A Quote by Charles Ives
Beauty in music is too often confused with something that lets the ears lie back in an easy chair. Many sounds that we are used to do not bother us, and for that reason we are inclined to call them beautiful. Frequently, when a new or unfamiliar work is accepted as beautiful on its first hearing, its fundamental quality is one that tends to put the mind to sleep.
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Is not beauty in music too often confused with something which lets the ears lie back in an easy chair?
We live in a time when people are afraid of beauty, because beauty passes; you can't hang on to it. And even if you see something or someone beautiful, the next time you hear it, it sounds different. So you can't cling to beauty; beauty passes and when that passes, you realize you pass too, and you will die. And that's why people cry at a beautiful view, a beautiful lecture, a beautiful painting, a new baby.
Beauty is too easy. Often in my work, I take beautiful objects and do extreme things to them so that they are overlaid with something a bit more sinister and violent.
You've got a beautiful country with so many beautiful people and so many beautiful things happening and stuff like that lets it down. I feel sad for them.
There are almost no beautiful cities in America, though there are many beautiful parts of cities, and some sections that are glorious without being beautiful, like downtown Chicago. Cities are too big and too rich for beauty; they have outgrown themselves too many times.
Beauty addresses itself chiefly to sight, but there is a beauty for the hearing too, as in certain combinations so words and in all kinds of music; for melodies and cadences are beautiful; and minds that lift themselves above the realm of sense to a higher order are aware of beauty in the conduct of life, in actions, in character, in the pursuits of the intellect; and there is the beauty of the virtues.
My mother was very, very beautiful, and I saw that the beautiful women around me were often constrained not only by their beauty but by the way that being an object of male desire frequently caused violence in their lives. And it caused them to be constrained in these terribly sad ways - their brilliance was not valued.
In those days we were punished very frequently and I felt that it was often unjust, and so I would resist the desire to agree with many, many things. So I used to get beaten quite frequently and I more or less accepted it as part of life.
What is wrong with looking muscular? Muscles are beautiful. Strength is beautiful. Muscle tissue is beautiful. It is metabolically, medically, and philosophically beautiful. Muscles retreat when they're not used, but they will always come back if you give them good reason. No matter how old you get, your muscles never lose hope. Few cells of the body are as capable as muscle cells are of change and reformation, of achievement and transcendence.
Flowers are beautiful, for instance, but we are not inclined to marry them. Duty, on the contrary, is a bugle call to action, whether you are inclined to act, or not. In this case, I obey the bugle call of duty.
Music can be used against us as much as it can be used for us. Muzak can put a whole nation to sleep, whereas a lullaby is intended to put a child to sleep in a sweet way.
Everyone has something of beauty about them. But loving let's you look, and look, and look again. You notice the back of a hand, the turn of a head, the way of a walk. When you first love, you look blind and you see it all as the glorious, beloved whole, or a beautiful sum of beautiful parts. But when you see the one you love as pieces, as why's, you can love those parts too, and it's a love at once more complicated and more complete.
Few people realize what a handicap it is to be what people call a beautiful woman. I'm glad, of course, that I don't look like an unmade bed, but too often, I'm just taken at face value. And there aren't many men who believe a beautiful woman can have any brains.
I think seeing is about truly looking, observing, and taking things in with an open mind. It's easy to see things at face value but some of the most beautiful things are not apparent at first glance. The works that stick with me and that I find to be most beautiful are often not aesthetically inviting right off the bat. So I think having an open mind and allowing the lines to blur between art, music, fashion, food, what have you, all leads to cultivating a much more open and enjoyable aesthetic sensibility.
I think making things beautiful is important. But often what's first considered ugly is beautiful, too.
It seems to me that whatever else is beautiful apart from asbsolute beauty is beautiful because it partakes of that absolute beauty, and for no other reason. Do you accept this kind of causality?
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