Beauty is in the eye of the beholder --- but the meaning of perceived beauty is in the metaphor.
For James Cole, the beauty of that place was all he saw. Meaning, would come later. James knew that beauty was truth---truth beauty---and that was all on earth he needed to know. He could not have expressed that knowledge in words, nor, if he had heard those words spoken or read them, would he have understood their meaning.
He stood at the corner of 4 2nd Street and 8th Avenue, Times Square, New York. In that moment, James Cole saw the beauty of that place. On that March night in 1970, he was an-a pilgrim/adventurer/explorer, whom had sought beauty, and found it there. He had been delivered to Times Square by a Greyhound bus, and not by ship or in the name of any king or queen. Like all explorers and pilgrims, it was the journey, progeny of destinations, that had seeded his desire to come here. And like millions before him, his long held assumptions about this place had become belief. He believed it beautiful and now saw only the evidence that confirmed belief.
An effulgent chaos of colors, sounds, and smells. There was light beyond light. Lights that blinked, glared, flashed, twinkled, and consumed. Before him, above him, and around him, red, blue, yellow, green, purple, and white lights. There were lights within lights. Resplendent lights that danced to layers of sound, supplied by a million engines, horns, moving objects, and spoken tongues. Carried upon wind, the smell of sewers, cooking food, car exhaust, tobacco, incense, perfume, and sweat. Like thousands of human beings, who had come before him and first looked upon that place, he was held transfixed and in wonderment, almost breathless, partially from what his eyes beheld and from the bitter cold wind that caressed his face and hands.
Comprising the beauty he saw, but invisible to his beliefs, were the wasted lives, prostitutes, pimps, con artists, drunkards, drug addicts, and the petty and prominent criminals. Invisible, was the filth that lined the streets and sidewalks and invisible was the filth that winked and invited from dozens of theater marquees.
Those residents of that city, whom could afford to, believed Times Square to be the diseased heart of Manhattan. It was, to their minds, the evidence of a malignant cancer of the city's body. An affliction that had began in the mid sixties and festered for half a decade. The cure for the city's sick heart had yet to find consensus. But the belief in the cause of the illness plaguing New York's center was shared by that class of citizenry that honored itself: The blight that was Times Square was an infection contracted from the moral degeneracy of 'others'. The Others, being non-white or poor, and/or under-educated -- those devoid of beauty. This was not truth.
A city has no heart. Neither its whole or parts can serve as a metaphor for the human body. It is the creation of human beings. The city is the expression of human belief. Each inhabitant is a part of the creator. Each makes manifest the city as whole. Dependent upon the choices of its makers, the city may affirm or destroy the beings that create it. Like an impersonal and subjective god, it is amoral.
A city does not decay, or die, or believe----its creators do. This is the confirming evidence of the beliefs of human beings. The city is a work of art made by many artists acting as one. This is truth. That is beauty. James Cole knew this---and did not.
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