Dorr Bothwell

   Creative observation of our surroundings revives in us a sense of the wonder of life. Much of this discovery involves the recovery of something that we all once had in childhood. When we were very young we were all artists. We all came into this world with the doors of perception wide open. Everything was a delightful surprise. Everything, at first, required the slow, loving touch of our tongues and our hands. Long before we could speak, we knew the comfort of our mother's warm body, the delightful feel of a furry toy. Smooth and rough surfaces, things cold and hot surprised and charmed us. Touch by touch we built up our store of tactile impressions, keenly sensed in minute detail.

   Later on, this tactile sensing was transferred to our eyes, and through the sense of vision we were able to "feel" things beyond the grasp of our hands. This kind of seeing was not the rapid sophisticated eye-sweep of the efficient fact-finding adult. This kind of seeing was a slow, uncritical examination in depth. The more we looked, the more lovely and surprising things appeared, until we were pervaded by that word-less thrill which is the sense of wonder.

  None of us has lost our store of tactile memories. Nor have we lost our sense of wonder. All that's happened is that we have substituted identifying and labeling, which can be done very rapidly, for the tactile sort of feel-seeing that requires much more time and concentration. For example, if you were asked to look at the edge of your desk and estimate its length, it would only take you a few seconds to flick your eyes back and forth and say that it's so many inches long. But suppose you were asked to run the tip of your finger along the edge of the desk and count every tiny scratch? You would press your finger along the edge and move it very, very slowly, and your eye would move no faster than your finger. This slow, concentrated way of feeling and seeing is the first step towards regaining our sense of wonder.

  There was a time when people moved no faster than their feet (or the feet of some animal that carried them). During that period, the artistic or creative spirit seemed to have free expression. Today, in order to be creative and yet move smoothly and efficiently through our fast-paced world, we must be able to function at two different speeds. The mistake we've made, often with tragic results, is to try to do all our living at the speed our machines have imposed upon us.

  In order to live at this speed we must scan the surface of things, pick out the most striking aspects and disregard secondary features. There's certainly nothing wrong in this if we're driving on a busy highway. But when we allow this pressure to invade every aspect of our lives, we begin to lose touch, to have a feeling that we're missing something. We're hungry for we don't know what. When that happens, we've begun to suffer from aesthetic malnutrition. Fortunately, the cure for this condition is very pleasant, and although it takes a little self-discipline at the beginning, the results are worth the effort.

  When we see the world as design artists see it, we become especially aware of the interaction between positive and negative space. In architecture we become suddenly aware of the spaces between the windows; at the ballet we notice how the spaces between the dancers open and close; and in music we realize that rhythm is made by the shapes of silence between the notes.

    Everywhere we look we see this principle in action. Trees are not silhouetted against blank air, but hold blue patterns between their leaves while the branches frame living shapes of sky. We delight in the openings between the leaves of a plant or the spokes of a wheel. This endless exchange between form and space excites us. Once more we feel in touch with our world; our aesthetic sense is being fed and we are comforted.

   We may have been taught that butterflies are lovely and frogs are ugly, so we admire the butterfly and shrink away from the frog without really examining it to find out if what we had been taught is true. Or we are taught that flowers are good and weeds are bad, so we pull up the latter without a glance. To the artist's eye there is no good or bad -- there is just the inappropriate. In the garden, weeds are not appropriate, but in an open field they offer a world of delight. And after we've learned to see the beauty in weeds, even though we have to pull them out of the garden, we can first admire their design.

    When no preconceived ideas keep us from looking and we take all the time we need to really feel what we see -- when we are able to do that -- the universe opens up and we catch our breath in awe at the incredible complexity of design in the humblest things. It is only when this happens that we regain our sense of wonder.

纯真的目光

    多尔· 博思韦尔