(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
It begins with the light that strangely strikes the pupil, and the deep notes that find its way into the ear canals. Or it is a new touch that irresistibly springs through the body, a piece of exploding food in the mouth or the body itself that has begun to move in tandem with the tones, the touch, the light.
The intensity increases.
The Elvedalen I see, the song I hear, the caress, the food, the dance or the artwork that has gripped and activated all my senses is about to set me in a state of intensity and attention, which I find in another dimension.
I forget myself. It is as if I am in time before time, before language. In the second time. In a way within time. "It" happens, "it" is.
I want it to last. It can't last.
The condition that has affected me involves all my senses, whether I am physically present in what is happening or indirectly through a story in a book, a movie or played music.
The emotions that the images, the vision, the tastes, the smells, the sounds have come to life, are reminiscent of feelings I have had before, about something previously deeply stimulating, but because I now, again, experience it as for the first time, with the intensity that every first once experience carries with it, my brain eagerly encounters the phenomenon of recognizing, interpreting and reinforcing the irresistible experience. It feels as if I have been moved out of myself and into something very stimulating, new and strange, and at the same time I have come home in a strange way, as if I am in the midst of living, yes, that is living.
I don't have a language for it yet. I do not know what that is. I just know that now, in this pleasure, the self-forgetting, the uplifting, the recognition, the intellectual clarification (or what I shall now call it), I experience the beauty. The world out there has made contact with something crucial inside me and is talking to me. Or something deep in me that has made contact with the world out there and talks to it. Outside of me? Within me? The words make no sense. I am this.
When it's over, when the strength of the experience has diminished, the power has subsided, when the music has subsided, the immersive play has ceased, the meal, the mass, the gathering has ended, when the intense concentration has subsided, I am permeated by a calm, a clarity, fatigue or peace. Some of us go on to work, others fall asleep exhausted, some want to talk about the event, process it, determine the quality of it, others have already started the preparations to experience it again – repeat it. For as soon as the opportunity arises again, as soon as the ceremony, the dance, the drama or the special party in the concert tears us apart, as soon as we again stand in front of the altar, the image, the clothes or the objects that irresistibly trigger – seize – the senses and our intellect, we recognize the beauty. We want to return there, we seek to return there to be in this liberating dimension. Many experience it as I-loose, for some it is the highest stage of disinterested contemplation – contemplation, for others quiet ecstasy, pure being, for others still the deepest, religious experience, the core of love. In certain cultures, in certain narratives, the encounter with the divine takes place in this moment.
Beauty has many faces, it manifests itself in very different forms, it is expressed through countless figures; from the taste of coffee in the morning to the most sublime moments of love, from the bear cubs' immersive play in the snow to self-forgetting immersion in a work of art. Animals and humans have the core of the beauty experience in common, it is as deeply rooted in us as eating, sleeping and reproducing, without the beauty, and the repetition of it, we would not have existed. When the human animal got the story, we also got the tool to manipulate the beauty, change, vary and enhance it.
Without the beauty, and the repetition of it, we would not have existed.
The need for beauty is so fundamental to us that wherever we are, we stage situations and repeat its conditions, to experience it again.
Throughout history, beauty has taken many different paths.
The first culturally created beauty that we know of – there have certainly been many before that – sees the light of day, or perhaps rather the torch darkness of the cave, something around seventy thousand years ago. Words and formulas, rites and songs are repeated in step with the rocking of the bodies. During the trance-like state that the rhythms create, the outside world gradually lets go of us and we come into contact with the sphere of life where we believe the spirits of animals and nature are also located. Ritual calling is our saving language in an otherwise ruthless world; the sick are to be healed, rain is secured, prey is led to the hunters, nature is deceived, led, appeased.
Everyone is in the cave, on the plain, in front of the fire. The trampling of the feet, the drums and the song hit our ear canals at the same time and are felt, physically, by everyone, at the same time. Imperceptibly, we fall into the same rhythm. Suddenly our bodies move in a common rhythm. Miraculously, the song and the trampling have coordinated our body movements and brought them into harmony. It's a unique moment. In that cave, or on that plain, around that fire, the community is generated, created, created. We do the same. We are the same. In this moment, the individual is also created, as one of us breaks out of the unison song, out of the community that is formed, feels the pain, the loneliness, and returns to the community, as another.
We urge and sing before and after the hunt, when the food is to be distributed, when the child is to be cradled, when the young are to be married, the dead are buried. We leave signs in the landscape, paint pictures of the forces we contact on the cave walls, decorate the shaman's drum and the hunters' weapons, we decorate the poisonous with colors and signs that give fertility and protect against evil forces, we make altars for the spirits, paint the bodies ours, houses and utensils are being decorated. We transform the conversation between the forces within us and in the nature around us into the narrative of the world.
Our self-awareness, our ability to see ourselves from the outside, develops in this process. We act ourselves in the stories we form. We see ourselves as strangers. We understand that we must die. Why are we here? Life is buzzing around us and in us. But at the same time it is completely silent. No one answers our questions. We align ourselves with a symbolic order in the world of silence.
With the song, the dance and the stories, we create for millennia this unique conversation between nature and ourselves into a complex web of life's language threads. This language must change all the time.
Some lead the ritual when the animal is to be killed, the grain is collected and life is celebrated, some organize the ceremony when conflicts are to be resolved, enemies are identified: the distribution of food and the organization of the room take possession of the beauty early on.
The celebration of the community, of life – of beauty – still unfolds in the same way in many cultures. The Aborigines decorate their bodies and sing through the stories of the landscape, which are also the stories of the individual clan. Amazon Indians bind nature and humans together by dancing through the houses; The late people of the Kalahari Desert recreate the community with healing hands that touch old and young in the night's dance around the fire. The bonds of the living must be secured and balanced again and again.
We moderns invest insane amounts to get in touch with beauty, but it is as if the inner effect is absent.
In China, it was poetry and the regular rituals of music that bound the earth, the sky and the people together, while deep insight into nature ensured inner freedom. Night and day, all year round in India the divine energy is evoked rasa in art expressions and festivals that with stories, candles, dance, flowers and music restore contact with the life-giving cosmos. Jews, Muslims and Buddhists still pray, sing, swing rhythmically into the divine.
The experience of being pushed into time, which beauty opens up, erases the differences. The idea of loss and gain disappears. By sharing something genuine and human, the lonely individual forgets for a moment his vulnerability and pain; by becoming part of the world, we strengthen the bonds to life and to each other.
It can look like lovemaking, but is not. The erotic can be part of the experience, but is not the experience itself. It may look like the burning obsession, but it is not. Desire can lead to experience, but is not experience.
Most of our chores have the experience of beauty in one form or another as their goal; in the midst of pain and torment, beauty makes the hard life worth living. Beauty is the raison d'être of life. The daily, weekly, monthly, annual party, get-together, play, life fair or artistic immersion is not an everyday act, it is an everyday prerequisite.
And yet, the more we strive to experience beauty, the more money and energy we invest to be filled with it again, the less often we, the modern ones, experience that we actually experience beauty.
We moderns invest insane amounts of nature's very limited resources to get in touch with beauty, but it's as if the inner effect is absent, yes, often it just feels as if emptiness is expanding.
What happened? Have we seen through the enchantment, revealed the birth of the blind, drunken mob in beauty, and therefore refuse to give in? Or have some smart, state master of ceremonies channeled our needs into a "useful", so-called healthier circulation? Or have some even smarter manufacturers of goods, without our noticing it, taken separate control of each of us and made the beauty, on which we are completely dependent, something unattainable by putting us in the eternal procrastination, the eternal dissatisfaction? With what motive?
But if it is the case that someone has gained such control over us, how are we going to recapture the beauty, liberate ourselves, recapture the community, the time, our lives?
Kiøsterud is an author and essayist.
His latest release is the novel Henders verk (October 2015).
