, economically incentivized world, we are (understandably) fixated on completing tasks rather than devoting attention to each situation’s aesthetic potential. But while money and material wealth can enhance happiness, a respect for the present and the intricacies of the sights, smells, and sounds around us can be truly enriching. Roger Scruton discusses the importance of utilizing these everyday experiences as a chance for something greater: “[Minimal beauties] are part of the context in which we live our lives, and our desire for harmony, fittingness and civility is both expressed and confirmed in them.” The intricacies of different things in our surrounding world reflect a deeper order that is inherent in our existence. The beauty of everyday objects, therefore, arises from their ability to embody this objective order and contribute to the coherence of the world around us.
When we focus on the present moment and enter into this communion with nature, we are relieving ourselves of our own troubles. Neuroscientist SamHarris explores the mechanics of psychological suffering and how much of our angst and apprehension can be relieved. He states that a lot of our issues are “really a matter of being lost in thought. There’s this waking dreamscape of thought where we’re talking to ourselves moment to moment, and much of that conversation is an unhappy one.” When we engage ourselves in the present moment, however, we break from “that spell and wake up from that identification with thought.” Being present opens up the opportunity to interact, even if subtly so, with the colors and smells and objects that go unnoticed and whose impact on our lives is too often merely subliminal. Doing this reminds us that beauty is not just in the province of the grandiose or the spectacular but also in the minute, whether that be the whisper of leaves running across your doorstep on your way to work or the gleam of a freshly washed piece of silverware.
Nicolas explaining the details of one of Mesciu Gigi’s garments to a client. October 2024, Washington DC Trunk Show.
Fleeing the anxieties and worries that assail our minds begets a participationin the present and its concomitant stimuli. The confluence of these disparatestimuli - like the sound of a police siren meeting the smell of new leather - canmake the world seem chaotic. This chaos, however, creates harmony. 17th century philosopher Anthony Ashley-Cooper, the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, offers that a jumble of dissonant notes in music is what comes together to form “the truest harmony.” The order of small beauties that brings coherence and peace to our lives is not induced by any sort of uniformity but rather discordance. Our lives are filled with a million different contradictions and paradoxes that we are never really aware of. But that is what makes it unique. If we strive to fill our days with only comfort and congruity, we are unable to grow. It is in the cacophony of everything around us – both the sublime and the prosaic– that we discover the most beautiful of symphonies.
