aesthetics of joy

Sometimes there’s a theme that just begs you to write about it. You ponder it, you scribble down a few thoughts, you procrastinate — but it just keeps following you. That’s how it’s been these past few weeks with rainbows. They arrive surreptitiously, by night in my inbox. They appear in the scatter of the spray from a drainpipe. They pop up at the ends of random links, cheerily persistent: “Hi, remember me? I’m that rainbow you were going to write about!” These rainbows act like they have important business.

And so they do. The other night I received a note from a reader named Lauren, with a story that both broke my heart and touched it deeply. Lauren wrote:

…I like to look at how others have used rainbows to brighten their world. I painted a rainbow chrysanthemum on the coffin of my baby boy when I buried him in July this year. Somehow, the colours have inspired me to keep going despite the tragedy that has divided our family.

I must say, first, that there can be nothing so horrible for a family as the loss of a child. Just reading Lauren’s few words filled me with empathy and sorrow. But Lauren’s story is not just about pain. It’s also about an act of beauty that is an expression of fierce love, and positivity that looks an awful lot like hope.

A rainbow is no compensation for the losses in our lives. Filmy and weightless, a rainbow replaces nothing, certainly not a beloved child. But strangely, the rainbow’s kind of joy is often the most able to reach us in those dark moments. Wordless, visceral, instantaneous: it has a direct line to our unconscious. We may feel incapable of laughing in a tragic moment, we may be ashamed of our impulses towards play, but we don’t begrudge ourselves a feeling of wonder at the sight of beauty. Rainbows, light, color, music — these are the things that break through to our dark places and lift us up. They make small spaces of lightness in a heavy heart, spaces for hope to take root. And it’s amazing (isn’t it?) that this kind of hope can be ignited just by color, by something so many people dismiss as “just decoration.” The surfaces of things have a deep kind of power.

In the fourteenth century, the German mystic Meister Eckhart wrote that there was a place within the soul that neither time, nor space, nor no created thing can touch. John O’Donohue, writer and philosopher, interpreted this to mean “that there is a place in you where you have never been wounded.” This place, I think, is our childlike heart, our awed and hopeful heart that dares to believe that life is worth living even in the midst of terrible pain. In depths of sadness, this place can seem inaccessible. It can feel as if it doesn’t even exist, that joy has been wrung out of our lives by struggle. In those moments, when we feel we cannot even find ourselves, it is good to remember that the way in, the way back, is beautifully simple.

So the rainbows were right to pursue me — their message is an important one. Beauty matters, especially in times of pain. If you know someone going through a difficult time, perhaps there is something beautiful you can do for them that will provide a spark of hope. And if it’s your difficult time, trust your own impulses towards beauty. Be kind to yourself. Take a walk somewhere open and wild, play music, or look at art. Seek out rainbows, or make your own.

I’m inspired by Lauren’s example, and feel privileged that she reached out to share her story. She continues to look forward, not forgetting her son Elijah (whose middle name is Rainbow) but remembering with a joyful mindset:

Elijah’s unfuneral in the park was a special day with rainbow flares coming up on the lens and rainbow face-painting. Now, two months after his death, I have yet to see a real rainbow. When I do, it will be special. In the meantime, I make my own rainbows and plan to decorate our new housebus with a rainbow of colour.

Image and story shared with openness and generosity by Lauren Fisher. On her site, you can learn more about her story, and the things she does to bring joy into her life and lives of her girls.

Have you seen the madness that is the installation created for the Dior 2012 AW haute couture show? These photos leave me a bit breathless. Giddy, like I could forget the clothes entirely, see a show of forty models in paper bags, and rave that it was the best thing I’d ever seen in fashion. Flowers can make even the sanest person lose their mind.

This joyful superabundance is the work of Raf Simons (and dozens of floral stylists — view the “Making of…” here), who debuted as Dior’s new creative director with this show. Clearly, he felt he needed to make an impact. The inspiration is Christian Dior’s own idea of the “flower women,” referring to his famous, very feminine silhouettes of the 40s. Beyond that, I don’t think we can get too analytical about it. The show notes are mostly gobbledygook. (A sample:  ”This is one of the ways Christian Dior’s ‘Flower Women’… become contemporary in the collection; the architecture of flowers is analysed in a different way for the contemporary world.”)

Anyway, the experience speaks for itself. This isn’t about the architecture of flowers, it’s about the pleasure of flowers. It’s about a fantasy made real. It is pure, immersive, sensory joy. There’s really only one thing to do with it, and that’s to enjoy it. Happy daydreaming!

Via: The House That Lars Built

And if you want more flowers, check out the technicolor landscapes of the Netherlands as the tulips are blooming.

I’ve taken many plane rides before, but never seen a landscape quite like this. I recently stumbled upon this article showing Holland’s tulip fields from above. Can you believe there’s a landscape that actually looks like this? It’s like agricultural earth art. I had to dig up some more images for inspiration. Let’s hope all these April showers will bring us some, well, you know…

Images: livetowander, Daily Mail, powerfocusfotografie, Daily Mail, Samuel_Leo, _Darek, heavenuphere.

Artist Pete Dungey says of his Pothole Gardens, “If we planted one of those in every hole, it would be like a forest in the road.” Indeed. And a gorgeous, surprising example of urban renewal and joyful activism.

{via for the love of bikes}

These variegated poufs of carnations are like a gorgeous brand of cheerleaders’ pom-poms. I love how this arrangement makes a prosaic blossom seem so luxurious. They’re so tactile too — you can just imagine how the cool, feathery petals would feel on your hands.

{flowers by BORNAY}

Nice mention of AoJ in this post on Brandchannel about Toyota’s creation of two new flower species that absorb nitrogen oxides and take heat out of the atmosphere. The two flowers, variants of the cherry sage and the gardenia, are planted at Toyota’s headquarters in Japan. Designed to highlight green improvements to Toyota’s manufacturing facilities, the flowers are an interesting marketing move and a great example of a joyful gesture. It may be “joywashing meets greenwashing,” but it’s hard to be skeptical when it just makes you want to smile.

{image: crossmage}

Well, I was going to leave you for the next few days* but then I saw these and I couldn’t wait to put them up. For these Penguin Classics, designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith, I might actually think about violating my multivariate color-coding system.

What is it about gorgeous objects that makes me all synesthetic? I literally want to eat these. I guess, in the end, all aesthetics comes back to survival, food being a big part of that. Whatever the reason, I think these are just delicious.

Also, one the more joyful interviews I’ve read in awhile features Bickford-Smith on the Penguin blog. The image-text format really made me smile.

{via Daily Candy, available on amazon}

*Wow, it’s evidence of the long week I’ve had that I spent this whole morning convinced it was Friday. But, no, it’s still a day away. So there will be at least one new post here tomorrow. Apologies if I confused anybody! xx Ingrid

Patterns give me joy, and this quiz from @Issue magazine suggests that they bring joy to many cultures around the world as well. The quiz asks you to match the patterns above with the nationalities that created them, showing the diversity and distinctiveness of the ways we express ourselves in non-linguistic 2d terms. The differences interest me less than the fact that all cultures seem driven to create in this way; to abstract, in varying degrees, our essential experiences into color, line, shape, and repetition.

Take the full quiz here.
Via Joyful Delight

I love love love these wonderful videos of flowers growing and blossoming in time-lapse. I get a visceral wave of joy watching each one.

Above, the ornithogalum reminds me of popcorn popping open. Below, the tiny blossoms of the eremurus sparkle like firecrackers, stamens bursting out of their centers all right on cue. And last but not least, the daisies, which remind me of that beautiful Mia Michaels piece danced by Jeanine and Kayla on the So You Think You Can Dance finale (which I watched in its entirety at 1 in the morning the night I got home!). The way that they rise and bend, growing in bursts, the struggle palpable yet  beautiful — it may sound silly but they make me feel inspired.

There are more on munich timelapse‘s page, and each one is captivating in its own unique way.

Ornithogalum blossom one after the other / timelapse, Three flowers dancing / timelapse and Eremurus flower / timelapse from munich timelapse on Vimeo.

Joyful activism is a theme that keeps popping up these days. Rather than angry protests, a lot of people are realizing that a good way to effect change is to make people feel good.

I love this project, the Bed Stuy Meadow, by 21st Century Plowshare, the goal of which is to cover every vacant patch of land in the somewhat rough-and-ready neighborhood with wildflowers. Joy is at the heart of the activist premise:

The profusion of wildflowers will probably be relentless and visually unifying, and this relentless unity of wildflowers will probably make anyone walking down the street feel really good.

And the designer here recognizes that such positivity can have a contagious effect:

I want people who don’t even live within the five boroughs to visit Bed Stuy for the first time so that they can see the Meadow with their own eyes, and I want people who will never even come to be so inspired by the Bed Stuy Meadow that they make their own amazing neighborhood project and share it on 21st Century Plowshare.

Guerrilla actions such as this one have a much greater likelihood of success when the tone is positive. In a way, the Bed-Stuy meadow is a form of graffiti, the exertion of one person’s artistic will over a communal environment, but who can object to flowers? I think we’ll be seeing a lot more initiatives like this one in the coming years.

via PSFK