Our going about the world is never simply guided by active rational thinking. I think a lot of our daily lives are shaped on an intuitive level and composed aesthetically. The things which compel us are never generic. We are drawn to a specific form of beauty, a certain formulation of ritual, certain artistic confrontations or consolations. This even works out in relation to colour palettes, but here too maybe more in terms of an affinity for forms of consonance and contrast which hide behind the simpler, “I just like blue”. This is one reason I really enjoy learning about other people through the art that they gravitate towards. Whether music, wallpaper patterns, film vibes, whatever, it’s always the conversation about why someone loves the thing that I find so interesting and provides a window into a kindred soul in light of the coherent and beauty of how and why their aesthetics are different from mine. Thought they are unique, I think we still often find forms of aesthetic agreement with others, sometimes even in ways that we can’t quite express.

Sara Ahmed captures this idea in her Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others (2006). She argues that we are not merely subjects who stumble around making sense of a “neutral” world. We are oriented in particular directions, towards specific kinds of objects, people, activities. On the basis of our orientation, certain kinds of futures come within reach, while others recede from view. For Ahmed, an orientation is therefore not just a belief or preference but a bodily and practical way of inhabiting the world: “To be orientated is… to be turned toward certain objects, those that help us to find our way.” Ahmed is particularly concerned about the agency we have in this work of orientation, she speaks in the introduction of how we “come to find our way in a world that acquires new shapes, depending on which way we turn.” In some cases we may be responsible for the ways we are drawn to ugliness or cheap beauty. Violence and oppression have “vibes” and we can, sometimes unwittingly, orient ourselves towards them. Have a look at the futurist or fascist art movements to see what I mean here.

But it is also sometimes the case that these turns happen to us.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this over the past few months as I keep finding that things I used to enjoy suddenly have lost their appeal. In some cases this is a (possibly temporary?) consequence of depression: if I don’t have the mood energy to summon enjoyment, then obviously I won’t respond to specific things that demand attention or response. But it’s also obvious to me in some cases that my aesthetic has shifted. To use Ahmed’s language, my life has turned in a particular way, and that has shifted my orientation.

This has happened before. The trauma of infertility (another long story I won’t go into here) which is a permanent sediment underneath our joyous experiences of being adoptive parents has left me with an almost nuclear aversion to certain kinds of Christmas. When I was church-hunting for Noah about 10 months ago, I found myself having to walk out mid-service from one because I felt such rage and alienation at the theological shallowness and baby-mongering of the Christingle service unfolding in front of me. I struggle to go near a church at all during Christmas time anymore. Christians just struggle to avoid calibrating to a certain kind of campy undemanding hope aesthetic, unwilling to veer into darkness (except where it has SEEN A GREAT LIGHT!), hoping desperately that some more people under 70 will stick around for services in the new year. Ok sorry, that’s really cynical. But this is a significant enough thing for a large group of people whose life circumstances have made them aversive to happy + campy vibes that churches have introduced “blue Christmas” services.

And BTW for those of you out there who are worship leaders, this has always felt like a disengenuous fix to me. It’s like the grocery stores which acknowledge their autistic customers by having a single 2 hour period each week where they turn down the music. Thanks guys, that’s a really impressive sacrifice. I’m really glad you suddenly realised I existed and decided that the sensory hellscape of grocery shopping could be adjusted for 1.19% of the week.

There are some things which are not as burdened with aesthetic brightness, or might be more malleable to our intuitive sensoria. But religion is heavily and irrevocably aesthetic. It’s my sense that this is often the dynamic by which grief estranges us from the usual rituals. Our sites of religious practice munch along in blissful unawareness of the aesthetic forces they marshal. This is fine if the vibes are your vibes, but those of us who have experienced a traumatic rupture of daily live, who have had, in Ahmed’s account, an involuntarily change in our orientation are exposed and vulnerable to aesthetics. They hit us especially hard.

The other thing to understand about this experience is that it is bewildering and slow. I don’t really know what my aesthetic is anymore. And it continues to be a stumbling in the dark situation. Ten months after Noah’s death I’m still finding unexpectedly new instances where l turn on playlists or TV shows that I used to love and now I just don’t. I imagine this will be a process of many years sorting out how my aesthetic field has shifted.

If you’re new to Ahmed’s work, it’s also worth noting her account of disorientation. We can become so accustomed to the experience of feeling at home, she notes, that we can conflate orientation with familiarity, and disorientation with strangeness or difference. We can forget that – outside the kinds of oppressive disorientation that are forced upon us – we have a level of control and choice in fashioning familiarity. Ahmed’s work implies that those people who find themselves with an abundance of aesthetic privilege ought to consider deliberately pursuing disorientation as a sort of moral imperative. Though it’s certainly not my experience right now, I want to say that sometimes disorientation can be edifying and provide us with morally formative opportunities. Seen in this way, those wayfarers who are disoriented and out of place – immigrants, queer folx, disabled people stuck in able-bodied spaces, persons navigating trauma – often have a facility with this work of orientation.

It can be tempting to respond to distress – the person who is out of place – by trying to make that person comfortable. But this kind of move can be self-serving in that it leaves your own comfort and safety intact. Let’s call this the “Blue Christmas” option. Taking a glance at the other side of my own present disorientation, I wonder if it’s possible for a person to seek out disorientation as a form of personal edification and growth: to leave behind the comfort and safety of being at home and instead find some way to make yourself a sojourner.