aesthetics (junkyard of notes, links)

Uncategorized / Saturday, July 27th, 2019

I want to persuade people that it’s worth their time and effort to experiment with their aesthetics.

Why? I can start by talking about my personal experience. Simplistically, I can divide my life into “life before embracing my aesthetics” and “life after embracing my aesthetics” – and life after embracing my aesthetics has been a lot more enjoyable, a lot more satisfying. People like me more, even flirt with me more. I’m a happier, more relaxed, more comfortable person. I feel cooler, more interesting, higher-status. I believe that you can actually see it in my face, and people are more warm and open towards me because of it.

I’ve always been someone who’s somewhat sensitive to aesthetics in general. I’ve always cared a strange amount about things like font choices, color choices, typography and so on. But for most of my life, I wasn’t very deliberate about “living” my aesthetics.

I did experiment with a bit of it when I was a teenage musician, which I enjoyed. But when I got married and became a working adult, I allowed my aesthetics to decay into a sort of “neutral, vague, bland” state that I think most guys live with. (Yes, guys – this is a gendered phenomenon; I believe that women are more sensitive to aesthetics in general.)

Worrying about my aesthetics then seemed like a luxury I couldn’t afford. I always had this vague fantasy that one day I would save up enough money to buy a new wardrobe. One day I would find the time to work out and get fit, so that a nice shirt would look really good on my frame. One day, one day, one day.

What I’ve learned since is that it’s actually much more sensible to just start embodying your aesthetic(s), right now! You can start with something really small, like a ring or a pendant.

Okay, wait. Hold up a minute.

What are aesthetics, even?

According to the Oxford dictionary, aesthetics are “a set of principles concerned with the nature and appreciation of beauty.” I can roll with that.

What are some important things to note about this?

  1. There is no universal, all-encompassing aesthetic. Some aesthetics are more widespread than others, more popular, more common. Sometimes an entire aesthetic is almost universally agreed to be more elevated than another. I’m seldom interested in those arguments. I’m mostly interested in appreciating each set of aesthetics according to its own internal rules.
  2. Every aesthetic is its own infinite game, with its own set of rules, meant to be toyed with artfully. People will argue and debate about this, of course.
  3. Aesthetics is not just about looking pretty. “Pretty” as a goal is just one type of aesthetic. Consider, for instance, how there are many different types of attractive, even amongst the widely-acknowledged types of conventional attractiveness. There’s “cutesy”, “raunchy”, “sophisticated” and so on. You could have a gritty aesthetic. You could have something deliberately messy, or
  4. Aesthetics are neither objective nor subjective – they’re intersubjective.

(notes to self – look through more questions, more discussions, keep refining, share with more people)

Here’s an example of a random tweet I did – I said that a Hot Wheels car had amazing aesthetics:

Why use that phrase? Why not just say “what a beautiful car”? Technically, “it’s a beautiful car” is correct. But I say that it has great aesthetics because I want to imply something beyond that. I want to imply, specifically, that you could build an entire “cinematic universe” around this car.

And that’s a lot of what I do

β€” trapped β€”

I think being trapped by one’s inherited aesthetics can be a source of frustration, kind of like the pain of being inarticulate.

β€”β€”

Khruangbin’s The Recital That Never Happened reminds me of palm ave float club (sensory deprivation tank place), where I first heard it, and it’s just got this really serene, chill vibe. just listening to the song always mellows me out

An interesting model to play with is thinking of everything as mood modifiers. Everything you read, listen to, touch, have around you – all of it is part of creating an aesthetic, a vibe, a mood for yourself. I personally think it’s good and cool to have a diverse mood collection.

IMO, playing with moods, aesthetics and vibes is a sort of proxy or precursor to playing with ideas and worldviews, identities, self-concept. Depending on how you frame it, you could even say it’s fundamentally the same thing, or deeply intertwined.

Rather than try to model existing status/class signifiers, which is tiresome, it’s far more fun, interesting and exciting to develop + elevate your own aesthetics. Bowie, Prince, Hendrix, Manson, etc appreciated this.

every experiment with aesthetics tantalizingly hints at an entirely different mode of being

the smallest aesthetic bits can help you get started on reimagining and reconceptualizing your entire identity, and by extension, your entire reality

β€” Talismans β€”

I’ve been thinking about talismans recently – everything sacred becomes sacred because people deem it such. You can decide to give objects meaning. It’s not *entirely* arbitrary – there’s an art to it, the stories you tell with and about your objects should resonate with you.

Further reading: