Two Views of a River – Twain
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> But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of the majestic river!
This is something that, a little, keeps me from learning more about music. I love the magic of music, it's a mystery to me. How the writers, composers, performers manage to, by design or no, affect me the way that it can.
I mean, it's just folks banging or blowing on things. I listen to music that's popular with "musicians". I went to a concert once, and while waiting to get inside, someone asked out loud "Who here is not a musician?" and I seemed to be the only one to raise their hand.
I can not say why the music appeals to musicians. Apparently it's very technical. Which, means, of course, that those literate in the art can appreciate it on that level. But, also, perhaps, those literate in the art may not be able to well appreciate other styles. "Oh, that's to XXX, it's not YYY".
The point being, as you get more knowledgeable in an art, there's a tendency to become more critical. And I guess maybe you'll know "why" you're more critical. Where as ignorant me doesn't know why I like or don't like something, just that I do.
And I think I'd rather just stay ignorant and enjoy music that I do on the face of it, without diving deep into the how or why.
> I have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say "look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. Then he says "I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing," and I think that he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is ... I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there's also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.