A8 is on a roll. Those were two interesting pieces he sent us to.
'Satisfying' is a good word to apply to the feeling we can get from symmetry.
It brought to mind the comparable questions: Why are "resolutions" in music
and in "storytelling" satisfying?
In an attempt to think about these questions, addressing the FORM as
distinguished from the plot-particulars in a story isn't always easy. In music,
we can
at a very young age come to long for the resolution of a chord, and for
finality at the end. Why?
The piece about how to look at abstract art -- with that writer's appeal that
we stop trying to find representations in the abstraction -- is also worth
comparing to how we listen to music, and how we "grasp" the over-arching
"through-line" in a novel, play, or movie.
Still, why do certain "well-made" stories and and music-pieces nevertheless
fail to "satisfy". Why do some post-nineteenth century music-pieces that just
seem to STOP nevertheless feel right? In fiction, some works -- almost always
short stories -- "satisfy" though they are "still lifes" that leave us at the
end where we were at the beginning. But isn't storytelling usually expected
to be a "temporal" WoA?
All of it is strange, fascinating, and, happily, inexhaustible in its
mystery.
**************
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