oursin | Eye of the beholder? (Reply)

Or, further thoughts on the problem of performing Random Acts of Senseless Beauty.

I will concede, she conceded, that I may be unduly prejudiced against the yarnstormers and graffiti knitters and their contributions to brightening up the cityscape for a purely personal reason: at university I was acquainted with someone who bedizened her room in the student residence with all sorts of handmade knickknackery and textile crafts and the effect was frankly disturbing.

On the whole, I am with those people in the comments to that post who were saying more or less that there are people out there who need scarves more than the statues do, even if you are making an Artistic Statement thereby.

Which I don't think is being Judas Iscariot about the pot of precious ointment, because a one-off gesture between individuals is a bit different, no?

Some acts of senseless beauty I am okay with - e.g. guerilla gardening even if I don't do this myself, because I can kill plants just by being the same room with them, so my trying to sow seeds broadcast would probably bring about the Waste Land.

But as a general rule, I think it falls under the same There Is No Simple General Rule rubric as random acts of kindness - there are very few actions which everybody on all possible occasions will be assumed to be kind and accepted with gratitude. (Okay, an earlier tirade of mine on acts of kindness that were actually less than helpful or useful incited someone else to post about my Amazing Lack of Gratitude To People Who Were Only Being Nice, but I still think that if you offer to let someone stay in your apartment, it is only civil to do this if the apartment is actually habitable and the gesture will not involve various other individuals in trying to get the boiler to work, etc.)

Because there is such a very strong subjective element to what is considered beauty, your enlivening of the drab urban landscape may be my twee-overload plz 2 pass sickbag. Or the responses evoked by Epstein's Rima when it first appeared in Hyde Park and regularly got vandalised with paint.