Aesthetic Realism Is True

Today, so many people I know are worried about their jobs.  More and more I'm meeting people who don't have a job and can't get one.  Just today I learned that a friend has been locked out of his work, while his wife can't find a steady job.  With the for-profit health care situation in the US, they have had to CANCEL DOCTORS' APPOINTMENTS FOR THEIR TWO CHILDREN.  The husband's employers, ConEdison, froze their health benefits when they locked them out.  This is barbaric.    

I was moved and grateful to read the following sentences about unemployment, from the current issue of The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, and I think every person who's unemployed should be able to read them.  Moreover, every person who's fortunate enough to have a job in these days of economic cruelty should read it in order to get a sense of what it's like to be unable to find work:

Chairman of Education Ellen Reiss writes:

"Among the effects of unemployment . . . is hunger, including the hunger of children across the land who cannot get the food their little stomachs need because their jobless parents are unable to purchase it. And there is this effect: every person who wants a job and cannot get one, feels a certain way. When a person sends off a resume* and gets no response or is turned down; or goes for a job interview, then learns he has been passed over; or, after working someplace for years, is told his services are no longer needed—there is tremendous feeling. Millions of people are being made to feel that they cannot be of use, that America does not need what they can do. That feeling is horrible. And it comes from a lie."

People in England should know that, though it's true that the US has been the bastion of capitalism for many years (though that is changing) there is also great and increasing feeling against this brutal way of seeing and using people. To learn more about how Aesthetic Realism sees economics, go to this article called "Reality vs. the Profit Motive."   

*CV

Wow! There is a new Aesthetic Realism podcast and it's great. Consultant Bennett Cooperman talks about what he's learned about toughness and having a kind, feeling heart. These twenty-odd minutes have the answer to a quandary that I think has plagued just about every man -- including me. See for yourself: "Toughness and a Feeling Heart--Can a Man Have Both?"

Get ready to have a big experience, especially if you care for Jack London and/or dogs!

PS: Here's a link to Bennett Cooperman's website, which he shares with his wife, Meryl Nietsch-Cooperman.

I like the song "Michelle" very much, as I do most of the other songs by the Beatles. Eli Siegel, the poet and philosopher who founded Aesthetic Realism in 1941, came to this principle: "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves."
Michelle begins with that lovely, steady guitar introduction and then you hear Paul McCartney singing, coming in on the same note -- but the key seems to have changed! There's a feeling of wonder and newness immediately. This is exactly what we are looking for in love -- to see the world as fresh, to find new interest in something we thought we know, to have wonder and big feelings that we didn't have before! And we want security. We want to feel we can count on the person we love, and we want to feel we can be counted on too.
This is what I hear in the very first bars of "Michelle." It gets me every time! Even the guitar intro isn't only steady of course. The high note stays constant most of the way through, while the lower note is descending.
As to the rest of the song, three pairs of opposites I hear in particular are sameness and difference, logic and emotion, and strength and yearning.
Play the song and do let me know what you hear.

PS: I love it that it's in English and French. It's a second Entente Cordiale, with a better purpose. Or maybe an Entente Amoureuse.

Why do so many film-goers delight in horror films, in violence on the screen, in thrillers where the quiet man next door turns out to be a human monster? And what does it have to do with ourselves?

Eli Siegel said in a lecture he gave at New York City's Steinway Hall: "To see how in a person there can be the desire to pour tea and be nice and also a desire to snarl, some notion of the opposites in a human being needs to be had."

Find out more by reading

Mind, Violence, & Movies, the latest issue of The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known.

I love football, and since the new season has started it's a great time to talk about the opposites in "the beautiful game." "All beauty," according to Aesthetic Realism, "is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves." Every person who loves football is affected by opposites.

1. Strength and Grace; Assertion and Yielding. When you see Simeon Jackson*, say, leaping high in the air and getting onto the end of a curving cross from the left wing, meeting the ball just right and nodding it sharply and precisely into the back of the net -- you, my friend, are being affected by strength and grace, assertion and yielding, force and accuracy, straight line and curved line, near and far. These are opposites in case you hadn't noticed! Very often people feel yielding is weak, and then when they assert themselves they feel unkind. We lay down the law without thinking about what is good for the other person. If you tried to play football that way you'd mis-kick it, and your header (if you touched the ball that is) would go sailing over the crossbar.

2. Continuity and Discontinuity. The whole game is continuity and discontinuity. Forty-five minutes of almost non-stop action, but there are corner kicks, throw-ins, goal kicks, and, if you're lucky, a penalty for your team. One of the marvellous things you can see when a team's playing well, is the stringing-together of one pass after another, some across the field, down or back, some diagonal, shorter passes, longer passes, and sometimes a quick one-two. Every person wants to feel that the world is coherent, that it makes sense; and that it can surprise us, has sharp edges. Otherwise it's boring. This is something I see as a teacher -- that young people want to feel that the lessons they attend have something to do with each other, and that school has something to do with the rest of their lives; and how they want change! Football satisfies our desire for continuity and surprise, especially when it is played well!

3. Individual and Collective Football is a team sport! Everyone depends on his/her team-mates, and we all know how frustrating it is when one person hogs the ball, tries to take on the whole opposing team, then loses control or is tackled just when the goal was beckoning with a teammate unmarked, just a few feet away. I think it's one of the reasons why Becks/David Beckham is so great. It's not just his precision, it's the fact that his bread and butter is passing the ball to teammates. This is like the Aesthetic Realism definition of good will; wanting other things or people to be stronger and more beautiful because this desire makes oneself stronger and more beautiful.

Check out Is Beauty the Making One of Opposites, by Eli Siegel. Next time you see a game, look for opposites!

*I'm a Gillingham fan

If you're reading this in the UK you probably aren't going to be able to hop on the plane and come to the seminar. But you can go to the homepage of the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, or to the Online Library to read poems and essays by Mr. Siegel, or to the Terrain Gallery to see visual arts with comment about beauty, opposites and the questions of our lives.

And next time you do cross the pond, come to 141 Greene Street to see for yourself. Call ahead to make an appointment for an Aesthetic Realism consultation, the new form of education which shows how the questions of self are related to art and all of culture.

This coming Thursday -- August 6, 2009 -- there will be a seminar, "What Do Men Most Need to Know About their Anger?" It's at 6:30 pm at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation in downtown New York City -- 141 Greene Street, SoHo.

Aesthetic Realism explains this intense and urgent subject, with logic, compassion, and critical humor! It’s been a great pleasure working on my paper and learning more about the difference between anger that is for justice and anger that is narrow.

I will be speaking about the life of Nye Bevan, founder of the British National Health Service, and what I have learned about two kinds of anger in my own life. My colleagues, Dr. Jaime Torres, and Joseph Meglino, Aesthetic Realism consultant, will be speaking respectively about Puerto Rican nationalist and abolitionist Dr. Ramon Betances, known as the "Father of the Puerto Rican Nation," and a popular self-help book "Facing the Fire; Experiencing and Expressing Anger Appropriately" by John Lee.

With Harry Potter back in the movies -- and in the news --  this is an excellent time to read what Ellen Reiss, the Class Chairman of Aesthetic Realism, wrote in "Nature, Romanticism, and Harry Potter." She looks at the great appeal of this amazing series of books by J. K Rowling, using this principle of Aesthetic Realism: "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves."

Ms. Reiss explains that the main opposites that the Harry Potter series puts together are the strange and the ordinary -- and those are the same opposites that Wordsworth and Coleridge were dealing with in their Lyrical Ballads of 1798! This is the greatest true honouring of Ms. Rowling's work that I've seen.

The greatest tribute I know to rock ' n' roll will take place at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation on August 24 and September 28: It is Rock and Roll, the Opposites, & Our Greatest Hopes -- A Celebration!

Why do people love rock 'n' roll?  Why has it lasted?  What makes a song beautiful?  What does it have to do with me?  That's what you'll learn, and more, while classic, moving, rip-roaring hits from the 1950's to this very millennium are performed.   

This show, which I'm thrilled to take part in, is based on a lesson Eli Siegel, founder of Aesthetic Realism, gave to a rock musician in the 1960's.  I heard notes of that lesson years later in The Opposites in Music class, and I knew what he said explained why I loved groups like The Beatles, Hollies, Herman's Hermits, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Elvis Presley, and later Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones, Van Morrison and so many others.  In the lesson he asked, among other things, "Is there [in rock and roll] the utmost pain and the utmost assertion?  Is it the blare of agony?"  Personal feelings, things generally kept private by people, are made public, sometimes with beautiful form, turned into what Mr. Siegel referred to as a "train-call"!  This satisfies our desire to have the opposites of inside and outside make sense, instead of hiding what we are and feeling forever that there is a part of us we can never show to the world.  (Read the announcement at the link above and you'll find out more of what Mr. Siegel said in that lesson).  

One of the greatest thrills of my life is learning in the Opposites in Music, taught by Barbara Allen, Anne Fielding, and Edward Green, why music stirs people; what is it, technically, that notes on a page (or not on a page!) -- played on guitar, keyboard, or sax, put to words and sung by one singer or many singers -- do to us?   For years I had no idea -- I just liked it!  Now I'm studying why, and the asking and finding out adds so much to my feeling.  I feel like I'm in heaven during every class, but with comprehension and rigor that satisfies my mind because it's based on principles that are TRUE!  "All beauty," Eli Siegel stated, "is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves."  

Next time you listen to music -- any music -- ask yourself, "Am I hearing emotion together with a structure?  Is there something definite -- perhaps rhythm -- at the same time as there is change -- perhaps, but not necessarily,  melody?  And does the rhythm itself has change even while it is steady?  Does the melody have steadiness even as it rises and falls?  Does this satisfy my desire to see reality as exciting, in motion, but also reassuring, to-be-counted-on?"  In my fortunate experience, the answer is Yes.