I've never been able to understand the notion that an aesthetic experience is somehow separate from other so-called experiences, as if any experience is a discreet unit. Experience is the stream of consciousness, made and remade in the flow of time with our attention darting hither and yon and dragging the "after-images" along, making a stacked palimpsest. Cheerskep, the champion of the impossibility of words having meaning, and therefore a champion of the innate capacity of words to serve as containers of multiple -- intentionaly metaphorical -- meanings laid into them, paradoxically wants us to peel away the palimpsest layer by layer to expose some innate bedrock is-ness of the aesthetic experience. By his own argument the bedrock is a phantom.
As far as I can determine all subjective experience has an aesthetic dimension. It may burst forth without intention, fully entangled with the stream of experience or it may be slowly coaxed forth through by various means, laborious, distracted, or even disinterested yet, as always, entangled. You can't define the aesthetic experience because it IS not something at all and therefore inseparable from the subjective stream of the consciousness of I being alive. WC --- On Sun, 3/8/09, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote: > From: [email protected] <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: Text and Images > To: [email protected] > Date: Sunday, March 8, 2009, 5:33 PM > I wrote that I was about to deliver "Two somewhat > arbitrary assertions, with > no great back-up corroboration." > > The first assertion was this: > > "(1) An artist's or critic's > "explanation" may lead to greater > "understanding" of sorts, and > "admiration" in a contemplator, but never to an > "aesthetic > experience" -- except of a bogus sort." > > Whereupon Michael pounced: > > "Are you saying that someone can experience at least > two sorts of aesthetic > experience, the bogus and the non-bogus? Explain that, > please. Explain what you > have in mind when you say bogus a. experience, and by > inference, the > non-bogus a. experience." > > He then quotes my description of a "bogus a. > experience": > > "like the shallow awe that arose in the minds of young > readers of Eliot's > "The Wasteland" a couple of generations ago when > they read the "Notes" to the > poem." > > Aw shoot, man, it's Sunday, and I said I didn't > want to corroborate anything, > I just wanted to run off at the mouth in a relaxed Sunday > kind of way. But > okay, here's what I had in mind. > > I remember when I was a kid, from about eight till > nineteen, I was much of > the time an enormous phony, and there was no one I was more > a phony with than > with myself. When I read those "Notes" to > "The Wasteland", I was knocked out by > all this what I took to be palpable confirmation of the > poem's (and the > poet's) "art". I remember writing some short > fiction at the time, and putting lots > of footnotes in it, and cooing over my own "art". > > > In fact I now think the "Wasteland" notes are > bullshit, not impossibly a > very conscious gimmic dreamed up by Eliot or Pound. > > Still, at the time they awed me, and convinced me I was in > the company of > "artistic greatness". The experience was > memorable, august, I thought, the sort > of thing that grips great minds -- which I wanted to > pretend to myself I had. > In fact, however, it happened long before I ever derived > from a poem an > experience that I have since called "aesthetic". > > There must be others on this list who can recall some time > in their youth > when they were conned by cathedral-grand trappings into > feeling they were in the > presence of greatness. As a kid, I didn't have the > right stuff of the kid who > could see and say the emperor was bare-ass. > > In sum, what I may have thought of as an "a.e." > back then I would now call > something else. Pseudo aesthetic. Bogus. > > Michael continued to come after me. But I'll save that > for another posting. > > > > > ************** > Worried about job security? Check out the 5 safest jobs in > a > recession. > (http://jobs.aol.com/gallery/growing-job-industries?ncid=emlcntuscare00000002)
