LIFE AS ART - WHY BEAUTY MATTERS | 9 SEPTEMBER 2025 | London, United Kingdom
I was 18-years-old, living in Boston, MA attending Berklee College of Music, paying more attention to the decor of my apartment, pressing of my clothes, fragrance on my girlfriend’s skin, the mysterious curation of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and the fascinating humans who seemed to magnetize my way. It may have been in me all along, but I began to develop a sense that all of life could be lived beautifully, or artfully at least. Ones speech, style, and the way an individual could flow with the universe, interacting with the arc of the sun and murmuration of society on any given day, could all fall into an aesthetically pleasing flow. Was this just aesthetics though, or something that touched upon a law more fundamentally human, even spiritual?
Later I would come across the documentary ‘Why Beauty Matters’, by the English philosopher Roger Scruton. While the delivery was painfully dry, it did validate and clearly articulate what I intuitively sensed back in Boston; that care in the design and refinement of all things in our physical world has a more profound effect than perhaps we collectively believe today. He implored that beauty addresses a universal human need, offering “consolation in sorrow and affirmation in joy”, and plays a vital role in making life feel worthwhile. He laments in his conviction that modern society has abandoned beauty (I only agree in part), and has too often chosen utility over emotion or harmony (mostly agree), and that these increasingly-rare elements and aesthetic experiences lift us into "an illuminated sphere of contemplation.”
And so a lifetime later, having just completed the 3-year arc of an album made with such pure dedication to the artistry of a thing, I look for other ways to approach life in this artful manner. It’s something I seek to play with, interact with, test, push, and converse about, all in an attempt to create a life of richer substance; experientially, artistically, socially, and spiritually. To create a life that is a worthy masterpiece of quality and refinement in every layer, and every stroke. As imperfect a man as I am, I believe it’s a worthy North Star, curiously present since those formative contemplations in Boston.
Image: The Birth of Venus - Sandro Botticelli - Uffizi Galleries, Firenze, Italy
