Aesthetic Realism Is True

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.          

At the Aesthetic Realism Online LIbrary you can read poems, essays, and lectures by Eli Siegel, the founder of Aesthetic Realism, as well as works by other critics including people who study and teach this philosophy.

Here are links to some of my favourite poems. (I've included their beginning lines): 

Dear Birds, Tell This to Mothers
 "Fly, birds, over all grieving mothers.
  Tell them, if they know more,
  They will grieve less . . "

To Dylan Thomas
"I hope that where you are
 (I think so, too)
 People, including literary people,
 Will see you more as you were;
 And not get you so angry
 You'd die sooner than you had to.
 You wanted criticism for everything you did, . . . "

Something Else Should Die: A Poem with Rhymes
"In April 1865
 Abraham Lincoln died . . ."

The Dark that Was Is Here
"A girl, in ancient Greece,
 Be sure, had no more peace
 Than one in Idaho.
 To feel and yet to konw
 Was hard in Athens, too.
 I'm sure confusion grew
 In Nika's mind as she, . . . "

 Somewhere This
 (These are some later lines)
 A man going into a library;
 A shout from somewhere.
 "Chicken I want," says someone near.
 "O, what do I care," says a girl.
 "He loves me, I'm sure," says a girl.
 "What the hell do I care," says a boy.
 "What did he do then?" says a man.
 The elevated comes roaring by.
 Rain falls quietly.

Note: The "elevated" was the old  New York City elevated tube, or subway.

 Twenty-one Distichs about Children

"1. Bernice thinks a little.
Bernice is two months old; the world is new for her.
Ah, will her parents' angry world quite do for her? . . ."

 Spark
 "I am a spark,
  Which always goes out,
  For it needs another spark . . . "

It is my pleasure and honour to study in professional classes taught by Class Chairman Ellen Reiss at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation in New York. She is a marvellous teacher, because (1) she always tries to be fair to the subject under discussion, and (2) she uses the principles of Aesthetic Realism, which were come to be Eli Siegel, in order to shed light upon it.

These classes are serious, because the purpose is always to see more true meaning in the world, and at the same time they are so lightsome, humourous, charming -- because the purpose is always to see more meaning in the world!

The recordings we hear of lectures given by Eli Siegel in the 1960's and 1970's are the greatest educational experience of my life. Here are the titles of some of Mr. Siegel's lectures, which you can read at the Aesthetic Realism Online Library:

Poetry and Women

Ownership, Strikes, Unions

Animate and Inanimate Are in Music and Conscience

There Are Two Freedoms

Aesthetic Realism and Nature

Poetry and History

Educational Method Is Poetic

Selves Are in Economics

Have you seen what Ellen Reiss, the Class Chairman of Aesthetic Realism, wrote about Harry Potter?  Look at "Nature, Romanticism, and Harry Potter."   She writes, in part (referring to the first in J. K. Rowling's series, "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone," the importance of this novel, its goodness, and the enthusiasm about it are explained by the following principle, the basis 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." And the chief opposites that Ms. Rowling has made inseparable are the opposites that are central to romanticism, that new way of feeling and showing the world which began in Europe at the end of the 18th century: the opposites of the strange and the ordinary."

She goes on to describe how these same opposites, the strange and the ordinary, affect every person's life. The more beautifully we see them, the better our lives will be.

Very often we divide the world into two parts -- what is dull, which we already know (or think we know) and what is wonderful or strange. There's your job, then there's the summer holiday. That's not the way to be happy because it's not accurate!

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