Last night I watched a very artistic music video directed by Tao Ruspoli and then a philosophical/aesthetic commentary on the video, then watched the video again and it was a really fun experience. You might enjoy it (links to video and commentary below). The philosopher who is doing the commentary, Mark Wrathall, taught at BYU when I was there.
When I served an LDS mission in Argentina, the President of my mission was a former scriptural instructor and an avid outdoorsman. He told us, “When you’re out hiking, camping, hunting and you’re thirsty and find a spring, you don’t want to drink water downstream, where deer and other animals have trod through it and ‘contaminated’ it with their presence. Rather, you want to follow it upstream toward the source and drink from where it originates, where it’s pure. That’s how it is with scripture. Don’t start with commentaries. Commentaries are downstream. They can help you understand the source, but use them as supplements, not your primary reading. They can also influence you too much and prevent you from having your own insights and opinions.”
I’ve found that to be valuable advice for my life. I always try and start with the “hard” source texts (whether it’s philosophy, business, scripture, etc) and do my best to understand them, underline what I don’t, and then research. Only after reading the original source texts do I venture into commentary. Then, I re-read the originals with the additional understanding of the commentary.
I feel like this gives me significant additional insight.
As I watched the video below, I had some impressions the first time I watched. The commentary then gave me some additional insights. On re-watching, I had a VERY rewarding interpretive (and aesthetic) experience.
Try it.
The whole experience takes about 45 minutes and I found it very worthwhile! Uplifting and got me in an artistic frame of mind. (The artist, Alexander Ebert wrote and recorded the song himself, played all the instruments, and did all the singing. It’s a pretty great song and the words are very meaningful!)
Video: