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EPOCH · 2023
- Sl2
- St
- Eq
- Aq
- Pt
Deluge
Awe-Quiet is the magnitude already absorbed: the stars overhead no longer overwhelm, they simply keep company.
Awe-Quiet
Settled-Awe
EXTREME
RARE
LOW · Still
Awe after the overwhelm passes. The settling of magnitude, once the thing that exceeded the categories has been absorbed and the categories have changed. Awe is the encounter. This is the afterward.
The word
Awe reaches English from Old Norse agi, dread, and the dictionaries stop at the encounter: they offer nothing for what follows it. So the taxonomy built the compound itself, awe then quiet, the magnitude with the alarm subtracted. It is the newest kind of word here, a name for a phase rather than a find.
The feeling
The heart rate has come down and the scale has not. Whatever exceeded the categories is still there, sky, sea, cathedral, image, but it has stopped arriving and started residing. Breathing lengthens. You can look at the enormous thing steadily now, the way you cannot during awe itself, and the looking asks for nothing.
Against its neighbours
Awe is the encounter: categories failing in real time, the self shrinking on contact. Awe-quiet is the afterward, once the magnitude has been absorbed and the alarm has left. Stillness can arrive without any encounter at all; awe-quiet has to be earned through one.
In the work
Scale rendered without threat. The magnitude is still present and no longer arriving.
1 work composed with Awe-Quiet
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