Grateful for Beauty

Transcript

I want to tell you a little experience I had yesterday. I want to tell you about being grateful for beauty, grateful for artists and the people who put in that little extra effort to bring something beautiful into the world.

So a few days ago I was downtown Asunción and I heard this Brazilian fellow, busking and playing with his electric guitar playing with his hard case on the foot path accepting change and was playing Three Little Birds or something from Bob Marley, I forget which it was.

And he had his own little style of the song. Vocally quite similar to Bob Marley but he was putting this different rhythm into it and I was like “Hmm, that’s cool” and I started bobbing my head walking down towards Bolsi and I was just having a good time.

You know some days, maybe could be most days you could just walk down somewhere. You know you’re going to arrive in a few minutes and in that exact moment there’s nothing for you to worry about. Nothing for you to fear.

And you can just focus on your breath and walking and listening to the sounds around you and just enjoy what’s happening.

So I was in a really good mood. I’ve been in good moods a lot lately but especially that day.

And yes when I passed by again I made sure to put 5000 Guaraníes into his hard case and I thought about that.

You know it reminds me actually of Ayn Rand. Some people see Ayn Rand as this very stiff rigid woman.

She says something which was very interesting when you see some sort of beautiful sunset. And I hope everyone can see a beautiful sunset, if you sometimes go out of your way to see a sunset. Or when one happens to occur in front of you, you happen to notice it a little bit. Pay it a little attention.

But somebody asked Rand about natural beauty and if she ever felt that sort of awe towards it.

Hard woman she was “No, you know what makes me feel that kind of awe? Skyscrapers.” It’s kind of a weird thing to say but low key brilliant like so many things that Rand said.

Like there are all these people, these architects and builders and so many people involved in that process that come up with something that’s not only practical but also awe inspiring.

And you can marvel looking at a sky scraper or even just construction to house and say “Wow, look at all the work and all the thought that’s gone into making this something beautiful and something livable.”

Things around you, people around you, people are doing things every day to make this world more beautiful.

Kurt Vonnegut said “Go into the arts not because it will make you a lot of money. Go into the arts because that is what is real valuable. That’s what makes life worth living.

All these people around us we might not even notice. Some people spray paint and some graffiti artists are better than others. Some more thought provoking, like Banksy.

There’s a graffiti artist I really like his type is Peque or Peque VRS or the VRS crew. I saw it first when I was in Guadalajara and I was like “Wow, this guy is amazing.”

Whenever I saw the VRS or the Peque VRS I was like I gotta scrutinize this, look at the detail. There’s sure to be something amazing, interesting and kind of quarky.

Like on Juárez in Guadalajara you see this picture that kind of looks like Trump with the orange hair and at the same time looks like a monkey. It has a confederate flag and it’s kind of cheeky and says “devolution” or something like that. It’s very impressive.

And when I got back to Sydney and looked around and saw “Wow, Peque is here as well. Amazing.” Amazed that he’d travel across the world and was out there spreading this kind of beauty. This amazing in your face weird quarky beauty.

Some of these artists even take personal risk to create a mural. To put up a piece.

There are people out there to whom beauty and art is so important that they will risk having to pay huge fines or going to prison.

I don’t have the same priorities but I respect that. That’s how deep that commitment is. That’s how much they want to bring something beautiful into this world.

Thank you so much for listening.

Please notice the art around you and notice those people who put in the extra effort to make the world more wonderful, meaningful and deep, full of art.

Thank you for creating your art, making music, tapping out a rhythm or strumming around on your guitar just for fun. Just playing around and playing your heart out as if it doesn’t even matter if you get it right because you enjoy that process, improvising creating something interesting in that moment.

Thank you, thank you, have a great day and I’ll talk to you soon.