Why do I and other artists aspire to beauty? Is it because it is ephemeral, eternal, and yet available to even the minutiae of this world. That it can be achieved effortlessly and boldly by fate, gesture, desire, or simply being- which is in and of itself a disastrously beautiful thing? I have comforted myself in times of upheaval and dissonance by the beauty in suffering and my sufferings are so common and unique at the same time; truly a member of the human race, truly a part of something. That by our sufferings we are ultimately confirmed as these strange flawed animals whose intellect and pursuit of something eternal is so beautiful in the face of their biological fate... their doom, meaningless.