It is not just the act of the sun setting, and the associated colors from the light refracting in the atmosphere (though those things can be nice too), but the formation of a distinct and pleasing pattern of clouds that provide a deeper dimension for the color to grade and become fleshed out along their contours, that makes for a magnificent sunset.
It is the clouds, blooming high into the sky, and being smeared every which way, or rippled out and sculpted, that add such a striking depth of character to a falling sun. Here is an active sculpture, forming before one's eyes, cut into and spread out as the myriad invisible wind forces shape it, a great aerial sculpture then lit up and changing color as the sun's rays pass through their phases, with new contours and textures revealed as the light first blazes orange, and then explodes into pinks, reds, and purples, before bleeding out red and leaving the clouds that darken to a bluish and purplish grey, with a white afterglow fading away in the horizon beneath them.
Such natural beauty is sustenance; its gradual and wholistic movements invoke gentle waves of grandiose and cosmic feeling that permeates ones awareness and leaves one glowing and buzzing, as sharply opposed to our radically constructed artificial beauty, which assaults the senses and at least delights temporarily, but then blows out one's sensibility and afterwords one feels dead, with repeated permutations necessary to rekindle those extinguished feelings.I get writing again with experiences like this because the sensations themselves produce sustained reactions that feed my head. I think perhaps in an urban environment one is constantly battered about by artificial displays of beauty and simulated beauty. There is a place for these certainly, but our mainstream society knows no moderation. We destroy natural beauty and then build the artifice on top of its ashes, and so over time one becomes habituated and numb to a constantly changing but static composition of forced sensation.
Natural beauty just is. All of the information is there, none of it amputated or stylized. It is all connected to its origin, for the observer to take from it what they will, without it shaped by a finite intelligence. I do still take great pleasure in photographing such a panorama, which necessarily limits its nature. Though pictures are limiting, they function as tangible artifacts that can be shared and used to construct, which I think will always be an essential component to the human condition. But one must take care not to get lost in the images, to collapse into the postmodern temptation of believing that image is all there is. It was extracted from something. And it is necessary to go back to that something to be replenished.
Going back, now that is something. Not to deviate too far, but that makes for a large portion of the zeitgeist. I'm writing for a company right now that manufactures fixie bikes. They're fixed gear bicycles that have become wildly popular among the bike enthusiasts and hipsters and others. It is an old, simple bicycle design that goes back to the fundamentals. Bikers want to feel the road. They want to build their own out of scratch or at least have a simple, barebones bike to play with. It speaks to a collective desire to return to roots, to the earth, or at least to simpler platforms before we started branching off into blinding, labyrinthine complexity. There's this sense that we've come so far out in our technological and intellectual progress that we can no longer see where we came from, leading to a danger that we might be going the wrong way.
And it is true in some ways. Processed food, chemicals, bank derivatives, the latest iteration of Windows (hah!), all abominations of overcomplexity. Some manipulation is fine. Too much though, and you begin to lose the collective intelligence required to understand what it is you are affecting, or what it is that is keeping harmony. That darned reductionism. I can name all of the parts but where the hell do they all go? And then there is the tendency of the business types to take those increasingly fragmented segments, claim ownership over them, and then erect toll gates for those who don't posses the technical know how to get around. I'm thinking of a proprietary car engine, which has become so complex (and deliberately so) that no one but the company's highly trained specialists know their way around them.
It seems easier to claim ownership over something that becomes radically separated and instantiated as a separate object. When one understands all of the connections, one is less inclined to take possession.
Anyways, off the rails again. Better stick to watching clouds.
