Beauty in Low Places

It was probably 2019, New York City, I was in a bar drinking a gin and seltzer, alone, as I often did then. A few feet from the precipice of a chasm, but I did not know it yet. Or maybe I did. When "Higher Love", sung by Steve Winwood and Chaka Khan, came on the bluetooth speaker. It was not the first time I had heard it, but it was the first time in a long time, and the feeling was one I hadn't felt in a long time. Like a stream of fresh clear air on the radio waves, piercing the heavy stale haze of the bar. It was a reminder of the existence of something pure and true, beyond what my world had become, an ideal captured. In the coming years, as things got worse, and then better, it would continue to serve as a reminder of the world above. A buoy in the rough sea. But how was this song conceived of, what was Winwood channeling? What is Love, and will he fly as soon as we try to pin him down? The dialogue that is perhaps of most relevance to this question is Plato's S...

Plato, in the Phaedo, informs us that we live in hollows on the face of the earth, filled with water, mist, and the lower air. This is in contradiction to the commonly-held belief that we live, of course, on its surface. Plato (through his vehicle of Socrates who, however, most say was likely a real person) further reveals that our experienced earth is only the sediment of the true earth gathered, and that this true earth is a more fair and pure place. Indeed, he says we are like creatures at the bottom of the sea, fancying that we are on the surface of the water, but too feeble and sluggish to lift our heads and behold the true upper world. I not only agree but find this revelation a perhaps strange comfort. For I am in decrepit decaying basements, underground tunnels, watery underworlds, in my dreams. And little wonder, when the scenes all around us are of war, violence, destruction, general depravity. At least for me, these are only stories in the news, not lived experiences. Living...