Sensuous culture
The American culture is in some ways more of a utilitarian than sensuous culture. We tend to demand functionality while settling for little sensuality. We think there is a kind of truth possible without beauty.
In a sensuous culture, eating is accompanied by talk about food, not our to-do lists and other distractions from the joy of eating and cooking. We nibble and share from each other’s plates and sip from each other’s glasses. We wear clothes people can’t resist touching. We use technology that pleases the eye as much as the hand.
We greet and part with touching, if not hugs, kisses, whatever our gender or generation or cultural differences or commonalities. We savor moments of shared silence without rushing to prevent their delicious possibilities into something new. We live and work in spaces that makes us feel cared for and alive. We speak in words, tones, cadences, and phrases that produce as much music as meaning. We take care of our skin and are known to stretch or sing in public spaces.
We care how our ambient air smells, often adorning it with flowers or incense. We use color that invites emotion. We let music breathe life into the spaces between. We speak in stories.
December 23rd, 2005 08:18
Do you think our focus on individuality over communality impedes our sensuality? Perhaps the smaller the radius of our personal space, the easier it is to act in the ways you are talking about…
[let’s use more words ending in -ity!]
December 23rd, 2005 09:20
That’s a good observation/question. If you mean individuality as isolation and opposition instead of community, I would say yes. Individuality expressed as uniqueness in community may actually add to a sensuous culture.
December 23rd, 2005 11:27
The first time my husband visited Italy with me, he remarked that he never appreciated how powerful the Puritan influence was in the US until he visited a country where that influence doesn’t exist.
Your observation that in “. . . a sensuous culture, eating is accompanied by talk about food” is spot on. I’ve enjoyed sumptuous, multi-course meals with my Italian relatives where at the very end, when we’re stuffed to the gills with delicious food, someone will invariably ask “I wonder what we’ll eat tomorrow?” Hilarious.
December 23rd, 2005 14:34
Jack - I have to believe that, as hinted to a bit in Tamara’s comment, your observation (which I’d agree with) reflects a certain clinging to ascetic ideals, even as we consume more and more. So few people take the time to see the connections that exist or can exist between enjoying what you do and having what you do sustain you - whether it’s eating, work, love, or relaxing. For me, this is the crux of the problem in American society: a tendency to make everything black and white and not recognize how much of life, of living, is not mutually exclusive.
December 23rd, 2005 14:57
Yes Jill, consumption is too often about quantity and ownership rather than quality of experience.
December 25th, 2005 06:21
I think Tamara’s husband’s made the point: we Americans have been in the grip of a Puritanism that shuns sensuality as a vice.
Food? Good. Solid. It fills you up, the better to get on with work, the true purpose of living. No time for savoring. That would be to play into the devil’s clutches.
Now we have fast food on every corner. What could be more utilitarian, less “sensual” in all the exquisiteness that word implies?
In mass culture, sensuality has given way to sensation — bigger, faster, louder, better.
More’s the pity.