“A willingness to fail is an important part of difficult beauty. Because difficult beauty will arrive first not as beauty at all.” –Chloe Cooper Jones

In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Chloe discuss the philosophical concept of “easy beauty” and “difficult beauty” in the context of travel (2:30); how our relationship to places changes over time with repeated exposure (15:00); how art and travel, home and adventure, became important aspects of Chloe’s life (23:00); how the archetype of the “Hero’s Journey” evokes aspects of home as well as travel (35:30); Chloe’s investigation and experience of “dark tourism” in Cambodia, and how it gave her perspective on how other people view her disability (45:15) and how there’s no easy way to navigate the polarities of the self, but trying to do so can result in a hard-won experience of beauty (1:08:00).

Chloe Cooper Jones (@CCooperJones) is the author of Easy Beauty: A Memoir. She has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist in Feature Writing, and was the recipient of a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, as well as a Howard Foundation Grant from Brown University.

Notable Links:

• Bernard Bosanquet (English philosopher)
• Sublime (philosophical concept)
• Paris Writing Workshops (Rolf’s summer writing classes)
• The Vagabond’s Way, by Rolf Potts (book)
• Lake Como (lake region in Italy)
• “The Loss of the Creature,” essay by Walker Percy
• Teotihuacan (pyramid site in Mexico)
• Pico Iyer (travel writer)
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (book)
• Quality (philosophical concept)
• “Such Perfection,” (Believer essay by Chloe Cooper Jones)
• The High Line (elevated greenway park in New York City)
• Roland Barthes (French literary theorist)
• Souvenir, by Rolf Potts (book)
• The Sheltering Sky, by Paul Bowles (novel)
• Heroes of the Fourth Turning (2019 play by Will Arbery)
• “The Grateful Acre,” monologue from Arbery’s play
• Hero’s journey (narrative template)
• Minangkabau people (ethnic group in Sumatra)
• Wanderjahre (journeyman tradition in Germany)
• Gyoza (Chinese dumplings)
• Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese Buddhist monk)
• Killing Fields (genocide sites in Cambodia)
• Poetics, by Aristotle (philosophical treatise)
• Catharsis (purging or purification of emotions)
• The Philosophy of Horror, by Noël Carroll (book)
• Dark tourism (phenomenon of travel to tragic places)
• Tuol Sleng (Cambodian genocide museum)
• Francis Galton (English explorer and geographer)
• Tuk-tuk (auto-rickshaw common in SE Asia)
• Sørumsand (provincial town in Norway)

The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel’s 2017 album Lumber.

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