The Most Beautiful Paradox
I'm taking a little tea break to share some thoughts which a nice lecture on Japanese architecture inspired. Something which was well articulated in the lecture, by the Japanese architecture and gardens, to which I feel profoundly intrigued by is the idea of this paradoxical simplicity--a simplicity which requires great complexity and sophistication to be achieved. I love paradoxes. And this paradox--the highly complex simplicity, the greatest naturalness achieved through the greatest abstraction--defines for me what true beauty is. And one can find this everywhere: to me, the most beautiful music is so sophisticated and complex but when articulated in a very refined way appears to be some of the most simple while holding the greatest depth; architecture which is free of excessive ornamentation and articulates a deep understanding of space and materials is almost minimalistic or even austere yet it holds such pleasing formal elegance in every detail; poetry which limits all linguistic ornamentations or fussy formalities expresses through clean language something even more moving; tea, food, fashion, manner, . . . the same follows in most anything, for me.
