Monday, January 16, 2006

beauty, death and immortality

I've been watching 2 movies, amadeus and before sunrise, during this weekend and the thought of immortality just popped out of my mind when i watched both of them. In amadeus, it's sad to see how Salieri trying so hard to outdo Mozart. During his last few years, he asked a priest whether the priest was familiar with certain tunes that he composed. Sadly, the priest didn't know any of his tunes but when Salieri played one piece of music, the priest suddenly smiled and hummed to the tunes. The priest asked whether that was composed by Salieri but too bad, it wasn't. It was composed by Mozart. Salieri trying so hard to make his music became famous and be played for many generations to come. But no. His music died after a few years. No one played what he wrote anymore...slowly fading away into nothing. On the other hand, the music prodigy, even after his young death (he was only 35 years old when he died), his music become so popular and people respect him for his works. Mozart is immortal. Even after 3 centuries later, you can still hear people play his works.

We know that human can't live forever. It's finite. We will all die and turn into dust. But who aren't afraid of death? I think everyone does, well maybe there's some who is not afraid. If we turn on TV or read magazines, we can fine so many ads for beauty products that promote anti-wrinkle, anti-aging stuff. Turn your old skins into young again. Believe it or not, so many people fall for it. Well what can we say...we all want to look young again. It's not only beauty products. Nowadays, plastic surgeries also become so famous thanks to TV (again)shows like the swan or extreme makeover. If you dont' like your face, you can always operate some parts to make it beautiful, like nose job, eye job, or lip job to name a few. For me, I'm happy with what I have. Off course sometime i wish i had an oval face instead of a square one, a higher nose instead of my small one, a perfect eyebrows instead of my messy one, and so on..... Granted i can always do some nose job or eye job but thinking about all the knives and needles that will pierce my body, it makes my skin crawl. what's the use of make ups then? Beauty comes with pain. Yes... it's so true. But when we are old, let's say 60-70 years old, we won't have all that anymore. Think about it...are you still going to do plastic surgery to lift up your saggy skins when you are that old? You won't be bringing your beauty to the grave, will you? yeah let's say you do all the operations to make you beautiful but then you died the next day and burried with your beautiful self but after a few months, only your bones will remain. Where's beauty then? It's all eaten by worms and other animals. I believe beauty should come from inside. If you are beautiful from the outside but your inner self is rotten, you are going to be marked bad from others and people will soon stay away from you.

On the other hand, take a look at all the dead composers, artists, activists. Eventhough they were all dead but until now, we are still appreciating their works. Isn't it interesting how their works weren't appreciated when they were still alive? Mozart: his famous operas Don Giovanni and the marriage of Figarro were only played 5 and 9 times total in vienna compare to now....hmmm talking about classical music, it makes me think about pop music nowadays. There's no doubt that classical music will still be played for a long time. It has withstand so many centuries and it won't died out that easily. I think that all the dead composers and artists are all immortal. Not their bodies but their works. Pop music is different. What we consider now as hits and new, in couple years to come they will be consider as old songs in new generations dictionary and eventually it will fade away into extinction. So many examples: ant & dec, the moffats, backstreet boys (soon), n-sync (soon), even green day will be lost forever. A new generation will soon take over them. It's kind of like shedding skins. the old skins will die and replace by newer skins.

just a thought...i wrote immortality only based on dead composers, artists but what about the famous criminals? eventhough it''s been a long time ago, but people can still remember what they did. Can we still call the criminals immortal just because of their reputation and what they did?

yeah...anyhow...all i wrote was kind of abstract...nothing really related to one another except maybe for beauty and death. hmm or maybe there's some other thing? well i'm not going to think about that now.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi there... just happened upon your blog by clicking the "next blog" button.

I like this post about immortality. If you haven't before, I would encourage you to read Immortality by Milan Kundera. He discusses these same ideas.