German American physicist Albert Einstein was born this day in 1879.

In his book, Einstein, Picasso, Arthur I. Miller writes:

“The corpus of Einstein’s fourth paper entitled ‘On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,’ the so-called relativity paper, is at first glance no different from other scientific papers of that era.

“Yet first glance deceives: It was daring in both style and content. Today no leading physics journal would publish it because of its complete lack of citations to the literature.”

If this is so, then art and physics are allies in the description of truths: physical and metaphysical. Nearly a century after Einstein drew his line of chalk in the fabric of space-time, the quest for the Theory of Everything has become the holy grail of advanced theoretical physics.

The equation of the millennium would explain the elemental relationship of matter and energy, gravity and light.

We can also note that a considerable aspect of Einstein’s genius lay in his gift for asking the right questions coupled with his dedication, his ability to stay with a problem for many years until a solution revealed itself. 

Who is the arbiter of your thoughts, your feelings?

Before you answer, remember that we all are prisoners of the culture and language that we inherit. The artist, recognizing this limitation, creates a new universal language that is free from the bias and restrictions of the past.

Original thinking or feeling is based on nothing that preceded it. This is an essential insight to grasp for your own evolution.

Original means something unencumbered by what preceded it; original is not a conclusion, but a revelation that takes off in a new direction.

In the same way that you can’t plan an original thought, you can’t contrive original art. This isn’t an opinion; it is a universal constant. 

Why has so much been written about the aesthetic experience? And what is it?

The aesthetic experience is when art becomes a doorway. You look, listen, feel, and for yet another moment, or for the first time, you are seeing for yourself without the limiting and blinding filters of others—that is, of course, if you’ve got the guts.

Digging deeper: The aesthetic experience is a moment of truth, and you know where you stand without having to ask for a show of hands to corroborate your feeling.

And as we have heard from the poet, truth is beauty, and beauty truth—and so beautifully said to boot.

Here’s a repost from seven years ago.

Mr. Bowles’ Buddhist-leaning observation contains a universal teaching we can all prosper from and enjoy in the present moment.

“Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustable well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that is so deeply part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it. Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps 20. And yet it all seems limitless.”

—from The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles

"No matter what further purposes artistic expressions may serve, they are produced and valued for themselves; we linger in them; we neither merely execute them mechanically, as we do automatic expressions, nor hasten through them, our minds fixed upon some future end to be gained by them, as is the case with practical expressions. Both for the artist and the appreciator, they are ends in themselves.”

—from The Principles of Aesthetics by Dewitt H. Parker

But are all artistic expressions created equally? Of course, not. Is it art or cotton candy? Is Muzak Mozart?

If you are taken with a painting, do you know why? Guessing or relying on the ‘expert’ opinions of others is not the aesthetic experience of feeling with your higher emotional intelligence—an endeavor that requires work.

Meaningful appreciation rarely happens overnight.