Ducks Are More Majestic Than Sunsets (A Treatise on the Appreciation of Beauty)

I often walk the Salisbury Crags.

Windy, grassy cliff tops, draped around the foot of Arthur’s Seat, the Crags offer some pretty outstanding views of Edinburgh. When you need a wander to clear your head, the Crags are a blessing.

The fact that they face west means that, with careful timing, you can witness sunset over the city there too.

It’s beautiful.

Or at least, that’s what my brain, eyes, and skin were trying to tell me the last time I was there.

Not long ago, I wound my way up the Crags to watch the day sink away. I needed a good old think, and the Crags beckoned. I reached the top, and right enough, orange clouds were blazing in a darkening sky.

Everything I had been raised to believe was beautiful was laid out in front of me. The riotous horizon: check. The glittering city: check. The warmth of the sunset: check. The bracing bite of the wind: check. The distant, hazy hills: check.

My Checklist of Awe was full of ticks. And I did indeed find myself transfixed by what was happening in front of me.

And yet…

I’d better gave wistfully into the distance, mouth slightly a-gape, I thought. It's expected of me! BECAUSE THIS IS BEAUTIFUL!

I did so. Job done.

Such beauty deserves an obedient audience. Sit down. I continued to think.

A little voice in me replied: “But there’s a weird oozing moss on the boulder und-"

SIT DOON!

“Okay…”

BECAUSE THIS IS BEAUTIFUL!

I sat down, trying not to let me face show the discomfort of knowing an alarmingly textured substance was now stuck to my bum.

You’d better cry now. A single, solitary, dramatic tear.

“What - Really?”

I don’t see any teee-ars! If this was a movie I’d be struggling to engage emotionally with you.

“But this isn’t a movie…”

IRRELEVANT! Cry, damn you! Like a baby!

“I’m trying!”

Try harder! BECAUSE THIS IS BEAUTIFUL!

“I know, I know, you keep telling me! But it doesn’t matter, because I can’t feel anything!”

I soon gave up trying to be life-alteringly moved by the scene in front of me, accepting that it was impressive before concentrating on my thoughts rather than my failed attempt at feeling.

My episode up on the Crags highlighted to me the nature of appreciating beauty. And in the process of thinking it through, I realised that my concept of beauty, and my culture’s concept of beauty, don’t exactly see eye-to-eye.

Case Study 1

I work in a theatre, usually as a bartender, but sometimes as an usher. This means that I get to ‘watch the audience watching the show.’ (i.e. Watch the show, before being interrupted by an overexcited kid projectile vomiting across your section of the upper circle.)

Recently there was an enormously emotional play on. I saw it, felt impressed, even a little bit moved. On the way out, one audience member called it “Beautiful”.

I concurred, I suppose.

Later, one my way home, I noticed something on the ground. I bent down to find a little collection of cigarette butts. In the shape of a smiley face.

The magnitude of joy and wonder this gave me is indescribable.

Of the two events that evening, one being the “beautiful” play, the other being the toxic smiley stamped into the pavement, the latter had a much more profound effect on me.

Why was it there? Was it an accident? A freak of nature? Something, some wonderful twist of fate, had allowed these little burnt-out shreds of paper to fall to the ground together. And assemble into a SMILEY FACE!

It is a wonderful world we live in, I concluded.

Case Study 2

One night, I could not sleep. I tossed and turned, curled up into a cocoon, emerged, pretended I was a butterfly with bedsheets for wings, cocooned up again, sighed, tossed, sighed, turned, semi-dozed, drooled a little bit, decided sleep was not on the horizon.

Concluding that I may as well do something to deal with my sleepless sleepiness, I listened to my iPod.

I did not have fun.

The singers was trying hard to project an emotional, powerful, beautiful voice into my ears. But all they were doing was making me grouchy, and reminding me I should have been asleep at least an hour ago.

Eventually I gave up with the iPod, hunkered down, prepared more tossing, turning, cocooning, butterflying.

But then, on the street outside, a voice.

"In da jungle..."

A slurred, wobbly voice bouncing about the silent buildings.

"Da miiighty jungle..."

It was a sozzled reveller returning from a night out. And he was singing the Lion King soundtrack.

"Da lion sleeps toniii - hic - iiiight."

For song mysterious, illogical reason, a bizarre law of the cosmos, it was his hiccup-y, worryingly gargle-y, but unashamedly joyful melody that hit my heartstrings. I felt at peace. I sank down. I fell into a calm sleep.

Drunken-Simba zig-zagged on through the streets of Edinburgh, singing the song of his people.

Case Study Three

This is a short one.

Horses are “beautiful”. Cool. Good on ya.

But ducks are in a league of their own.

I’ve been thinking long and hard about cigarette butts, drunken warbling, and ducks in my bid to understand beauty. And I think there may be a simple, but easily forgotten, truth.

I’ve steered clear of applying this conversation on beauty to people, but I think that my following statement applies to that particular sub-field as well.

Beauty isn’t a set of rules, despite the qualifications needed for it to be used in guidebooks or magazines. 

Beauty is something that makes you feel in awe, or happy, or both. And that changes person to person, and from mood to mood.

To be honest, a lot of the “beautiful” phenomena out there just don’t do it for me unless I’m in the right mindset.

Beauty, it would seem, is relative to character and circumstance. It isn’t a definite thing.

That day on the Crags as I forced myself to be in awe, I just wasn’t concerned by the sunset. I had other, more pressing thoughts on my mind, and the outside world, however “beautiful” it wanted me to think it was, was just a backdrop. A very pleasant backdrop, but a backdrop nonetheless.

We need to stop punishing ourselves for not being able to appreciate the supposedly beautiful. Awe, love, desire, or happiness cannot be forced, despite the training our culture pushes us through. Looking for beauty is hard. But if we keep our eyes and minds open, beauty will find us.

This is Guru Gna, signing out.

(The Crags from Arthur's Seat. I'll try and find a pwetty sunset one for ya.) 

(Note: Apologies for the pen running out from frame to frame. I intended to have more pictures, but the pen eventually gave up the gig. Next post, I'll have a shiny new one!)