On May 5, 2008, at 12:50 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Hell, I don't dispense with the rest of the play. I'm talking about my
a.e.'s. I get no a.e. during the rest of the play. In those Friel
plays, the
whole first acts were without a.e.'s for me. However, the first acts
were necessary
to set up the impact of the a.e.. But note: after the single moment
of a.e.
in the two plays, I had no further a.e.'s in either play. And plays
can have
marvelously constructed set ups -- and yet no a.e. The set up is quite
distinguishable from the a.e.
You sound like you're talking to your doctor. "I watched those people
up on that platform for thirty minutes, then I got this feeling in my
head and a little flutter in my chest. Then I waited another thirty or
forty minutes and those people did something else and I got real light-
headed. I think I had an aesthetic experience, doctor. But sometimes,
I watch other people, and I don't get any reaction at all, doc. Is
something wrong with me, or is it the people I'm watching?"
Humor aside, Cheerskep, do you feel any other feeling when you watch a
play? or is it just a long duration of an-aesthetic experiences,
punctuated by one or, if you're lucky, two a.e.'s?
Or, as a counterproposal, do you feel the entire viewing of a play as
an "aesthetic experience," punctuated by one or two moments of
particularly intense focus?
I believe the only feelings one gets directly from a WoA (or, by their
kind, paintings, sculputes, musical compositions, etc.) are aesthetic
feelings. Other thing contribute, including your own physical state of
being (sore feet from museum-traipsing, numb butt from the poor seats
in the audience, etc.); or the evocations of the representations
(either directly as the denoted subjects, e.g., nostalgia for the old
barn, or connoted, e.g., a sense of Greek history as you look at Alma-
Tadema's "Pericles Inspecting the Parthenon Frieze"); or purely social
feelings, e.g., the response of your companion to the works or your
anxiety in not being smart enough to understand the ramifications of
why the curators chose what they did for the retrospective Kinkade
performance piece and site-specific interactive video installation,
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Michael Brady
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
