Awe-Quiet

Settled-Awe

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.

Awe-Quiet is held in the archive. These prints carry its family.

Open editions from $75. Free US shipping.

1 work composed with Awe-Quiet

  • Deluge APEX, 1 edition. Open the tier key.
    $398SOLD
    • Sl2
    • St
    • Eq
    • Aq
    • Pt

    Deluge

Composed with

The rest of the Still family

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