Poignancy, Pathos, Triumph: How Beauty Feels

It's so important for writers to seek out and learn from other art forms: architecture, painting, music. In a recent TED talk, designer Richard Seymour explores the feeling of aesthetic beauty; he begins with a story about a watchmaker. A customer has brought in a watch to be cleaned, and when the watchmaker opens it, he discovers words etched into one of the watch's interior wheels. "Why on earth would the designer have bothered to put these words in a place nobody would ever see?" the customer asks.

"God sees it," replies the watchmaker.

Whatever your definition of God, this is a charged understanding. Do you struggle with  your own responsibility to the notion of beauty? Or is the idea of "making beauty" a burden? How does it feel to compromise on your standards? Are there aspects of your work that nobody but God will ever see? The idea reminds me quite a bit of Markus Zusak saying he would have written The Book Thief even if he knew in advance it would never be published.

Seymour identifies three aspects of aesthetic beauty that humans inevitably respond to: Poignancy, Pathos, and Triumph. Clearly these aspects should be kept in balance--too much pathos results in sentimentality; too much triumph is simply unbelievable; and any reader will eventually tire of wall-to-wall poignancy (exactly where humor can cut through the fluff, like adding acid and salt to an over-sweetened dish.)

If you haven't, check out Google's ArtProject here for further inspiration (James Elkins argues that too much reading stunts our visual sense, which we badly need as writers). Below is Seymour's 20-minute talk. He loses me when he waxes poetic on the motorcycle design (clearly not my thing), but the first half of the talk is riveting.