sinking fish a lighting geese eclipsing the moon a bashing flowers you've probably heard of Helen
of Troy the face that launched a thousand ships the most beautiful woman in history but in the
Legends of ancient China there are four to rival her see she beloved of an enemy King
so beautiful that when she leaned over a balcony to peer into a pond for a moment the fish within
were dazzled at the sight of her and forgot to swim sinking to the bottom married off to assure
peace between enemy Nations so captivatingly gorgeous that as she traveled the Northern
Plains the wild geese came down out of the sky a lighting on the grass to better admire her beauty
and the secret agent who brought a warlord to heal so lovely that as she worshiped in her
garden one evening the moon itself felt inferior and embarrassed and hid itself behind a cloud
flower of the Imperial Court and beloved of the emperor in the presence of whom the Thousand
roses and peonies of the Imperial Garden closed their petals out of sheer bashfulness
sinking fish a lighting geese eclipsing the moon abashing flowers
this isn't just a list of stories it's a traditional saying across China to call a
woman exceptionally beautiful you might say that the side of her could cause all of these things
but imagine trying to paint such a woman imagine trying to describe a beauty which could cause all
of these things with nothing more than a canvas and a spread of paints how do you capture not
only their outer appearance but the whole Nuance of their Essence their error their Spirit your
tools would suddenly feel very meager I think could you help but fail this was the unfortunate
fate of the fabled artist Mao Yen Shu and I think there's a lot to learn from his story
when Wang chowshun the beauty of the alightening geese was first chosen from among the common folk
to serve the emperor she and the other women each had their portraits rendered by the court painter
Mao Yun shu the emperor had planned to look through all the portraits to choose the most
beautiful among them to become his concerts in one version of the story most of the other woman
in their families bribed the painter with gifts not Huang Zha shun irritated the artist rendered
her with a big mole under one eye thus the emperor paid her no mind and xiaodun remained a lowly maid
much later when the king of the shongnu a rival Nation requested a marriage Alliance the emperor
realized he need a princess to marry oth thinking he'd already picked all the prettiest women in his
service to be consorts the emperor allowed one of his maids to volunteer herself for adoption
and then marriage this of course turned out to be Wang zhaoshun on the day of her departure she
finally came before the emperor to Bid Farewell the first and last time they would ever meet
he was shocked to see before him a beauty without equal in the entire Empire but it was too late she
was to become his adopted daughter and depart for her new life that same day bereft and enraged he
sent Wang xiaotun away and had the deceitful painter executed but that's only one version
of the story in another the painter was innocent there was no bribe no extra mole the painter had
simply done his best to capture her beauty with all the tools he'd had and failed his painting
was more accurate closer to her appearance than anyone else could have done and still her beauty
exceeded it too great to be held within a mere portrait in the words of Song Dynasty poet Wang
anshu the essence and demeanor are impossible to paint alas they killed Mao yangshu unjustly
I asked you earlier to imagine trying to paint such a beauty but you are not Mao yanshu not
simply the court painter you have other tools at your disposal more abstract ones than paints
and brushes painting can seem very visually exact sensorially concrete you see what you see
but language I think we tend to understand is a little different language is composed of sounds
and symbols which carry meaning but don't actually deliver very much sensory experience on their own
all you hear are mouth sounds in sequence all you see are letters marching across a page but
the beauty of language is that like code being read by a computer you use it to generate sensory
experience within your own mind through the lens of your imagination and memory these sounds and
symbols translate into active scenes seen in three dimensions full of Sensations the word
red as written is not actually read at a glance it does not convey what it is you do not see what
you see staring at the word yet when you read that simple series of three symbols together the
color red splashes across your mind for a blind person that translation would not happen the
word red would fail to mean much of anything at all the meaning of the symbols comes half from
what they're written to convey and half from the audience's ability to interpret them this is just
how description works it's a dance between the one observing and the one describing the listener and
the speaker the audience and the artist you may be able to convey most of what you mean but you
will always need the audience's involvement to complete the effect fill the gaps you've
left there's a saying in musical theater when the emotion becomes too large for speech you sing when
the emotion becomes too large for song You Dance in other words the more intense complex poignant
the thing you're attempting to describe the more naturally it lends itself to abstract expression
beauty is a thing which can be observed and understood when you're experiencing it firsthand
but even the greatest artist would be hard-pressed to depict it well enough to convey the full effect
this is where abstraction comes into play the more abstract the description is the more room
left for the audience's imagination the painter can hardly put the brush into the emperor's hand
and tell him to fill in the rest of the portrait but can a poet ask the emperor to imagine
there is another Chinese Legend very similar to The Tale of Wang chowshun the difference this
time is that the artist knows better Emperor Han wudi was a rare kind of ruler here was a man who
had taken the throne when he was 16 a warrior a scholar and a great patron of the Arts who
had unified the country and crushed the shanu and the North by the end of his Reign he would leave
the Empire twice as large as he had received it despite all of this there came a time when he was
steeped in Gloom petulant in his frustration with a sigh he lamented aloud to his court musician
that he had seen his many Beauties in his life as flowers in a field and not one of them his match
hearing this the court musician only smiled gently and began to recite a poem there is an
outstanding Maiden in the North standing alone she is unique on the Earth with one glance back
she conquers the city with a Second Glance back she conquers the state don't you know what would
be worth losing both the city and the state for it will be hard to find such a maiden again
this peaked the emperor's interest is such a beauty really possible he asked the musician
could this Maiden really exist your majesty the musician answered I am singing of my little sister
Han wuti of course wanted to meet this girl and of course the two fell in love he took her as an
honored consort bestowed upon her the title Madame Lee and eventually they had a son together this
story does go in quite a tragic Direction after this but this part of it is a great illustration
of how an abstract description can succeed it's more than just the difference between language and
visual art it's an ideal a philosophy a truth the musician understood something the painter in our
earlier story did not there's a reason he didn't take this opportunity to describe in detail the
daintiness of his sister's feet or the darkness of her hair he didn't actually describe anything
at all about her physical appearance because he knew that any picture he could paint with
his words would never compare to what the emperor could paint in his own mind with one glance back
she conquers the city with a Second Glance back she conquers the state it was up to the emperor to
imagine what such a woman would look like which made her more beautiful to him than any other
sinking fish a lighting geese eclipsing the moon a bashing flowers kingdoms conquered with a glance
there is no such thing as a person beautiful enough to do all of these things and I think
that's the point none of this language actually seeks to illustrate the physical qualities of
the beauty it describes it exaggerates it leaves room for interpretation unlike the
word red which instantly creates a very Vivid and accurate sensation within your mind's eye
these descriptions create an experience for you through absence through abstraction this language
says things which cannot be said you could say that it captures the spirit not just the form
and there is certainly a practical difference between the two it's a little hard to pin down
succinctly but there's another Chinese tale that I think helps to illustrate the boundary
there was once a master of horses who knew everything there was to know about them he was one
of the few men alive who could look at an animal and tell whether it would be a good thousand Lee
horse a horse that could run about 300 miles in a day he recorded all of his knowledge into a book
meant to be the ultimate guide on horse buying and one day his son got a hold of it reading the
wisdom within its Pages he set out in search of a horse that would make his father proud according
to the book a good horse has a very high forehead bulging eyes a big round stomach and Hooves like a
mini layered pancake the boy tried his hardest to find a horse that fit this description and after
much searching he finally did I found a thousand Lee horse he told his father proudly it's exactly
like the horse he wrote about except for the Hooves those are a little different when the
master looked at the horse his son had brought home he felt a bashed affronted even a little
angry his son had followed his guide the Master's ultimate manual on horse buying and the animal he
brought home was a toad not even a horse at all but as he thought about it thought about how he
described his ideal horse how his son had come to this conclusion he couldn't help but smile
this horse is good at jumping he said but it would have a hard time pulling a card even with the most
discreet possible description of a thing's form the full picture can yet be lost the words of the
song Dynasty poet ring true here again the essence in demeanor are impossible to paint some things
can only be experienced Only Be Imagined without evoking these things within our audience we can
only truly communicate so much here look at this painting of a horse by shirby Hong this doesn't
seem like an effort to create a concrete true to life portrayal of what a horse really looks like
does it the flying Mane is choppy and exaggerated and at least one of its legs is uncannily long I
think what the artist wanted to depict here was the spirit of the horse in large bold strokes The
Artist conveys the power the life force the Vitality of this creature it's vigorous and
compelling hoarseness we see in our Mind's Eye a complete horse racing across the grassland created
not only from the places where the artist laid his ink but from all the many places he did not
a mere collection of brush Strokes that we can almost imagine Galloping right off the page
you animate it in your mind you are where its Spirit lies think about the court painter who
tried to render Wang Zhao Chun in great detail how accurate he made his painting and how it
nevertheless failed to capture the true beauty of the subject failed to capture her spirit
imagine how much differently the tale of Madame Lee may have gone if her brother had tried to
do the same describing every hair on her left eyebrow the length of her nose in millimeters
it would hardly have brought the emperor closer to understanding it may have even
brought him hilariously far from understanding as we saw in the tale of the horse and Toad
in creating art it's important to remember that half of what you do resides in your audience
you can capture a things form at times almost perfectly but if in doing so you do not also leave
room for their personal experiences imagination interpretation if you fail to evoke the emotions
and memories associated with the thing you have not captured its spirit and it remains incomplete
among the Four Beauties the Tang Dynasty poet Le Bai wrote clouds Envy her garments flowers
and be her beauty and that's all that needs to be written to know her beauty
all you must see is The Impossible emotion of the sky of the flowers
the rest you already know even if you could never say it never paint it for someone else
you are where the spirit the beauty lies it's a precious thing to realize about yourself anytime
you're consuming art you're making up half of it it matters what experiences you have the life
and perceptions that you cultivate those things alter the world the art that you see which is why
it's such a shame that so much of the world seems hell-bent on manipulating them as you watch these
videos as you talk about them in the comments as you browse the internet at large your brain is
being analyzed picked apart and bottled up like a cheap preservative for large marketing algorithms
to consume and they do there has never been a more powerful targeted marketing machine than user Data
Tracking every single thing you do online becomes a data point which advertisers political campaigns
even propagandists use to influence not just what you buy but how you think it may seem like a small
thing all this user Data Tracking stuff but make no mistake this is a bid to purchase you condition
you to think more the way these interested parties would like you to think in fact you'd probably
even be shocked by how much of the internet you're not allowed to see things hidden by region often
for very flimsy reasons it's a bit disheartening to know that this is happening to you all the
time isn't it hard to feel like your experience on the Internet is actually yours makes you feel like
a product rather than a person thankfully it's easy to shut pretty much all of this down with
a few clicks you can keep websites from tracking your data keep an invasive and manipulative ads
from showing up everywhere you look even keep malware at Bay nordvpn does all of this and much
more it's had the amazing effect of making my browsing experience feel like mine again it's
subtle I hardly have to think about it at all it just runs quietly in the background keeping
me invisible to all the prying eyes there's a freedom in this that's pretty hard to quantify
until you've experienced it firsthand I think it becomes clearest when you realize just how much
you've been missing out on go to any streaming service and use nordvpn to change which region
your provider thinks you're in watch the selection of titles change before your very eyes there's so
much media idea you've been missing out on just because for whatever reason it's not available in
your country it's wild to realize this and that's just the tip of the iceberg if you want to stop
feeling like a product and start feeling like a person again and if you want to break through all
the quiet censorship you experience on The Daily I really recommend trying out nordvpn it costs less
than a cup of coffee and it will change how you experience the whole internet visit nordvpn.com
tailfoundry to get two years of protection and freedom with a huge discount there's a 30-day
money-back guarantee so it's completely risk-free and so worth trying on top of all of that if you
sign up right now with our discount at nordvpn.com tail Foundry you'll even get a whole extra four
months for free I hope you'll give it a try the internet can feel like a very cynical place I
think we tend to take for granted that everyone's trying to manipulate us all the time here which
let's be honest isn't actually wrong but with nordvpn it really doesn't have to feel that way
we spend so much time finding ways to help you be an artist but part of what I love about this
video is that it gives some additional value to being part of the audience too a big thanks
to the new human on our team Momo for helping with the idea behind this video and the writing
as always keep making stuff up but also remember when you share your work that the
audience is there too making up the other half thanks for watching I'll see you next week bye
[Music]