Beauty Despised as beast 2

Beauty Despised As Beast 2

What do we see from Menotti‘s struggle and view-wars with his contemporaries? And what does his experience with his peers teach and instruct us of?

A number of things and we shall take out the time to understand a couple of them.

• Beauty can be despised as beast

“Because it is set aside doesn’t mean it is not good
Because it is despised doesn’t mean it has no worth
Because it is rejected doesn’t mean it is ugly
The conditions should first be the point of consideration:
Are things being done well and correctly?
And under what conditions and set of laws were the first things set?”

It is interesting to note about our prologue that it is not a work of fiction, but rather events in our world that happened in history where people, who were meant to be the “proponents” of beauty and aesthetics rejected the very thing they were called to be about. The very same message they were meant to proclaim, the same way a Christian evangelist proclaims the gospel, was the same message they rejected (as though someone rejected their heritage and upbringing).

Vestiges of this are what are found in art movements as the object trouve −found object− (talk about Duchamp). This rejection wasn’t coming from people who were alien to the world of art and the concept of beauty, rather it was coming from those to whom the very concept of “beauty” was committed; to preserve and keep, as guardians and voices in the academic, intellectual and social space. But what happened? The contrary as a matter of fact; they became the threat to its existence and continuity. Beauty suffered rejection.

Beauty, what is it?

Beauty refers to aggregate of qualities that make a person or a thing aesthetically pleasing. These qualities may be physical, metaphysical or spiritual. Beautiful (an adjectival form of the noun) by extension is something or someone that possesses these qualities.

 In the world we live in people strive for beauty, and or to add on beauty. Ranging from use of cosmetics products to surgeries, acquisition and ownership of beautiful houses, clothes, accessories, ornaments, etcetera. Everybody wants beautiful, everybody loves beautiful (arguable at this point now though). The compliment, “you are looking beautiful” or “you are beautiful” is one compliment no one is sure to get enough of. It’s new and beautiful every time it is said. You are beautiful! The upshot is, people love beauty and nobody rejects beautiful (except that some people do, and for the strangest reasons).

It’s not a problem with you…

Some people suffer rejection and instinctively they think there is a problem with them. They blame themselves for everything. Why they are not accepted, why they don’t fit in, why they are rejected, why they are being despised. 

This especially happens when such rejection has hit them more than once at different times and from different sources. Impact  and effect increases with consistency, inevitably they crash.                                              

The good news is, sometimes it’s not about you, and it’s not a problem with you.

Of course there are times when there are things about us and about our lives that we need to change and work on, other times it’s neither. If it’s not then what is it?                                                

Sometimes it’s a problem much deeper than you can imagine or think, and feeling sorry or depressed is not just the way to go about it. Think about the racist world of decades ago (though elements of it still remains in some quarters) when the blacks were treated as sub-humans, subservient and inferior. It wasn’t a problem with the black race as to how they were being treated; it was a problem ubiquitous in the then world, cutting across whole nations and continents. Truth is only a handful of the world could see and diagnose that this was a problem.

As it was with Menotti and people like him at that time that weren’t producing terrible music, pieces the public loathed. The attitude and reception of the musical elites and so called professional musicians towards Menotti’s compositions and the likes of his didn’t mean his pieces or their pieces weren’t beautiful, creative, skillful or lacking in content (on the contrary as a matter of fact) but rather it meant something much much deeper than they could relate with at the surface and this was that they were face to face with a system that had evolved and wouldn’t give good and beautiful a place to thrive. It was anti-beauty. It was a problem out-there and not a problem in-here.

The Upshot…

When you suffer rejection in any form, and nobody wants to give you a chance or even hear you out, you should always remember that sometimes people will hate you not because you are bad but because you are different. Not because you are ugly but exactly because you are beautiful. Beauty can and sometimes is rejected and despised as beast. You can be everything good and still fall out of favour and popularity with the prevailing paradigm. Beauty sometimes suffers rejection and is despised too. So don’t give in to the circumstance and the pressure. Lift your head high and walk tall in the midst of it. It’s not your problem, so don’t take full responsibility for it.

Beauty despised as beast 2. (To be continued…)