Reality, Beauty, Life: Journal of a Student of Aesthetic Realism: Festival of Blue Nets - Festival des Filets Bleus

I felt transported back to a much earlier time at this festival in Brittany, August 2019. The people taking part have such seriousness and dedication to ancient music, dance, costume, and way of life. This seriousness shows also in great joy and liveliness and it's a wonderful thing to witness.

Festival of Blue Nets I

Parade participants

People have been taking part in it for nearly 100 years, and the roots go way, way back. Watching it had me think of these words by Eli Siegel from his early work, "The Middle Ages, Say":

There were people who lived in the Middle Ages and, who, so, suffered and enjoyed; the one difference between us and them is that their pains and pleasures are over and ours are not. These people are our fellowmen over the years..."

And later:

We should look on the past passionately; we should see all reality passionately, not only the part we have right under our noses or nearly that. Our feelings should have no limits in either extensity or intensity...

Witnessing the parade one feels so much closer to people of 100, 200, 500 and more years ago, and these sentences are a celebration of their reality. Just as the parade itself does, they can have one feel even closer - and consciously, deeply closer - to the people of the past - as we are inspired to have a way of seeing the people and reality of today (and perhaps the person right next to us) that can make us proud because it means things really matter to us.

See a video of the parade in Concarneau

See "History Is Ethics and Aesthetics" issue #1385 of the periodical "The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known" See also: "Is Beauty the Making One of Opposites?" - fifteen questions about beauty by Eli Siegel, written in 1955 on the occasion of the opening of New York City's Terrain Gallery

More photos of the parade: