Finding Beauty In The Mundane
On the way home from work I saw something strange beyond belief; I saw a man perched like a nature photographer, phone in hand, snapping a picture of something over the wall just ahead. The subject was out of sight from me, so I hastened my walk intrigued to see what had stopped him in his tracks. To my surprise, the centre piece of this mans photo was a pigeon, and a humble pigeon at that. Of all God’s good creatures, I would dare to say that it is perhaps the most commonplace, at least for anyone living in the UK. They are as passing and trivial as a carrier bag blowing across the road. Why, I thought, would someone want to take a picture of it? Well I suppose he thought it beautiful in some sense. A photo is a souvenir of a moment; something to be returned to and admired. This made me think, am in the wrong for thinking a pigeon unworthy of my awe or attention? This man had done something remarkable that would make life a little more bearable for all of us; he had reclaimed childhood wonder at what we miserable old adults, timeworn, by and large deem mundane. Novelty junky that I am, I demand grand vista’s and white sand to satisfy my inner photographic urge.
And so I thought about this- I have far too much time on my hands- and I have come to the conclusion that I was the one in the wrong- I shall explain how. If repetition and the passing of time takes the beauty out of something, we should all leave our long-term partners this instance. But I think, most would agree, that our loved ones don’t diminish in any sense over the years, we just grow blind to our blessings, and complacent with our lot. Of course we discover new traits which were buried away also, but that is besides the point in this analogy. The key to seeing beauty in what has become mundane is looking at everything as if it were the first time, and treating it as if it were the last. Now I don’t expect us to maintain this exhausting mindset everyday of course, or for everything- only those things we have grown weary of, but once loved (and somewhere, still do). I turn to children to demonstrate how this looks, because much of what they see is truly novel; They stand in awe of insects, and watch mesmerised as a pigeon takes flight, they stand wide eyed before a building, and star struck as a dog enters the room. In a similar vein, this man saw a pigeon and thought it as worthy as a lion, and that, I believe, makes him far superior to those that walk with their heads to the ground convinced that the commonplace has been mined and found wanting of beauty.
I have tried this approach, and although it was not in anyway life changing, there are certainly merits to reclaiming awe in the face of the ostensibly banal. The buildings on the way to work look like turrets- strangely medieval and fortified. Now when I walk past them I can’t escape a momentary image of them as battlements. with fierce men waving halberds on top. Furthermore, the local college looks like an old soviet building, left to be reclaimed by nature. And behind the church lays old Roman ruins which also feed the imagination on cold, melancholic mornings. So here is to walking with our heads up, seeing the beauty in the ordinary and yes, perhaps even to photographing pigeons.
