I’ve just added a short piece called Beauty is Truth in the short stories section. It’s a piece I’d started some time ago and intended at some point to continue but, for the present, I’m leaving it as a stand alone vignette. It is exploring the idea that because society now makes such a show of being brash, loud and disrespectful the most rebellious thing you can do is be the opposite. If society is rude and discourteous then open doors, pull out chairs, and say thank you more. If everyone in society swears then learn better words, learn to express yourself more eloquently. If society dictates that Katie Price is to be admired then go read about Rosa Parks or Emmeline Pankhurst. If society dictates that Lady GaGa is some kind of musical genius then go listen to Beethoven’s Piano Concerto #5 and realise what genius means. Courtesy is the real rebellion, culture is the real revolution.
The story is entitled after the last lines of Keats’ poem Ode to a Grecian Urn. They sum up nicely an attitude that existed before we all became so infuriatingly post-modern.
You can read Beauty is Truth here and there are also some notes on the story.
Nice start – quite Dead Poets Society, with plenty of ways to develop.
Thanks. I have a couple of story lines in my head but haven’t progressed with either as yet.
I’m now feeling woefully inadequately read again. Should I be looking out for the Dead Poets Society?
It’s a film. Robin Williams plays a maverick teacher in a buttoned-up New England (I think – Ivy League-ish, anyway) boys’ school. It made me bawl my eyes out, aged 14, but I haven’t seen it in years. I do remember it being very good, though. Robert Sean Leonard played one of the main schoolboys, which makes me feel very old, given that he’s now playing a proper grown-up cancer consultant in House.
I will have to watch out for that, sounds like a good idea. I do like Robin Williams. I don’t know Robert Sean Leonard though, not having seen House. (Though I did once see a clip on youTube of Mr. Laurie breaking up with an 18 year old girl using lines from Casablanca.)
Good job! I’ve just emailed you about this!
And oh yes! Do watch DPS – top film! Like Katja, it was a life-changing film for me in my teens. Watched it again the other day after a loooooong time; it really has aged quite well…