I pulled this quote from the New York Times in my morning reading. For not entirely explainable reasons a quote from the work of Friedrich Nietzsche struck me as very important for us all in this era of image. UmaSofia Srivastava, now former Miss Teen USA from New Jersey in her letter of resignation to the Miss Teen Organization quoted Nietzsche saying: “There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.” A beautiful surface carries the weight of its history. A beautiful surface is not to be confused with a pretty surface that is only a generally pleasing presentation but without the ballast of what it takes to create or be ‘beautiful’. There is a tendency to overlook the very real and consistent suffering that accompanies the creation of beauty. When beauty is exploited, the energy that has been reduced, compressed and shaped to make that beauty and that beauty can explode.

My use of the word ‘good’ in this project, and the life long intentional maturation of one’s ‘sense of good’ are not invitations to the convenience of being ‘pretty good’. I am asking us all to treat our sense of good as an art project with the intent of creating something beautiful and to suffer the process of being something beautiful. I suspect for me and probably you, this is what can make our lives decent and meaningful at the same time in our time.