“What we need today more than anything else is to invest in beauty, because beauty is harmony which comes from chaos. But we invest in chaos, because chaos is much more profitable than peace. Beauty is a kind of safety valve for people.” -Vangelis, film composer
I came across this quote by the Greek composer Vangelis after he passed away in May of 2022. Vangelis was part of the 1960s “prog rock” scene, which is shorthand for songs that are just 12-minute guitar solos with a couple of lyrics tossed in somewhere near the end. Vangelis really hit his stride in the early-1980s, turning that sweet, sweet prog rock synth influence into Academy Award-winning gold as the composer behind Chariots of Fire (1981). The theme not only became a cross-over radio hit, charting to the top spot on Billboard (when that kind of thing mattered), it also became the equivalent of a 1980s meme. Anytime a commercial, sitcom, or college sketch comedy troupe did something that was “slow-motion, but make it funny or ironic or just super weird,” “Chariots of Fire” got called off the bench. To which I say, good on Vangelis! Cash those checks my friend.
This comment came from an interview Vangelis did with Al Jazeera in 2012. I’m always startled when I bump into these types of insights from somewhere in the past that seem excessively relevant to present day life. You mean to tell me that worrying about things like apathy and bigotry and the slow unraveling of the fabric of humanity has always been on peoples’ radar? So it was always this bad? The answer is, yes! Of course! Our planet formed itself in a series of ultra-violent calvings over the course of billions of years. Instability is our brand. And aside from the first sightings of rainbows, the discovery of the cacao bean, and the creation of The Muppets, it’s pretty much been one, long downward spiral. Vangelis could have been writing in his diary in 1892.
The spigots dispensing our relentless stream of information in all its forms were already turned on in 2012. Now they are wider, more powerful, and come manufactured with nearly every facet of our daily lives. As the artist/creative Emily McDowell recently wrote: “We used to have to sit down at night and watch it [news], or buy a newspaper, or even visit a news site; now it comes to us directly and relentlessly. It notifies us.”
I read that and nodded. I shook my head and shuddered a little. Then I opened up a tab and clicked on my bookmark for The Guardian in case something happened in the last 3 minutes that I really, really, really needed to know about. Not great.
Vangelis called it—sex sells, but chaos is a cash cow. We’re living the effects of the chaos industry. We’re rewarding its architects. We all bear responsibility for sustaining the despair and anxiety machines, but we all also have the power to respond in some other way. The agency that these tech companies exploit in our brave new world is the same that will save us.
It’s not just that so much of what we consume that passes for “news” is negative, it’s that it’s destructive: it corrodes our hearts, our minds, our psyches, our relationships, our planet. We pay for all of it in both senses of the word. Invest in beauty, said Vangelis. He didn’t say appreciate it or believe in it or say really nice things about your friend’s synthy-prog-rock film score. Pour your energy into the efforts of becoming, building, growing, creating rather than tearing down and dividing. Because it is all labor; what side do you want to work for?
This undertaking feels particularly urgent now, and that might be our collective egocentrism and short-term historical memory kicking into gear. Or it could also be a healthy dose of not unreasonable panic. Regardless, investing in beauty is and has always been necessary, which makes it endless and timeless, casting each of us as baton-passers in a kind of evolutionary marathon made for a Vangelis-inspired anthem.
