I just heard the phrase, Beauty Demands Replication. It means that when you see something beautiful, it moves you and moves you to action. When an artist sees truth and beauty, the artist is moved to express it their way. Van Gogh saw a starry night and created his own on canvas. Picasso saw so many everyday items and transformed them into art. But he also saw the horrors of war and created Guernica. Gustave Courbet saw the exposed vagina and had to try to capture it in paint. Georgia O’Keefe sketched flowers (and maybe vaginas, too). It’s the same with e. e. cummings, Bukowski, Shakespeare’s dark lady in his sonnets, Vonnegut’s Monkey House visit…
I used to post on Fetlife, where I’d see so many beautiful, evocative photos and so much beautiful, evocative writing! It all inspired me to express my reactions in my writing. So much delicious kink, so much inspiration, all grist for the mill. Not a day would go by but that I’d wish I could post photographs of my perfect posterior, my bruised butt, my juicy pussy, my smiling face. But I can’t. So I write, feebly trying to put into words the truth and beauty I see.
But there’s another phrase, Pretty Is As Pretty Does. I learned this most clearly back when friends with homecoming queen Janis A. I never saw such an exquisite face, such a dynamite body in the gym class shower. But she was hate-filled and viciously cruel, too. I saw examples of this again recently on Fetlife. I met a woman so comely on her outside, so ugly inside. I met a man who lives to post mean negativity whenever he can. Please try to learn from their non-examples, as I did. And we would all do well to keep these two phrases in mind as we live our best lives.