U NCOMMON V IRTUES #6: R OMANTIC /A ESTHETIC

EVERY MAN A POET, TO GREATER OR LESSER EXTENT

Let us open back up Tomas Carlyle’s 1840 masterpiece, “On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History” – as good a source as any of uncommon virtues in the modern world.
 
Here is Carlyle on the nature of poets and poetry –
 
"A vein of Poetry exists in the hearts of all men ; no man is made altogether of Poetry. We are all poets when we read a poem well. The “imagination that shudders at the Hell of Dante,” is not that the same faculty, weaker in degree, as Dante’s own?
 
…
 
A man that has so much more of the poetic element developed in him as to have become noticeable, will be called Poet by his neighbors. World-Poets too, those whom we are to take for perfect Poets, are settled by critics in the same way. One who rises so far above the general level of Poets will, to such and such critics, seem a Universal Poet; as he ought to do. And yet it is, and must be, an arbitrary distinction.  All Poets, all men, have some touches of the Universal; no man is wholly made of that.
 
…
 
For my own part, I find considerable meaning in the old vulgar distinction of Poetry being metrical, having music in it, being a Song.  Truly, if pressed to give a definition, one might say this as soon as anything else: If your delineation be authentically musical, musical not in word only, but in heart and substance, in all the thoughts and utterances of it, in the whole conception of it, then it will be poetical ; if not, not.—Musical: how much lies in that! A musical thought is one spoken by a mind that has penetrated into the inmost heart of the thing; detected the inmost mystery of it, namely the melody that lies hidden in it; the inward harmony of coherence which is its soul, whereby it exists, and has a right to be, here in this world.
 
…
 
Nay all speech, even the commonest speech, has something of song in it : not a parish in the world but has its parish- accent;—the rhythm or tune to which the people there sing what they have to say! Accent is a kind of chanting; all men have accent of their own,—though they only notice that of others. Observe too how all passionate language does of itself become musical ,—with a finer music than the mere accent; the speech of a man even in zealous anger becomes a chant, a song.  All deep things are Song.
 
…
 
The Poet is he who thinks in that manner. At bottom, it turns still on power of intellect; it is a man’s sincerity and depth of vision that makes him a Poet. See deep enough, and you see musically; the heart of Nature being everywhere music, if you can only reach it."
 
***
 
VISAGES OF FOREIGN LANDS
 
In all times, traveling to another truly different country and culture can inform our behavior. An American can’t walk along the streets of Istanbul without being changed.
 
The way the Turks relate to music, scents, art, business, work, and harmony are very different than the American conception. All along the famous Istikal Avenue  in Istanbul, many of the shops have a speaker playing out a unique type of music in such a way that you can hear it from outside as you walk.
 
Likewise, and surprisingly, a lot of perfume and incense are used to create a mood or feeling among these shops. This happens in the United States to some extent – high-end hotels and casinos, notably, tend to use fragrances and perfumes to subtly set a mood for the environment.
 
But the American conception of business is different. The idea of – hmm, it's difficult to even phrase in American English – “artistically shaping” the first experience you encounter on the threshold of the shops – this is very different. Again, walk the streets with your senses open, and you’ll realize factors that the Turks take very seriously which are not done in America.

This can cause a sort of unlocking of one’s mind and conception of the world –wait a minute, I didn’t know that was even  possible.
 
This doesn’t sound groundbreaking until you truly reflect on it – the idea of explicitly  cultivating a small zone around your shop where it sounds and smells very different, we don’t do this in America. To the extent that we’re shaping experience within shops, we tend to go for more generic and conforming ideas – elevator music, pop songs, etc.
 
To the extent there’s scents in a shop, we tend to rely on whatever the business might be producing – outside a coffee shop you can perhaps smell coffee, food within a restaurant, etc – but perfume or incense would be very rare.
 
I think it’s not surprise that, across all of history, travelers who go to a different land, and then come home and open a shop in their home country can often outperform.
 
***
 
SCHULTZ’S IL GIORNALE
 
You’ve probably never heard of the most influential chain of coffee houses throughout history – Il Giornale.
 
Howard Schultz – you might have heard of his name before – he seems a man with a deep sort of poetic sense; echoing Carlyle, if he were not a businessman, he’d have been something ; song was within him.
 
In 1979, the 26-year-old young Schultz was working at Hammarplast, a Swedish maker of drip coffee machines.
 
Seeing that a Seattle-based chain was buying a lot of Hammerplast equipment, he went and visited the chain – Starbucks, still a young company, and then primarily focused on making coffee beans, teas, and spices.
 
Already, we can see glimpses of the poetic sense in Schultz that is in all of us, but dormant in too many of us.
 
Schultz sees something special in those Seattle coffee-lovers, a devotion to mastery and craft and knowledge – something all of us recognize from time to time throughout the world, but how often do we act upon this recognition?
 
In 1982, Schultz joined Starbucks – a tiny place, not the Starbucks we know today – as director of marketing.
 
On a buying trip to Milan, Italy, that poetic sense in Schultz would be stirred again.
 
He saw a culture of coffee among the Italians that was part of a deep fabric of their society; little espresso bars where people would congregate and drink their espresso, yes, but also so much more than that.
 
The espresso bar was not merely for consumption of caffeine in a transactional way – it was part of one’s life, part of one’s community, part of one’s experience.
 
Schultz, a savvy businessman but still much more poet than businessman, tried vainly to convince the Starbucks owners to emulate the Italian concept. He felt inside him, “we need this in America – the Italians have something marvelous.”
 
He was able to convince the owners of Starbucks to do a trial, and it was successful, but they did not want to commit to it. They had their priorities.
 
For that lofty spirit in Schultz, it was not enough.
 
He left Starbucks to open his own chain of espresso bars, Il Giornale.
 
You likely have never heard of it, but it’s the DNA and the genesis of the most popular chain of coffeehouses of all time.
 
As Schultz’s operation grew, he had an opportunity to buy out the original Starbucks – their roasting plants, their pilot shops.
 
He seized the opportunity.
 
And then, in a nod to good business sense, he took the incredibly painful step of adopting the longer-established and well-respected Starbucks brand for his nascent coffeehouses; the name Il Giornale  became a footnote in history.
 
But make no mistake – the Starbucks you congregate with friends and family and colleagues around the world did not grow primarily out of the Starbucks roasting plant of its era – no, Starbucks as you know it is Il Giornale , the attempt to bring the best of Italian romantic community building to first the United States, and then to all of the world.
 
***
 
SCHULTZ’S TRIUMPH
 
I’m just barely old enough to remember the era before Starbucks was common – getting coffee at Dunkin Donuts or 7-11 was a very, very different experience than Starbucks. It was very transactional, sterile, factory-like.
 
Schultz saw a thriving tradition in a foreign land, and built on it. You know the rest of the story – Starbucks is a 90 billion dollar market cap company and Schultz is a billionaire. There are 24,000 Starbucks chains in 70 countries.
 
That’s the business side of the story.
 
I’m not quite old enough to know where a default casual go-to place to do business would have been before Starbucks. Where did people meet for casual business and social meetings when they were traveling? Was there a single go-to place that you know would always be good enough for a meeting?
 
Perhaps not.
 
The staff at Starbucks are higher-paid and generally happier than elsewhere; he made a serene and luxurious experience accessible to everyone for $3.
 
It would be rather a stretch to say that the Schultz’s triumph were strictly as a result of his sense of aesthetics and the romantic and the poetic – but surely, in absence of following those inclinations, there would have been no Il Giornale , and then, no Starbucks around the world as we know it.
 
***
 
UNCOMMON VIRTUES #6: THE ROMANTIC AND AESTHETIC
 
In writing, I try to remain firmly grounded in mathematics, statistics, causality, logic. I aim to be maximally grounded in these points – you really can’t be too  reality-based.
 
But masterfully navigating life cannot be done by actuarial tables alone.
 
In all spheres of life, cultivating a sense of aesthetics, and developing a sense of the romantic, leads to both a deeper engagement with the world and greater thriving and success.
 
In various times and places, this is more common or less common.
 
In this chapter, we explore briefly why this might be less common today, and then, how to cultivate this sense in yourself.
 
***
 
DATA POINT #1: MUSIC GOES FROM UNCOMMON TO COMMON
 
I firmly believe that “aesthetic sense” or “romantic sense” became less common as music became more common .
 
Stop and reflect for a moment. Only 150 years ago, 90%+ of the world’s population, in all countries, were farming and producing agriculture and food.
 
In 1866 – that was only 150 years ago! – there were no recordings of music, no vinyl records, no radio, obviously no streaming internet.
 
How magical must music have seemed for all of history  until that time?
 
Again, empathize with your ancestors for a moment: you are working very hard, constantly, without rest. Your life is a constant struggle – a single bad harvest or heavy rainy season could put your next year in doubt and jeopardy.
 
If you could not play music yourself – and you probably couldn’t – how lofty and inspiring and special must have been even the most simple performance on the fiddle or guitar?
 
How haunting would have been an elegant performance on the piano? How overwhelmingly moving must have been the symphony or opera?
 
In a life with very little music, music would have been incredibly special and precious. Certainly, philosophers throughout the ages have reflected on music being an incredibly special thing.
 
Nowdays, do any of us go a single day without hearing any music?
 
A week?
 
Short of being out on a long wilderness trek with no modern technology – and most of us do not do that – music is with us always and everywhere, but blended into the background. With our constant immersion in music, we do not realize what a truly special and unusual thing it is.
 
***
 
DATA POINT #2: MASS PRODUCTION
 
“Any customer can have a car painted any color he wants so long as it is black.”
 
– Henry Ford
 
In the long span of history, I believe that mass production will not be seen as an enemy of the aesthetic and the romantic – eventually.
 
It’s easier to make, enjoy, and share art now than ever before.
 
But in the early days of mass production, Ford’s dictate was that his salespeople needed to focus on the fundamentals and not get bogged down in making custom orders for everyone.
 
When almost no one has an automobile, it makes no sense to customize every automobile to every individual customer’s preference. Getting the fundamentals right – quality, price, performance, reliability, service – was far more important than anything else. Ford rightfully put all his focus on that in the early years.
 
But this does mean that, for a relatively brief period in history, aesthetic considerations would have been completely dominated by considerations of basic utility and function.
 
This is already changing – you can already see this changing course across all domains – but for a brief 100-150 year period in history, romanticism would have been largely an error if prioritized over getting the fundamental mechanical and technical details correct.
 
***
 
DATA POINT #3: INDUSTRIALIZED TOTAL WAR
 
I don’t want to linger too long on this – it is beyond the scope of this chapter – but much aesthetic and romantic sense throughout history is cultivated through adversity.
 
War always brought out the very best and very worst in humanity.
 
That Orson Welles half-jesting quote seems relevant –
 
“In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed – but they produced Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.”
 
Prior to 1914, war could certainly be as ugly and brutal as anything – but it was (relatively speaking) not so  dangerous or destructive, and many veterans of wars and their families would have come home mixed with a battle-hardened grounding in reality, and – sometimes – an uplifted and lofty spirit.
 
Chaos and adversity can generate this.
 
1914… 1914 was no 1814. You ever notice how there’s no paintings like Washington Crossing the Delaware  or Napoleon Crossing the Alps  about World War I?
 
Individual bravery, pluck, audacity gave way to mechanical and mechanistic destruction. Blending the love of survival with the love of one’s country and cause no longer led to a harmonious fusion of danger and risk with benevolence and sacrifice.
 
No, it was just slog and bloodshed. Artillery and poison gases didn’t discriminate. Whereas the end of the Napoleon Wars set the stage for the renaissance of the Pax Britannica, the end of World War I just left most of the participants traumatized. World War II raised the brutal stakes higher, and the Cold War higher still.
 
In World War I, the soldiers often rode on horseback to the battlefield in beautiful colored uniforms and plumed hats, excited to test their mettle. They came home in drab khaki and grey uniforms, metal helmets, traumatized.
 
Dash, pluck, and audacity gave way to the insane and wanton cruelty of mechanized total war. All lofty ideas and ideals were now to be held suspect.
 
***
 
DATA POINT #4: THE ART WORLD GOES NAVAL-GAZING
 
It’s understandable that the children and grandchildren of the World Wars would be skeptical of high-minded ideas. “The Great War”, World War I, was sold as “the war to end all wars.”
 
It didn’t work out quite like that.
 
Their grandchildren came of age skeptical of everything.
 
Gradually, art grounded in religion or patriotism came to be seen as passe – weirder and stranger forms of art become more and more dominant around this time.
 
Eventually, many top artists in the Western world started to self-referentially mock the concept of art entirely. A man installs a urinal as an art exhibition, or an artist cans his own feces…
 
… this is, umm, awful.
 
See, I’m not so into the no-judgments thing. I’ll just say it – the nonsense-art of urinals, canned feces, a crucifix submerged in urine – this strikes me as the harnessing and expressing of a rather juvenile and petty thing.
 
I understand what they’re trying to do – actually, I think they succeeded at what they were trying to do – I merely question whether what they were trying to do was a good usage of human energy and genius.
 
Actually, no, I don’t just question it – I have my answer. It was dreadful.
 
***
 
ALIENATION FROM ROMANCE AND AESTHETICS
 
I think the general pattern of alienation from romance and aesthetics can be seen pretty clearly looking backwards –
 
1. Music goes from special, rare, and sacred... to plainly common, mundane, almost disposable; music loses some of its potency to make people aware of aesthetics and the romantic.
 
2. Craftsmanship goes from an outlet for aesthetic expression to being dominated by functional considerations; craftsmanship wanes as a place to cultivate aesthetics and the romantic.
 
3. War goes from a mix of adversity and uplifting to merely traumatizing; war and conflict go from places to embrace the aesthetics and the romantic, to something dreadful and mechanical.
 
4. The “high art” world goes from a focus on the grand and aesthetic – think of the Sistine Chapel – to a self-referential mocking spectacle; the art world itself, in the greatest of ironies and tragedies, becomes less about aesthetics and romance and more about the far inferior causes of celebrity and irony.
 
There are many more factors, and certainly many counter-balancing good things that have happened… but this is the world we’ve inherited, and our task is to thrive and do better in this world.
 
***
 
SO WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?
 
The good news is that aesthetics  are cultivatable in a technical sense, and that is my first piece of guidance for you.
 
There are a number of rules that governed classical forms of art, and they are easier than ever to learn.
 
In poetry and prose, you can look at different forms and structures. Iambic pentameter and blank verse are both worth studying – you can read Shakespeare or Milton still, to this day, and identify not just their themes but also their technical craft.
 
This takes some work and practice, but frankly, it’s time well-spent and not too laborious. It’s easy enough to do in the evening for leisure.
 
Hamlet’s final words –
 
“Heaven make thee free of it. I follow thee. –
I am dead, Horatio. – Wretched queen, adieu! –
You that look pale and tremble at this chance,
That are but mutes or audience to this act,
Had I but time (as this fell sergeant, Death,
Is strict in his arrest), O, I could tell you –
But let it be. – Horatio, I am dead.
Thou livest. Report me and my cause aright
To the unsatisfied.”
 
Marvelous! My god, the craftsmanship, the usage of language, the rhythm – wow.
 
This fell sergeant… strict in his arrest… Report me and my cause aright to the unsatisfied…
 
Wow.
 
You merely need to decide to study it.
 
Likewise, there are rules employed in architecture, in painting, in photography, and every other domain of human expression.
 
I remember chancing upon a book about filmmaking at a friend’s house, that broke down the different camera angles that films can be shot from.
 
How does a film change if it is shot over the shoulder of one of the characters during a dialog, as opposed to zoomed out and seeing both characters at a distance?
 
Coming upon that book, by chance, was marvelous for me. Suddenly, movies weren’t just some magical thing that inspired me in ways I could not comprehend, but were actually made of technique  and aesthetic sense  and judgment  on the part of the director.
 
Marvelous.
 
It is well-worthy of study. I contend that, studying any art’s technical domain will make you a more complete and effective human.
 
Cultivate an aesthetic sense – there are rules and guidelines for this. They can be deviated from, of course, but there is benefit in learning them.
 
Actually, at the risk of over-stating the case, I dare say it’s one of the best usages of your leisure time if you haven’t done so. Again – any  domain’s aesthetics and craft.
 
***
 
AND A LOFTIER ROMANTIC SENSE
 
And this is much harder. If you are not inspired, how do you become inspired?
 
Hmm.
 
It is tricky stuff.
 
The naive answer would be that it’s a matter of perception, reflection, and then coming upon sources that are inspiring and uplifting, and the rest will take care of itself.
 
Indeed, that’s a large part of it – but how many Americans went to Italy? Many. How many allowed themselves to be immersed and marveled in the culture the way Howard Schultz did? Not many.
 
Travel could help, in theory. Certainly, walking along Istikal Avenue could change your perceptions of the world and give you fuel and sustenance for great works going forwards – if you let it.
 
But so often, we don’t let it – why?
 
And as I look back at all the evolutions of the last 150 years which crowded out the romantic sense from most of our lives, I see two primary obstacles to cultivating this wonderful sense.
 
The first is the problem of Henry Ford – so much of our lives are dominated by the concerns of the moment, and perhaps rightfully so , but if you’re frantically busy, you don’t have time to truly perceive  and internalize all the glories of Istanbul or Milan or… or anywhere, really.
 
The excessively preoccupied man lives in his head, not in the world.
 
I dare say it’s less a matter of having time (no one really has the time) but instead a matter of how you orient yourself as you go about your day.
 
But even if you were to free yourself from that trap – which is not so  hard to do – there is one final obstacle.
 
Would it be trite to call it “cynicism”?
 
Maybe so, but I can’t find another word for it.
 
Regardless of how cynical you are – and cynicism isn’t the perfect word, it’s merely the best word I could find – regardless of that, you can study the technical side of aesthetics and cultivate them. That requires no deep belief, no music, no melody – per se.
 
But to go beyond that, what do we need? A willingness to drop whatever cynical and low-grounded rock we’ve been carrying around in our backpack.
 
It was understandable, perhaps even inevitable, for the generations after the World Wars to be traumatized and skeptical of everything.
 
But embracing the whole of reality, knowing we can touch aesthetic perfection and beauty with the human hand – this is a rare and marvelous thing, worth working at, even if the work takes years… we will better for it – not just on an abstract, aesthetic, or human level, but on immensely practical levels in our everyday affairs.
 
I’ve worked to unravel this thread – I’ve tried to get at it as best as I could – yet I do wonder if I’ve helped untangle it for you.

The aesthetic and romantic are uncommon in our day and age – even passingly touching upon them unlocks both great power and great thriving for whomever does so.
 
Life is beautiful – should we not embrace it?