Aesthetic Realism Is True

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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"Test it, test it--you'll see that it's true," said Eli Siegel, the founder of Aesthetic Realism. That is what I have done, for over 24 years, and I've found that yes, it is true.

It is true that, as Eli Siegel stated for the first time, "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves."

Here is an example: "The Four Seasons," by Vivaldi, which I've cared for since I was a boy, is extremely organised. There is a structure you can see even without looking at the sheet music. It has order. But how free it sounds!  Structure and freedom are opposites that all music deals with, but every instance has these opposites in a different way.  The greater the music, the more intricate, puzzling, satisfying,beautifully, these opposites are one.  In Beethoven's 5th, for instance, what structure there is!  But how can you separate the structure from the freedom?  You can't. 

Do we feel when we are organised that we are letting go?  Most people don't. 

Do we feel when we are letting go that our feet are on the ground?  Usually not.  This is the message of music for our lives.  More than sixty years ago Eli Siegel wrote these sentences:

"The question is, whether art gives order, intensifies life, makes it greater.  If art makes life greater, cannot what is in art be used as a means of making life more sensible?  Life, in other words, makes art; cannot art be used in turn on life, and how? 

"There is no limit to how art can be used to make life more sensible. To see art as making life more sensible it is first required of one that he respect art, know what it is, not make it less than it is."     
                                           --Self and World

This has the hope of the world in it, of all of us!  Getting back to Vivaldi, I love "Summer" particularly. "Summer" is so intense, but it has that structure you can count on. Freedom and Order, or Structure, are opposites, and in this music they are beautiful.

Then you hear the opposites of slowness and speed. How the strings are languid! How they drag, even, but you feel there is excitement, a quickening of life somewhere under the hot sun. Sure enough, a storm is approaching. The music speeds, and as the torrent begins, the opposites of falling and rising as the violins descend in octave patterns (see freedom and order again?!) are gorgeous.

Is the way we rise and fall as beautiful as the way Vivaldi's music does? A man can go from insufferable arrogance to abject (and equally insufferable) self-abnegation. I know because I did this! And studying Aesthetic Realism has changed the way I shuttled from high to low. I am HAPPY, and the happiness is based on principles that anyone can study.

So that you can see for yourself more about Aesthetic Realism, I'm putting links on this blog to things other people have written about it.

What exactly is Aesthetic Realism? It's a philosophy, based on principles, that states that a person's deepest desire is to like the world on an honest basis. There is so much more to say, and I don't have time to write more now.  But you can read some of Eli Siegel's essays, lectures, poems, and excerpts from books he wrote at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation Online Library.

More about Aesthetic Realism:

And see my blog, How Can Racism End? 

Here is a new blog: The Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method

Don't miss Marcia Rackow's charming and deep look at a beloved children's author: 'Wonder and Matter-of-Fact Meet--the Imagination of Beatrix Potter'
I'll be writing more shortly.