What Beauty Does

I saw a sunset like a million other sunsets last night, but it was gorgeous. I was observing it from my favorite waterside bar on St. Pete beach, and it was clear, fair, and about 65 or 70 degrees. My old roommate from college was with me visiting, and I was content. The experience was marred only by the fact that I had to be drinking Miller because they no longer serve Heineken. And the dolphins didn't show.

There has been and probably will be for some time a nagging anxiety under my emotional skin these days, the cause of which is not important right now. But it led me to think about the role of beauty. Here I was observing one of nature's most regular and most stupendous sideshows, one that never fails to please. Even at this loud, locals bar, a hush came over the group watching the sun sink into the water. After the rim of the orange disk slipped beneath the horizon some enthusiastic patrons even clapped. And who wouldn't want to express some sense of appreciation? We had waited patiently all morning for the sun to show its glorious rays and burn through a rather pea-soup fog. When it finally arrived, it shined with a sensuous strength and omnipotence, scorning our earlier doubts.

When it began to descend, I could feel the anticipation for a miraculous display, and I was not disappointed. It was slow and luxurious. The waves were slight in movement, but mindboggling in their change of color. I would gaze from time to time, framing a picture in my mind, and wonder what colors could possibly represent this natural palette. There were only a few streaks of clouds that adopted a variety a roseate hues. The horizon was a clear, straight, continuous line breaking the rhythmic waves of the water against the airy smoothness of the sky. The colors in their dramatic change of scenery are literally indescribable to me. They are not, however, unintelligible. Like Coleridge, I read in them the eternal language of the creator -- or some such thing.

Anna Marie Isle 5/4/98 (Photo by M. Gordon)

Panama City 10/92

That is the question, really. Why does the observation of a phenomenon as regular and predictable as that continue to please? More critically, what is it that it does in pleasing? We are pleased by many a thing -- hopefully -- in this life. I suppose as we grow older the sources of pleasure grow fewer. The simplicity and purity of the sunset might be a source of universal appeal. But is it really simple? The description above tries to capture the complexity of objective conditions and emotional reactions to the sunset. It wouldn't convey an accurate sense of the event if it were really simple. The sun set over the water in bright colors of red and electric blue. No, that is not what I saw.

Purity, well yes. Although the scene was enhanced by the presence of a sailboat, far enough away to present only a dark silhouette that crossed the horizon between water and sky. Otherwise the scene was fairly untouched by human hands. Unless of course we consider the makeup of the atmosphere, altered by industry-generated gasses that refract "God's" light through a "man-made" prism. No longer pure.

Besides, these answers address what beauty has, not what it does. Under these circumstances the beautiful sunset appears to be simple and pure, but is in fact a form of hallucination that pleases us. We might equate beauty with intoxicants at that level. That seems unacceptable, but it may be for puritanical objections to intoxicants and a desire to sanctify beauty more than anything else. We'll have to return to that idea another time.

Key West 3/95 (Photo by M. Gordon)

Loxahatchee State Park, Northern Everglades 12/94 (Photo by M. Gordon)

Perhaps I should speculate, jumping from my example to what I think does happen when I see beauty. Last night I watched in hypnotic contentment. I didn't really care about anything that would distract me. I wanted only to laugh, to drink my beer, and to be lost in the magnificence of that vision. Clearly it is a form of escape, but it is one that raises the spirit and cleanses the mind. Perhaps beauty is what offers a respite. Perhaps it acts as a force of consolidation and peace, a constructive force in an otherwise chaotic world.

Essay by L. Runge 2/2/96