The quantum of solace

Today for the hundred time, I am reading the same issue – aesthetic! What is aesthetic appreciation? Then when I looked out of the window, I saw the sky. It was raining a few hours ago but the sun is shining now. And at 4.35 p.m. it is hot. These few days, shine or rain, I have been going through this subject matter – completing my report.

Amazingly, the sky evokes emotions that I cant really describe with words. As I continue watching, the different shades and hues of white and blue, the golden and silvery lines look like fine broken thread here and there( not many just a few), give the impact of something majestic – beyond the talent of any artist in this mortal world. Isn’t that a sign? The Exhibitions of endless creations – sometimes soothing, calming and comforting; at times warning, threatening; once in while destroying! Inevitably, one will have to admit the existence of the One and Only Creator.

Then trying to relate what I am seeing here, now at this moment, how do I explain appreciation? Because the word ‘appreciate’ suddenly become small, so small that it couldn’t explain anything I felt. Maybe that is why we use appreciation for aesthetic – something which is not much. When in art – people are making such a big fuss over this worldly matter. I can name so many philosophers with their so many ideas and theories of aesthetic and artwork and beauty and ugly and craft and etc. Way, way back from Pluto, Socrates, Kant, Tolstoy, Dewey, Danto,….. the list can go on and on. From the Institutional school of thoughts to the most modern one today…. No one can really come up with a definition that truly describe the art that human created, how do we describe God’s creations.

Definitely, there’ll be time when people find peace just by looking at a painting. But will it last? Will that same person feel the same way looking at the same painting the second or the third time? Because artists can only paint what they ‘think’ they see. And the paintings will be there, over the years and decades if nothing happen to them. But there will never be the same tint, shade and hue of the sky even though you go to the same spot, at the same time everyday. So how do we write our aesthetic appreciation of the sky that is applicable everyday, unlike an aesthetic appreciation of a painting.

So what words can be used? Appreciate? Appreciation? Gratitude? Gratification? Thankful? But then, all these words are still meaningless if our actions do not show that we acknowledge the Existence and Power of the Creator – beyond explanation, beyond comprehension, way, way beyond!!!

Allahu Akbar GOD is THE GREATEST
Ya Rahman irham da’fana
O COMPASSIONATE, have mercy upon us