Brady writes:
> This strikes me as highly reductionist, or asymptotic: trying to > pinpoint a moment when the a.e. explodes into your awareness. > But that's exactly what I claim I can do. I can distinguish drab but necessary set up from the moment of a.e. -- in operas, in plays, in life. > Perhaps it was there all along, waiting until a ripeness that could only > occur once the seeds, planted at an earlier moment and growing as the story > unfolded, then erupt into the pleasure of the a.e.--which is when you realize > you've had an aesthetic thing happen to you. > Picture two sisters, very much alike. One meets Mr. Right and falls madly in love. You say to her, "Actually your love has been there all along." She, distracted, beaming, nods, having no idea what the hell you're talking about. Then you turn to her sister and say, "Actually, you're not missing anything because you too are in love all along." She whacks you one up alongside the snot-locker. Comparing temporal to non-temporal is tricky. It's part of what makes me these days question our readiness to compare the feeling from a great painting to the feeling from a great play or a Beethoven symphony and call them all "a.e.'s". We think of them as, so to speak, identical twins when maybe they're distant cousins. Still, this I can report: As a too-young man, I was walking through an exhibition of Van Gogh paintings without much reaction to the "old shoes" and the "potato eaters" and then the next thing I saw was "Sunflowers", and -- well, I leave it to you to imagine. This was a feeling I got no hint of from the earlier stuff. In some compelling sense I was unprepared for it. It was as different from anything I'd experienced before as my first ejaculation was. A similar thing happened when the first a.e. from a poem arrived. I'd read poetry before, but I'd never had even a hint a poem could have an effect like this. And, as Holden Caulfield might have expressed it: I was twenty-two for Crissake! ************** Wondering what's for Dinner Tonight? Get new twists on family favorites at AOL Food. (http://food.aol.com/dinner-tonight?NCID=aolfod00030000000001)
