Brain Food #830: At the end of the day, it is personal
The consolations of literature, art and wine
Thoughts of the day
Good morning, and thank you for reading today’s Brain Food. A warm welcome to those who joined recently, it’s nice to see so many of you here.
I gifted a friend a copy of Mary Oliver’s Upstream a few years ago, and they decided now felt like the right time to visit it. We discussed what quotes we had both saved and highlighted from the book. Some were the same, others differed.
Reading, but truly any form of consumption, is like a conversation. Books, stories, and personal accounts speak to us, but we must also be good listeners. Everyone’s experience of something external is different, invariably tied to who they are, and where they are at that point in their lives.
We read books, both fiction, and non-fiction, or consume the thoughts of others through various media, seeking answers, explanations, and meaning. But if every human being is unique, or strives to be so, for the answers to be true to us, they must eventually come from ourselves. What we see outside of us as meaningful is, in fact, what resonates within us.
And as Mary Oliver herself wrote, on the consolations of literature:
“The second world—the world of literature— offered me, besides the pleasures of form, the sustentation of empathy (the first step of what Keats called negative capability) and I ran for it. I relaxed in it. I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything—other people, trees, clouds. And this is what I learned: that the world’s otherwise otherness is an antidote to confusion, that standing within this otherness—the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books—can re-dignify the worst-stung heart.”
Grapes D.D. is a set of six screen-prints in multiple colours by Andy Warhol, made in 1979. The collection portrays different varieties of grapes, allegedly merlot and chardonnay. No artwork is better than the other. In some ways, consuming any form of art is very similar to tasting wine, and discovering what you like, what appeals to you. More often than not, after a certain level of quality, you will hear the same words: ‘It is personal.’
Warhol had previously designed the 1975 label for Château Mouton Rothschild. As with all things in art and life, one thing leads to another.
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