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Notes on the Aesthetics of Physical Therapy
Like rock and roll—and all art—good physical therapy puts opposites together. I gave this idea some thought, and these are some of my findings. It is in keeping with this principle of Aesthetic Realism stated by Eli Siegel, “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.”
Read it here and let me know what you think in the comments below.
Aretha Franklin’s “I Say a Little Prayer” – Containment & Ecstasy
Aesthetic Realism, the philosophy founded and taught by the American poet and critic Eli Siegel, explains that a successful work of art pleases us deeply because, in its technique, it does what we are hoping to do in our lives. “All beauty,” it states, “is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.” Aretha Franklin’s great 1968 recording of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s I Say A Little Prayer thrills me from the bottom of my feet to the top of my head because of the way it puts together containment and ecstasy, restraint and letting go, individuality and relation.
In I Say a Little Prayer we hear a single self; alone, apart, distinct, and at the same time ecstatically, joyously related to the world outside herself. And these opposites of singleness and relation are made one, not only in the words and in Aretha Franklin’s singing, but in the structure of the song itself. Here’s how it begins:
I’m looking at this recording in relation to notes from a 1975 class taught by Eli Siegel, in which he related music to his Questions for Everyone, which consists of 27 questions—deep, surprising, tough, kind questions that have powerfully affected every person who’s ever read them. I see this song as a thrilling comment on Question #1:
“Do I feel the same alone as I do with other people?”
The Self: Alone and Together
This song—both in its meaning and structure—is dramatically about a woman seeing herself as alone, yet also in relation to a man she cares for, and to the world itself. In the class I referred to, Mr. Siegel said:
Every reality can be seen as lonely, including one grain of oatmeal. Every note can be alone.
From the outset of this piece, there is a lot of separation of sound, including in the recording technique of stereo separation: the piano and drums are in one channel while the guitar and backup singers (the Sweet Inspirations) are in the other. And when Aretha enters, her voice comes from both channels, joining them. Each of these elements—each individual note, syllable, drum tap—can be seen as alone, but man do they keep beautiful company, creating such a wonderful, undulating tapestry of sound!
Aretha Franklin’s voice reaches right to the center of your soul with that gorgeous combination of urgency and casualness, intensity and ease. And the lyrics convey a very fine human impulsion: “The moment I wake up, before I put on my makeup, I say a little prayer for you.” Listen:
Is this an instance of a woman having good will? I think so. Good will, I learned from Aesthetic Realism, is “the desire to have something else stronger and more beautiful, for this desire makes oneself stronger and more beautiful.” And it is the thing that will have a person feel that when he or she is alone, they are not so different from when they’re with other people. And we find it in the music. For example, I love the way, after Aretha sings, “I say a little…” with those alternating up-and-down notes that can sound almost fragile, the Sweet Inspirations complete her thought, singing “prayer for you” in rich harmony. In the very technique, the outside world is joining her, strengthening her, completing her. She’s alone, but she’s also most definitely not alone.
And then, in the chorus, to church we go! After all, this is a prayer! The wonderful, surging, gospel-style call-and-response we hear as the Sweet Inspirations sing, “Forever! Forever!” and Aretha passionately responds, “Forever! Ever-er!” to each wave of emotion that she receives from them, is a wonderful illustration of a single self getting to strength and joy through the world outside.
What I Learned
How different this is from the feeling I and many people have had—not only in the moment we wake up, but for a lot of moments afterward: “How’s the world treating me today? Did I get enough sleep?, Do I have time to make coffee? What does the boss think of me?” etc.—in other words, one’s running monologue about oneself. And then when we are with other people we feel it’s jarring because we haven’t had people in our minds in a deep, thoughtful way before that time.
Once in a class taught by Ellen Reiss, Aesthetic Realism Chair of Education, a colleague mentioned that I liked to keep my distance from people. I said it was true, that I didn’t like myself for it, and wanted to understand myself better and change. Ms. Reiss asked: Why would one do that?
Kevin Fennell: Well, so I can just be with myself?—just have my own surroundings?
Ellen Reiss: How about that? Everyone has a preference for one’s own company. When you already have the best, why go elsewhere? Oneself is a precious commodity; there are only so many minutes in a day—why waste them?
I thank Ellen Reiss for her kind, critical, and often humorous, encouragement of my life. Questioning myself through discussions like this, I’ve become far more interested in knowing other people and trying to do them good than I ever would have been otherwise; and it makes for real pride.
In the technique of “I Say A Little Prayer,” the woman singing does not present herself as a “precious commodity.” In fact, the outside world is lovingly present at all times—the instruments, and very much the backup singers. They are backup singers in the true sense of the word—that is, they back the singer up in the depth of her feeling.
Another way this song addresses the question of a single self in relation to the world, of containment and release, is the way it has contraction and expansion rhythmically. The music is largely in 4/4 time, but at unexpected moments, the composer Burt Bacharach shortens a measure to 2/4 or 3/4 and you feel a little stumble, then a rush forward. Does this subtle rhythmic contraction and expansion convey through sound the sense of a self holding onto itself and also spreading out widely? I think it does. Listen for it.
Aesthetic Realism changed my life by showing me that what goes on inside of me is not apart from, but is deeply related to everything else in the world, including the inner lives of other people. One of these persons is the woman I love, Carol McCluer, my wife and friend. The knowledge of Aesthetic Realism logically and kindly demolished the wall behind which I separated myself from humanity, and which—though I had built it with my own conceit—was suffocating me. I’m grateful for what I’m learning now and for how my life continues to change. I feel so much more now that the person I am alone is the same as the person I am with other people.
To Really Mean It
Getting back to the recording, a great moment is coming. Following the two rousing choruses we just heard, things quiet down and mellow out considerably as the call-and-response now between Aretha and backup singers gets more spread out and easy-going on the words, “I’m in love with you. Answer my prayer. Say you love me too.” It seems like the song is winding down to its conclusion. Suddenly Aretha lets out a deep, “Yeah-eah-eah!” and the chorus of the song comes surging back, more intense, more utterly free and beautifully controlled than ever. Her prayer comes forth with new conviction and unmistakable ecstasy. We can learn from this. Do we want to be like this music—stick to our largest feeling, have it grow, and show it with all of ourselves? The revival of the chorus here says, “I want to mean it more, and more, and keep on meaning it!”
I thank Aesthetic Realism for showing so beautifully that there’s really no such thing as one’s self alone, apart—however much it may seem so. Our middle name is relation. This song, I think, celebrates that fact.
Learn more: AestheticRealism.org
Springsteen’s “Born to Run” – Can Love and Hate Make Sense?
Why have millions of people worldwide felt these words (and their accompanying music) represent them?—so much so that they’ve stood on their chairs in concert arenas and sung along to them at the top of their lungs:
“Tramps like us, baby, we were born to run!”
I believe the answer is in what Aesthetic Realism, the philosophy founded by American poet and critic Eli Siegel, shows is the deepest, most urgent desire in every person: our desire to like the world honestly; that is, with all the facts present. That can seem like a tall order considering how frequently we meet obstacles and difficulties in life. And it can be especially hard at this time as a heartbreaking war has broken out in Eastern Europe and Covid-19 has upended our lives in so many ways.
Aesthetic Realism shows that, even so, the world itself can be liked, because it has an aesthetic structure: the oneness of opposites. That is what every successful work of art illustrates. “In reality, opposites are one;” Eli Siegel stated, “art shows this.” In its musical structure, Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run is a thrilling oneness of obstacle and release, heaviness and flight, repulsion and attraction, enmity and love—and, as such, we can learn from it happily.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that it is easy to make sense of where we’re against the world and where we’re for it. But Aesthetic Realism shows greatly that when something corresponding to these opposites can be heard as one in music, we feel, however unconsciously, it’s possible to make sense of them in ourselves.
In a wonderful semester of the class The Opposites in Music, taught at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation by Barbara Allen and Dr. Edward Green, we studied notes from a 1975 class taught by Eli Siegel in which he discussed his essay “Questions for Everyone” in relation to music. He took up, for example, Question #3: “Have I sometimes felt that I hated everything?” He said music comments on this question because it consists of elements that are different from each other and, however harmonious they may be, they are opposed to each other as well. “Hate,” he said, “arises from the fact that things are different. Everything can be in a state of enmity.”
Born to Run is an exhilarating expression of the desire in people to break free of everything that stops us from truly being ourselves—those stultifying restraints coming from both outside and within ourselves. The music is an intense relation of high-spirited energy in a battle with something terrifically muddy and weighty. Listen, for example, to the opening: a quick series of drum beats and a heavily descending bass give way to a pulsating organism of struggling sound. The bass plays one relentless note over and over, a piano pounds out a rhythm on a single chord, the saxophone and other instruments drone out a thick blanket of inert sound, while drums, electric guitar and glockenspiel try with all their might to break free, with that familiar “Born to Run” anthem-like figure, spiritedly rising and descending against that thick wall of sound. Listen:
As the verse begins, we hear a slow, metallic strum of a guitar chord, and it’s like we’ve come to a clearing in the forest (though the bass still reminds us of thickness, difficulty). In the opening words, Springsteen represents people’s furious objection to an economic system that tells us, “Your whole life will be used to make profit for someone else.” And, as in many Springsteen songs, the attempt to break free is expressed in terms of hot-rod race cars:
In the day we sweat it out on the streets of a runaway American dream.
At night we ride through mansions of glory in suicide machines.
Then, on the words “Sprung from cages,” there is a sudden, wonderful uplift as piano and glockenspiel play exhilarated, up-and-down arpeggios, and the bass, which before was so heavy, is now dancing—positively lyrical. Still, the uplift and exhilaration are felt in the context of weighty opposition: that low, buzzing sound like molasses, which tries to push the singer back, even as he struggles against it. Then, at last, the first glimpse of triumph shines through on the refrain: “Tramps like us, baby, we were born to run!”
The terrific push for freedom continues in the second verse, as the singer asks a girl, Wendy, to join him. Then a grunted count of “1-2-3-4!” propels us into an inspired saxophone solo played by Clarence Clemons and, just as it reaches its height, the accompanying music suddenly turns darker for the middle section of the song. The fight between restriction and freedom is not resolved. No escape yet.
Sitting in my room in my family’s house in Yonkers, where I played this record hundreds of times in the late 70’s, I did sometimes feel I hated everything. But I didn’t have a beautiful enmity, as art always does. Mine was sloppy and it was ugly, because its purpose was to despise the world itself and see it as unworthy of me, which, I learned from Aesthetic Realism, is contempt: the “disposition in every person to think we will be for ourselves by making less of the outside world.” I used the fact that my family could be confusing to look down on people generally and see them as not worth knowing. And I felt people were out to trip me up or make fun of me. My mode of counterattack was to have a running stream of mocking thoughts about other people in my mind. But I didn’t know that this was the reason I despised myself so much.
In Aesthetic Realism Consultations, I came to see how contempt was hurting my life, and I’m so grateful to say I changed and became far happier than I ever imagined I could be. Aesthetic Realism enables one to look at a feeling of against-ness, outrage, even hate and ask, “Is my objection on behalf of greater justice, beauty, kindness, or is it for the glory of my narrow ego?” We can learn to have these opposites—for and against—in a way that makes us proud.
In Born to Run, there’s a sense throughout that the ferocious anger it expresses has within it a belief in a beautiful, likeable outcome; and the music sustains that. Still, the hate is unmistakable. “When people want to get away,” Eli Siegel said in the class I’m quoting from, “there is some hate.”
In the brooding middle section, the accents now land on the 1st and 3rd beats, giving a sense of struggle, incompleteness, yearning. The words describe teenage frustration—an agonizing relation of inertia and restlessness—with images of the New Jersey shore:
Beyond the Palace hemi-powered drones scream down the boulevard.
Girls comb their hair in rear-view mirrors and the boys try to look so hard.
The amusement park rises bold and stark;
Kids are huddled on the beach in the mist.
I wanna die with you Wendy on the street tonight in an everlasting kiss!
This is melodramatic, but I take it as a saying that one sincere moment is worth a lifetime of fakery.
The band now goes into a wrestling match of epic proportions, with one force trying to take off, and another force struggling to hold it down. Finally, the taking-off contender is beaten to the ground in what sounds like an unbreakable stalemate—and then something mighty happens: there is a terrific release. This is the moment near the end of a Springsteen concert (at least the ones I attended in the 70’s), when all the house lights come on in the gigantic arena and we see the whole crowd and ourselves at once and realize—this song is us! Right here! Right now! It happens on these words:
The highway’s jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive.
Everybody’s out on the run tonight but there’s no place left to hide.
Together Wendy we can live with the sadness, I’ll love you with all the madness in my soul
Oh, someday girl, I don’t know when, we’re gonna get to that place where we really wanna go and we’ll walk in the sun…but till then…
Tramps like us, baby we were born to run!
I have been amazed to see that this recording is a compound of struggle and freedom all the way from the first note to last. Even in this triumphant last section the highway’s “jammed” and “there’s no place left to hide.” It doesn’t present an easy answer, but it does present a fight—even a feeling of hate—as having a pleasurable, beautiful form. And having looked at it in terms of the opposites, as always happens, I love it more than ever!
Here comes the big finale:
Learn more: AestheticRealism.org
Homage to Little Richard
The great, the one-and-only Little Richard has died, but the beauty of what he did for rock and roll lives on forever, and I join millions of people worldwide in expressing my love for him.
I believe the reason Little Richard is so loved is that, as artist, he did what we are longing to do in our lives: have big, powerful, authentic feeling and show it in a way that is unfettered, unfiltered, uncompromised, and yet has accuracy and style.
Like everything I write here, what I’m saying is based on this great principle of Aesthetic Realism, stated by its founder, Eli Siegel: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.”
Little Richard is the giant, the hero of rock and roll that he is because of the way—in his greatest recordings and performances—he put opposites together; such opposites as wildness and exactitude, logic and emotion, inner feeling and outward blare.
When we hear him almost turn himself inside-out on such classics as Long Tall Sally, Lucille, or Good Golly Miss Molly (just to name a glorious few), there is something so staggeringly entire, so ALL OUT in his singing, that it thrills us to our core. It sounds like pain, but it feels like joy! That, my friends, is rock and roll.
In an Aesthetic Realism lesson he gave in 1969, Eli Siegel said of rock and roll, “If you listen to it there seems to be the utmost pain and the utmost assertion.” He called it “the blare of agony.” And he asked the man having the lesson (who was a rock musician), “Do you believe that there’s a desire for a person to unburden himself as if he were an earthquake?” That is such a description of Little Richard!
Continuing, Mr. Siegel said, “There is a desire to take one’s private life and to have a train caller give it.” Isn’t this why we love Little Richard? Don’t we want to take the turmoil, pain, confusion, frustration we have inside and find some way to let it out—not in a sloppy, ugly way, but in an honest way? When we hear Little Richard sing at his most high-voltage intensity, we also feel a sincerity that makes it feel right, well-formed; it satisfies our ears and minds at once.
I think he would be very proud to know that beyond the “flamboyance,” beyond all the frivolity and high-flying fun of his music, there is a deep encouragement for every human being, a means for us to be better people. The knowledge of Aesthetic Realism is what makes that clear, and I’m grateful to know it. I see Little Richard as a man of great courage. He got in front of that piano and microphone and wanted to hold nothing back—and he succeeded to very large degree. In fact, I think there is no person—even after all these decades of rock and roll—who has ever surpassed or even equaled him in that regard.
So, dear Little Richard, I salute you and thank you with all my heart.
We’re forever in your debt.
Rock in peace.
Here’s a link to my paper, Wildness and Precision – Little Richard’s “Good Golly Miss Molly”
Learn more: AestheticRealism.org
“Please Mr. Postman” Delivers the Goods
Dear friends,
I’m very happy to publish here a new video of my presentation of “Stop & Go, Pleasure & Pain in the Marvelettes’ Please Mr. Postman.”
Please watch, listen and enjoy!
Intensity and Ease in Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking out Loud”
Ed Sheeran
Like millions of people, I am very taken by Ed Sheeran’s giant hit record of 2014-15, Thinking Out Loud, and I believe the reason for its tremendous popularity is the way it puts opposites together—specifically, casualness and passion, intensity and ease, large feeling presented within a careful framework. We respond to this because deeply it represents what we want in our own lives, in keeping with this great principle of Aesthetic Realism, the education founded by the American poet and philosopher Eli Siegel: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.”
Thinking Out Loud doesn’t have the typical pop arrangement of verse/verse/chorus/verse, etc. Instead, it consists mainly of two large sections, each of which contains four short mini-sections that are melodically different from each other, but that build upon each other quite naturally to deliver the passionate import of the song. So, with all the emotional stir of Sheeran’s delivery, we’re also deeply pleased by a satisfying structure—including how the second half exactly parallels the melodic outline of the first.
The song begins very quietly with just a touch on the strings of a guitar chord; and Ed Sheeran’s voice is almost conversational, like a man speaking to a woman over a café table, as very spare and quiet guitar chords continue to play underneath his words. Listen:
Here, the melody rises and falls very modestly — yet there is wonder and yearning together with warm confidence in the way each line rises from the third up to the sixth, and then settles down to the tonic. So while the melody has an easy, casual way about it, there’s already a growing fervency.
Piano, drums and bass are now added to the mix as the momentum gathers. In the lines of the next mini-section, there is a pattern of notes that eagerly strive upward, settle down to something more anchored, and then rise again. There’s a pleasing relation of rushing forward and pause, as his passion continues to build.
We just heard the transitional phrase: “And I’m thinking ‘bout how…” which will lead us into the next mini-section. The melody is again different, with each line beginning with a tightly struggling, high-pitched phrase that then resolves.
And here the song hits what I — and I imagine a lot of other people — feel is its most beautiful moment. It’s on the transitional phrase “So, honey, now.” The way Ed Sheeran sings that word “now” — it seems to just flow out of him so naturally, you could almost say easily, and yet it is so passionately sung; like he’s singing it with every atom of his being:
Following this wonderful outburst is a last mini-section which I guess could rightly be called the chorus. It continues the large, excited feeling that has been reached. In the words there is a relation of intimacy and width:
Take me into your loving arms
Kiss me under the light of a thousand stars
Place your head on my beating heart
I’m thinking out loud
Maybe we found love right where we are.
In the cascading melody of each line there is a sound of struggle and gratitude, pain and triumph at once. Yet somehow, with all the feeling exploding forth, the song never loses its easy-going quality that has been there from the beginning. One reason I think is, again, those long pauses between the lines, as well as the spareness of the instrumental accompaniment. There’s a sound of casually luxuriating in one’s large emotion:
I love Aesthetic Realism for showing that we all want to put opposites together every moment of our lives. We want, as we’re taking it easy, to feel it is on behalf of vivid, lively respect for the world and people. And we want to feel, too, that we are capable of large emotion, and then, when we do have large feeling, that we can be truly at ease, not uncomfortable and looking for a chance to smooth things out.
I’m so fortunate to have heard criticism of the contempt that caused me to divide these opposites of ease and excitement and to go back and forth painfully between them. And I want to change more. In one class, Ellen Reiss, the Aesthetic Realism Chairman of Education, said to me very kindly:
The thing in you that wants to be passionate about the truth and beauty in this world is you. The other thing is an imposter.
I count myself one of the lucky people living on this earth to know that having big emotion about the world outside of me is the same as true comfort for my own dear self. And I aim to feel this more and more as my life goes on.
The title of this song, “Thinking Out Loud,” itself puts together the opposites of quietude and outburst that I’ve been writing about, while also illustrating what Eli Siegel has shown are the opposites central in rock and roll: private, secret, inner feeling made into a public announcement.
Then there’s what the song is actually saying. In the first part, he tells a woman that when she grows old he’ll still love her; and in the second part, he says that when he grows old, he believes she’ll still love him. And each part culminates in his saying, “So now, take me into your loving arms” and the rest of that passionate chorus, concluding with, “I’m thinking out loud, maybe we found love right where we are.” So, like the qualities we find in the music itself, there is in the words passionate feeling together with a kind of rock-solid confidence and ease. I’ve thought about that last line and the phrase, “right where we are.” It seems to say that love can be found in the world as we find it here and now — not in some other time or place of our imagination.
I’m immensely grateful that because of what I’ve learned from Aesthetic Realism, I’m more in love now with my dear wife Carol McCluer than at any time in our marriage. That is because we’ve learned from Aesthetic Realism that our care for each other needs to be based on care for the world itself.
As you’ll hear, the second large section exactly parallels the structure of the first section that I described — both melodically and with the repeat of certain rhymes and phrases in the words, making for a satisfying relation of sameness and difference. As the song goes on, more and more is added to the accompaniment, causing the feeling to build: the piano gets busier and stronger for example, and backup singers quietly join the lead singer, sometimes harmonizing with him, other times backing him up with rich harmonies on the syllable “Oooh.” Then there’s a guitar solo. It, too, has that relation of fervency and measure that is in the song as a whole. And it leads to the concluding chorus, where Sheeran is joined even more strongly by the backup singers, whom I like to see as standing for the outside world ratifying his emotion.
I respect the singing of Ed Sheeran. I feel he is unafraid to have and show large feeling, and I love his style. I don’t know whether it would be right to call this recording great. Maybe not, but — like millions of people — I know that I like it very much. It shows that ease and large feeling can be beautifully together. And as such, it stands for what we all most deeply want. Here is the remainder:
Learn more: AestheticRealism.org
Farewell to Aretha
Aretha Franklin
The great Aretha Franklin has died, but the powerful, soul-stirring effect that her singing has on us will live on for all time.
I believe Aretha’s singing thrills us so deeply because, at her best, she puts together opposites that we are hoping to make sense of in our lives. What I’m saying is based on this principle of Aesthetic Realism, stated by its founder, Eli Siegel: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.”
When, for example, we hear one of Aretha’s high-energy rockers (such as Chain of Fools, Since You’ve Been Gone, or Respect) or some of her more meditative pieces (like I Say a Little Prayer or Natural Woman), we hear a beautiful togetherness of power and grace, straight-line simplicity and tremendous richness of meaning, a single self and the wide universe. And we want this: We want to feel powerful and graceful at once; to feel that our most intimate feelings are connected with the unlimited world.
In Aretha’s best singing, there seems to be no separation between her own feeling and the sound that meets our ears. She reaches us from the depth of her very self. She tells the truth in sound.
I believe we love her singing because it has us feel maybe we can break out of our own self-containment and get to a large, passionate feeling about something or someone, and through doing so, feel more truly ourselves.
God bless you, Aretha Franklin. And thank you for the beautiful honesty you bring to the art of song.
Learn more: AestheticRealism.org
Little Stevie Wonder’s Early Rocket Still Soars
This summer marks 55 years since the amazing live recording of Stevie Wonder performing Fingertips, Part 2 (at age 12) first mesmerized our nation.
To commemorate that auspicious beginning in 1963 and to celebrate the love for Stevie Wonder felt by people worldwide, I’m proud to post a video of a paper on Fingertips, Part 2 that I gave as part of a presentation, “What Music Says about Our Lives—A Celebration!” at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation in New York.
Hope you enjoy it!
Moody Blues in the Hall—of Course!
I’m amazed it took until this year for the great British rock band The Moody Blues to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
But they’re in now, and they surely do belong!
In 1967 they did that daring thing: they created a rock album Days of Future Passed with an orchestra consisting mainly of classical instruments, calling itself the London Festival Orchestra. And it wasn’t just that this combination was new; it was done with such beauty, such grandeur, and with such authenticity—a certain rightness in the combination—that it made this record a landmark in the history of music.
After the lush orchestral overture (The Day Begins), the band comes radiating forth with Dawn Is a Feeling that has in it the expanding, energetic inevitability of the rising Sun. And by the time we hit Peak Hour, the full force of the Moody Blues as a bona fide rock band reaches high noon. Onward through the buoyant joy of Tuesday Afternoon and the poignant yearning of Nights in White Satin, orchestra and band keep intermingling, effectively heightening each other and making for an album like no other. And in all of their subsequent albums, that sense of sweeping largeness joined with the urgent immediacy of rock and roll, flourished and took many new forms.
I think the greatest thing about the Moody Blues is the overall sense their songs frequently give us that we are in a world that has goodness, beauty and meaning—a world that is on our side. This comes through not only in the message of the songs, but in the deeply convincing music that delivers that message.
As you, my readers, know, my writing on this site is based on this principle of Aesthetic Realism stated by its founder, Eli Siegel: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.” Again and again in their best music, the Moody Blues make a beautiful one of gentleness and ferocity, continuity and rhythmic punch, high and low, yearning and joy, definite and indefinite, a single self and the wide universe. This is why we respond to their music with such pleasure: it does what we are deeply hoping to do.
Aesthetic Realism shows that all art is a presentation of reality as worthy of our honest respect and love; and as such, it points the way for how we hope to see all the time.
Today I celebrate the Moody Blues and thank them for providing an abundance of material for doing just that.
Learn more: AestheticRealism.org