Conversely, if we know that people find certain proportional relationships
of sounds or movement or objects to be beautiful we can use those "truths" to configure
something people will find beautiful: as in works of music, dance and art/architecture
I'm not interested in specifics of either truth or beauty. I just want to propose that
truth and beauty as a dynamic relationship wherein
to behold the beauty is to know its truth.
Simultaneously: to know the truth of a thing is to behold its beauty.
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Love on the other hand is not so much a quality as it is a force and an energy.
It's also an affirmation.
When we find that one person that we love more completely and deeply than anyone else,
we stop looking and settle down.
We practice a piece of music or dance or keep at a painting or architectural design
until we love what we've done so much that we know it can't get any better.
Couldn't be any more beautiful or truer to its form: relative to the moment, of course.
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The arts provide us with an arena in which to explore
the dynamic of beauty, truth and love
without the complications of interpersonal relationships or social/political/religious norms
so long as the focus is solely on the artistic artifact.
But the development of the arts only became possible after
human beings had evolved within the dynamic of beauty, truth and love
to the point of appreciating beauty, understanding truth and having faith
in love's drawing force, sustaining energy and affirming qualilties of
rest, satisfaction and contentedness.
The course of evolution is too far removed for us to ever know,
but we can get a feel for it in the developmental process of a newborn.
We are not born with an ability for coordinated movement or speech.
The capacities may have evolved through our genetic code,
but the abilities still need to develop in each individual.
I think if you stop to think about the developmental process at its
earliest stages you'll see the infant repeating grasping and reaching
movements for the sheer joy of feeling what were once haphazard and jagged motions
becoming more controlled and graceful. What holds their attention and drives them is
love for the beauty of graceful movement. What they are coming to intuitivey know is
is the extent of their bodily proportions with respect to the types, degrees and sequences
of muscular contraction and relaxation needed to bring about the movement.
In short, they are learning the truth of movement.
Very similarly, long before an infant tries to pronounce words, they're cooing and chanting.
These early vocalizations are an effort to produce "harmonically ordered sound".
Each different vowel sound stresses specific bands of overtones in the harmonic series.
Leading up to the attainment of such precise control over the muscles of the vocal tract
is the lesser task of forming sounds that adhere precisely to the overtone series itself.
A simple example would be to think of the shrill caw of a crow vs the sweet tones of a nightingale.
The tones of the nightingale adhere to the overtone series.
Infants learn to produce sound adhereing to the overtone series by the same process
driving them to master movement. What holds their attention and drives them is
love for the beauty of harmonic sound. What they are coming to inwardly know are
the types, degrees and seqences of muscular contraction and relaxation needed to imprint
the proportions of the overtone series on the tones they produce. They are showing a desire
to express tones rather than more primal shrieks and cries. In short,
they are learning the truth of harmonic sound.
It's only after gaining proficieny in producing the purer tones of what we call
harmonic sound the infants begin to gain the more sophisticated control over sound
to be able to produce vowel sounds. After that the begin adding consonants in order to
form actual words. I don't remember what was on my mind or in my heart at the time I was
learning to form words, but find it easy to imagine that was a desire to be able to more
fully participate in the soundscape being created by the people around me out of love for them.
In short, drawn to and resting in the truth and beauty of words out of love.
This, to me, is the most primal dynamic
- or Perichoresis -
of beauty, truth and love
that we find in the material world.
A dynamic that finds its beginning in transfiguring
any old movement into graceful movement and any old sound into harmonic sound.
But that physical beginning comes at the time when neural connections and groupings are
forming in the brain. And what forms these connections other than the will?
If we can imagine this perichoresis of beauty, truth and love forming the neuronal groupings
which interact to form thought, imagination, make connections to memory, turn sensations into
perceptions, etc., etc. then we shouldn't be surprised to see the same perichoresis inderlying
every other aspect and interaction in our lives?