The Beautiful in Things

We live only to discover beauty. All else is a form of waiting

Once, long ago, I thought that as long as I an able to experience art, it doesn't mattet what I do, or what I become. There was a moment when beauty so tremendously captivated me. There are infinitely many human creations that I can witness and take pleasure in. What a life I can live, if I can be ecstatic every day of my life.

But life sometimes leads one to grow in many branches. Looking back at how far I have developed, it is amazing indeed how many ideas have passed, how many minds I have seen, listened, and read. I recall during my days how I shify from Scorsese, and then to Bergman, and then to Dostoyevsky, and there was Amir Hamzah and Mangunwijaya, and... you get the idea. Reader, if you are not familiar with these names, you certainly think of me as freakish.

But such freakishness is an amazing state of being. Way back, there was a time where I do not care what anybody thinks of me. There was a time where I could live feeding off the minds of others. I was sustained by films and books. But here I am now, as someone who dislikes displeasing others. In the social sense I believe I have become a better person, but so much of me is my past rather than my present.

I am now a programmer. I am an AI Engineer. What a stupidly fancy term. I work for a vendor to make AI software better. But AI is not a tool for making money. It is not a tool to make lives better. Although both are beneficial benefits, AI is a manifestation of beauty! I don't believe I ever truly cared on how our models perform. So long as I have the chance to solve a fun puzzle or to tinker with technology, I don't care what problems these systems can solve.

As I am always in contact with programming, my attention frequently turns to coding and software engineering. I find interest in them. I wish I can learn more languages more quickly, and I wish I can create fun projects with them. Yet the sheer possibilities of software engineering pales in comparison to the slight, dense bag of emotions a well-made work of art can induce in mere minutes.

There is something we always miss about ourselves from the past. I miss when I read more. I miss when I was an uncaring individual. I miss when I can work on scientific discovery. And I suppose that we all miss a time of our life when everything that we do is so beautifully clear. We were surrounded by excitement and gladness, though these emotions may vary. For me, as of now, I dearly miss writing and reading scientific papers. Though my last time writing was perhaps no more than 8 months ago, it was a greater part of myself that I lament my current state.

But at the same time I miss my artistic self. Some may consider calling oneself an artist or artistic to be pretentious, but that depends on the context. When I call myself artistic I communicate that I adore private and fundamentally internal experiences. There are nothing to boast or show off about one's aesthetic experiences. Yes, I am someone who takes pleasure in strong sensations invoked by human craftsmanship. And when I say I miss my artistic self, I mean that I miss the addictive preference to witnessing and crafting art.

Recently, I have came to a mindset of writing I never had before. When we are writing or crafting something, we must do so with a conscious goal of creating beauty. Its such a stupidly straightforward idea, and it is truly shameful that I have never thought about it like that before. I used to think that when I am writing, I am creating a nice piece of art. Something fine, something valuable. But why craft art with the goal of crafting art?

Perhaps, despite of my artistic tendencies, I have never truly understood why I write. Well, I know I read because I find beautiful writing to be pleasurable. And the manner of this pleasure is in the images of humanity that such writings can invoke. In The Museum of Innocence, it is the determination and relentlessness to pursue impossible love. In Wild Strawberries, it is the regret and longing for an alternate way of life. In Spirited Away, it is the passing-through of memories of the oneself and the world around us. In all of these, there is a little kernel of light that gave character to the human soul.

What is my purpose in writing? Is it simply because I want to create a quality object? My interest in artistry has been on a much lower level compared to science as I manage through college. Hence, when I write, I am pushed by a feeling that I am morally obligated to deploy my capacities as a writer. Indeed! Moral obligation. I feel myself bound by a duty to express something in narrative writing. But what am I expressing? I have come to the conclusion, long ago, that my writings are not an expression of my `self`. This is simply because I do not see myself in any of my characters, although they are all dear to me. In a way I feel distant to them, but distant in the way that a parent would be glad to see their child prospering in a far-off world.

So what am I expressing? Well, I am expressing an idea of a possible and valid snapshot of humanity. In my writings, I am proposing that (1) The persons described in the stories are representations of persons who plausibly exists, (2) That the experiences my characters face are meaningful and describes a significant node in the web of the human condition, and (3) I am making an implicit moral judgment on their actions and beliefs. My stories propose that the world is of a certain way, and I believe my stories are fundamentally moralistic. But I should go in-depth regarding my writing motives some other time.

Indeed, after all is said and done, what about beauty? Have I thought about this when writing? Certainly, yes, but it appears to be the supporting power towards my craftsmanship. I was always determined with everything I write to achieve a refined piece of work as a priority. Perhaps I think the same towards approaching scientific writing, that I want to make a good paper instead of a profound discovery. The paradox, of course, is that a fine piece of art requires tremendous beauty, and a good research requires a revealing discovery. As I ponder on my life from the now and to the beginning, perhaps (for I am never fully certain of myself) I have mixed up this important order of things. Alas, it is not everyday that my work consists of tinkering and experiencing technological beauty.

And I think it is strange because I have been closer to this perspective when writing my software projects. My most wonderful project was when I created my own language model from scratch--the 7M and 25M Sasando-1 models. They are bad and useless--contrary to the desire of engineering to create useful inventions. Yet I was fixated at the sheer possiblity of creating and tampering a mind with purely mathematical operations. I was mesmerized by the sheer beauty that such a miracle is scientifically possible.

Beautiful things take a certain form; a complex machinery, an emotional description, a profound knowledge. But heind them all is the essence of beautiful things; and it's that essence that I should strive for. A model, a book, or a paper--they are all merely containers that acommodate the vitality. So we must make these containers so that beauty can thrive, and not make beauty thrive that we can make these conainers.

The purity of doing nothing, save expanding beauty. Perhaps it was what I was missing all along; or rather, it was the core that used to drive me. I thought that I could be a good person if I can create many good things. But what is this good? Perhaps, for my purposes, this goodness should be beauty. And if I can harness it better and more consciously, perhaps I can do exponentially more.

First upload: 1 November 2024