I love how, subtly, life unravels itself, and also braids itself when appropriate, just at the right times to leave you seeing and feeling a deeper meaning and the resonating coincidence from which we can and do take pause to muse at life's wonder. And, I think this after having noticed on the YouTube page for the video below featuring Tim O'Brien speaking at Stanford about war and writing that the original speech occurred just a few weeks ago in late January of this still-new year.
Early in the clip, O'Brien says the "aestheticizing" of human suffering is necessary; without authors and creators trying "...to make aesthetic an ugly person and an ugly situation, there would probably be no literature; there would be few movies; Broadway would go dark. Part of what literature is about is the study of, and the contemplation of, and the meditation on being human, and all its aspects.... And human beings, unlike say the gophers or the chipmunks, we're aware of tragedy, .... and aware of horror, and aware of despair. To dive into that wreck as a writer and try to salvage something beautiful and is beautifully made in harmony and in proportion with language that can make the horror float and allow characters to confront it, I don't think that's a bad thing. ... To elevate our own suffering so that we can look at it." (10:27 - 12:13 in the clip below).
Lovely, thoughtful, cinematic commercial; watch it on full-screen and without other distractions:
MORNING Music
The air conditioner’s ocean breeze
drifts away as cannon balls
fly through it.
Police car screams
come up from the street. And I am awake.
Propped up on elbows,
judging the time by the haze
seen from living room French doors.
Up,
walking like an enthused, inflexible marionette,
I check the hour
by the old wristwatch
that used to save a ribbon of white skin
to match the tees on the golf course.
Shuffle-feeting, I am sleepily amused
as the sirens still sing,
probably a block away,
and a dripping sink
plays percussion
and I think, “Anything can be beautiful.”