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Three years ago, the Washington Post and violinist Joshua Bell conducted a social experiment in a subway station of our nation’s capital. In one of the busiest subway stops, the violinist took out his violin and began to play. People flocked by, undeterred by the melody– “Chaconne” by Brahms, considered to be one of the hardest and most beautiful pieces to be played by a musician. Three minutes into the 14-minute piece, a man slowed down and sped back up after a few seconds; half a minute later, a woman dropped a donation into Bell’s hat.

For forty-five minutes, one of the world’s foremost violin virtuosos played– FOR FREE– in a D.C. metro stop and the only people who deigned to pay attention were children that constantly looked back at Bell as their parents swept them away amidst the bustle of the subway chaos. After a while, the violinist packed up his bags and left, leaving the city dwellers to their daily rush through life.

As humans, we pride ourselves on our elevated intelligence– on our emotional and philosophical capacity to appreciate the intangible beauty that surrounds us. We are better than animals because we have the ability to think beyond our physical and immediate needs.

Is this true? Can we truly recognize the beautiful?

In a museum, in a cafe with headphones, on Facebook watching Youtube videos posted by our friends– these are moments where we can “appreciate beauty”. Of course this must be beautiful– the setting is right, the music has actually be recorded, our friends have impeccable taste! If our perception of beauty is dependent on characteristics and circumstances extraneous to the work of beauty itself, do people know how to discern beauty on their own?

Or perhaps this ability is lost in the quotidian routine of life, where the beautiful to us becomes banal because of our inwardly directed perspective of life: “I’m late for this, I’ve already seen this before, I know he’s just another homeless person playing for money”. We begin to categorize the beautiful into the things that are worthy because of its particularity apart from the ordinary and the things that are no longer deserving of attention because of its mundanity.

In doing so, we miss out on the beautiful.

Today, we are constantly bombarded by information, chased by deadlines, surrounded by busy-ness. And it happens that we so often fail to just STOP. BREATHE. And recognize the beauty that surrounds us even in the commonplace.

—

Gabby Park is a triple concentrator in Communication Studies, French, and History of Art.

In the empty lot behind the row of new office buildings, a singular structure sits, grey and green, moss-crowned, rust-shedding, an emptying hull of something that once was. People might have lived here, or passed through here, or worked here. Now it is cracked concrete and crumbling brick, flaking iron and the last chips of paint curling from the rotting wood. In another time, it might have been called grand, magnificent.

It still is, though. Magnificent, that is, though perhaps not in the same way. It is not only the image of rebirth (the ivy covering the walls, the oak growing out the roof, the grasses forcing their way through the concrete, the swallows nesting in the rafters) that makes it so. There is something else at work here.

In some places, the structure is skeletal. Stripped away are the trappings a former life, of a once-upon-a-time, of something that now lurks on the fringes of memory. Time passes, things change. Some things are forgotten, other linger on, and yet others merely oddslot morph into caricatures of whatever they once were. Perhaps the past was meant to moulder away into dust. Perhaps the past was meant to be remembered with processions of horns and viols and scarlet-decked frivolity. Perhaps.

But even then, in remembrance, something is inevitably lost. You can restore your brick-front facades and repaint your crown moldings and rebuild your sagging roof. In choosing what to remember, you choose what to forget. And then you remember, but you remember incorrectly, incompletely, which is, in a way, worse than not remembering at all.

Better, perhaps, to let things fade away into memory, beyond memory. Yes. Better to leave them unsullied by oversimplifications and misinterpretations and false justifications. It’s all quite romantic, really. Lost knowledge! Entire kingdoms, buried and then unearthed! An idealized past is at once untouchable but tangible, foreign but familiar.

Time alters all, slowly, but surely.

Hello and welcome to 2012; here is a list of my 5 favorite books that I read in 2011:

5.  The Monument by Kanan Makiya.  I wrote a previous post on Saddam’s victory arch, the subject of this book.  I had read one other book by Makiya, The Republic of Fear, about Ba’athist Iraq under Saddam.  Makiya is a political dissident from Iraq and was forced to publish under the pseudonym Samir al-Khalil until recently.  From reading The Republic of Fear, it was no mystery to me that The Monument would largely center on the nature of Saddam’s unique brand of pan-Arab fascism, but I didn’t expect it to have the level of art historical writing or image theory that it does.  I rarely read anything relating to Middle Eastern art, but Makiya applies the history surrounding it and Western art theory to the creation and interpretation of the victory arch, which makes it wholly relatable.

4.  The Silence of the Sea by Vercors. This was the first fiction novel I have read in awhile; it’s very short and only takes a couple of hours to read.  It was written in 1942, right at the height of the Nazi’s occupation of France.  It details the forced quartering (like, housing, not tearing apart by the limbs) of a German officer in the country house of and older French man and his young, female niece.  It explores the definition of

resistance, and the extent and moral limits of inaction.  The old man and his niece choose to resist the occupation by ignoring the presence of the German officer, despite very human temptations.  The beauty of The Silence of the Sea is that it has no direct answer as to what constitutes resistance; for Vercors, inaction is not necessarily passive support as many condemnations of civilians under Nazi occupation seem to muddle up.

3.  Marianne into Battle by Maurice Agulhon.  This book chronicles the history of the French female allegory for liberty, named Marianne.  Agulhon engagingly chronicles how Marianne arose out of the 1789 revolution and quickly became a propagandist tool into the 5^th Republic.  If you are interested in the small details of history then I certainly recommend this book.

2.  Eye Scream by Henry Rollins.  I actually read this in high school, but I reread it this past year and got way more out of it the second time around.  Henry Rollins, former singer/yeller for Black Flag and consummate angry person, has been more known in recent years for his spoken word than hardcore punk.  Unsurprisingly, Eye Scream is violent, sociopathic, and wonderfully lyrical.  Rollins’s aggressive intensity is mirrored only by the sadly honest clarity of his worldview.  I love this guy so much, I’ll probably write a whole column on him soon.

1.  Inside the Third Reich by Albert Speer.  These are the memoirs of Speer, who was Hitler’s chief architect and the Minister of Armaments for the Nazis.  It was secretly written mainly on scraps of toilet paper while he was serving a 20 year sentence imposed at Nuremburg.  When it comes to Nazi ‘confessions,’ they typically seem to be Eichmann-like, saccharine and dishonest, apologies, with no real remorse.   Speer isn’t begging for forgiveness in his memoirs, but accepts responsibility for the role he played.  He isn’t slobbering with excuses of brain washing or having no other choice, but instead treats his readers like adults.

Forked from the scope of the music world, Hip-Hop music can further be organized into two different classifications: mainstream and underground.  Hip-Hop’s mainstream artists are among the most affluent and well-known musicians alive today, and are responsible for most of the “pop” rap music heard on the radio. Underground Hip-Hop artists are, obviously, the opposite. Mainstream music cascades in a swift progression, fueled by the attention of millions and luxurious commodities available to only the most successful artists. However, there are more distinctions between the two groups other than their status of wealth and popularity. The reason there is such a dichotomy is because of the nature of the songs. The mainstream music is inspired by the artists’ lifestyles, enlisting complex beats and samples that are only available to artists of their stature. Underground artists rap over simple beats, made most frequently from a bass guitar’s constant rhythm, with a light accompaniment of a snare drum or piano.

Both categories have their strengths, and are equally important to the genre. In order to see the differences between them, we can look at two songs. Kanye West’s “Lost in the World” is featured on his masterpiece, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Its polished production quality, multifaceted sampling and emphasis on the instrumental render the song utterly mainstream. In contrast, “De La Souls” by P.O.S is distinctly underground. The beat is extraordinarily simple, the chorus adopts a punk-rock tone and it stresses the lyrics, instead of the instrumental.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jb0Vub0i9O0&feature=related

Kanye’s finale incorporates a hook from folk singer Bon Iver. While making MBDTF, Kanye spent a few months in Hawaii, where he invited all of his featuring artists (among other friends) to spend time collaborating and recording. Only the most prominent musicians can afford retreats such as this one. “Lost in the World” has a long introduction; Kanye doesn’t even start rapping until almost two minutes into the song. This sophisticated beat represents mainstream because of its catchy, pop style and contrasting tones.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKUt5g1AiJ8

“De La Souls” could not be more different. P.O.S. writes a deep and powerful message in his song. Personally, I love it because it exemplifies the intelligence embedded in Hip-Hop culture. An ugly, unfounded stereotype of Hip-Hop is that rappers are always ignorant, brainless fools who acquire wealth without any talent or moral conscious. Rappers like P.O.S. blatantly disprove that typecast. He proudly states, “I raise a black fist but won’t say (the N word) in the things I write, and I don’t say (faggot) because I don’t think it’s right.”

When asked to choose my preferred tributary, I struggle in finding the exact answer. I appreciate the redeeming qualities in both types, and am proud to profess myself a fan of all sorts of Hip-Hop artists.