TRUTH AND BEAUTY started when Indy Johar of Hub Westminster challenged me to do something. It started with the idea of a series of workshops on The Future We Deserve, but I realized that without creating new community and culture, we would be doing events which could be done in any lecture theater, taking advantage of none of the unique properties of Hub Westminster.
So that set me to thinking. I realized that I wanted to start trying to reverse some of the isolation, fragmentation and atomization within which so much thinking is done in the modern context. It’s epitomized to me by the scattering at the end of even the most amazing talk, when everybody goes off on their own or with their friends, and scatters to the wind.
We do not listen together even if we are sitting beside each-other, together alone. So I thought that to dine together before a talk would be good, so that when people are hearing, absorbing, they are doing it together, as something with at least the possibility of community, rather than as an anonymous audience.
Then there was the art. I’m no artist, but I’m somebody who’s life has been shaped by fiction and art. Dali was an obsession for some time. I feel, in my bones, that we are in a period of history where dry rational analysis is not going to produce breakthroughs in our culture. It is important to do, and it is important to do well, but if there is hope, at a fundamental level, in my mind it lies with art and particularly music, and their ability to unite, make whole, and bring solidarity. Music is still our best doorway to participation mystique. So it seemed natural to present both the discursive and the performative, and to bring together people who have a broad range of tastes and capabilities to help me where my capabilities are weak.
It’s a small seed, but things start at the beginning. I hope you’ll help me to build this and get this right. Thank you.
Vinay Gupta, @leashless
