Is depression a momentary (or sustained) giving up of being fascinated and curious in the world around one, and a turning into oneself? Does then come a switch from being painfully aware of this “giving up” to a period when that consciousness disappears and the turned-in-on-oneself becomes a stable state? A good friend of mine reminded me that depression is a strategy of the mind, or brain, to get the person to stop doing something that was causing him or her untold damage, but refusing to acknowledge this. And depression is a way to stop the damaging. Depression forces the person to stop. This might be a neat way to help the person out of depression, but not if the depression has switched into that deeper state. The danger is when the depression has become the norm for the person. That’s the true danger. And this is where oral histories are so beneficial. Oh, how I wish for those community circles where these stories would be shared and one person’s story become ervyone’s story. No judgement, just a cmmunal “om”

I can’t think of extracts from plays right at this moment where apology has calmed an angry spirit, but they are there.

Yes! You mention something so important in today’s manipulative world, the idea of “worth”. Perhaps worth is more important than equality; perhaps worth has become something we sell about ourselves, whereas apology can be construed as a way of conferring worth on the other. In that case, can the act subdue a threat? In the theater, apology is a very powerful “weapon” as used by playwrights.

What confuses me with discussions focused on art and reality is the parable of the mirror. Is the image really inside the mirror? In some way of course it is. It’s what we see. But then comes the ancient question: is the seeer somehow separated from what he/she sees? As an artist, I get bored with this question because the process is what counts. In the performing arts, this question because redundant because we see bodies in space. The body carries the reality. In the plastic arts, the reality is the object whatever it is, and the artist quickly gets bored in the object, moving swiftly onto the next process of creativity.

But if God is simultaneously inside as outside us, then, to the extent that our lives are as much having a developing relationship with ourselves (getting to know ourselves more), surely we do have a relationship with God.

An interesting question suggests itself from reading this conversation. Is apology one of those great equalizers cutting across status and hierarchy? Is the act of apologizing, assuming it is done in good faith, i.e. genuine, and whether or not the situation objectively calls for an apology, a declaration of equality? In much the same way, I wonder, that greeting a stranger with “hello” carries an assumption that the stranger is seen as an equal by the greeter. Of course, that also assumes that the person receiving the apology does not then manipulate the situation to extract further admittance of responsibility and other unsavory demands from the person apologizing.

Apologies for delayed reply. By framed I mean we perceive beauty as some thing within borders, and by that therefore composed. In other words, we compose a thing of beauty. Some thing seen or heard is plain enough to have borders. I guess a smell might be more challenging, yet the same principle applies. A particular smell of beauty is composed within our brain by filtering out the other smells. Within our brain, we are composing beauty. We convert the chaos of signals received by our brain through composition into beauty. Artists simply (or not so simply) externalize this composing process.

Perhaps because somehow our perception of beauty always seems to be framed, somehow we seem to need a frame.

I wonder how much a role composition plays in the way we view beauty....