Art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

Art and beauty are one and the same.

However, we consider beauty in a spectrum far more limited than we consider art.

We need to widen the scope of what art and beauty are.

Why can I not find art and beauty in shit?

Why can I not find art and beauty in death?

Why can I not find art and beauty in ugliness?

Why do we seek such narrow bands of feeling? Why do we choose to paint only with one color? What of red and brown?

What of black?

What would a world be like where art and beauty were universals, not limited to a specific arrangement, not limited to a specific pattern, but merely an intrinsic quality of all things that exist?

I’m not so convinced that’s not already the case.

I’m not so convinced that that’s not already the case, and that we just aren’t looking at it, that we aren’t aware of it, and that we’ve chosen to ignore this universal principle.

What is a great novel, a great story, without an antagonist, without a central conflict? We view the antagonist as a force to be defeated, a conflict as something to be worked through — but do we forget to thank those central themes, central roles, for the great gift that they are in creating a story?

Is it possible that only through the presence of a conflict, through the presence of an antagonist, that a protagonist can be born, and that a resolution can be created?

This is the art of alchemy. There is no Philosopher’s Stone without lead, without the prima materia.