The first post I published in 2019 on my former blog was titled What is Art and Why Does it Matter? In so many ways, that is the question I have intuitively and consistently been drawn back to.
Roger Scruton1 and other philosophers have articulated the ethics of aesthetics well, but what makes some art “Good” and other art “Bad” can be hard to pin down.
Take this scene in the movie Mona Lisa Smile when Professor Katherine Ann Watson (Julia Roberts), the progressive new professor of Art History at Wellesley College shows her students a black and white photograph of a young woman.
“This is my mom,” she says, “is it Art?”
“It’s a snapshot,” one of the students quip.
“If I told you Ansel Adams had taken it would that make a difference?” The room is quiet.
Then the defiantly traditional Betty Warren (Kirsten Dunst) speaks up, “It’s not art until someone says it is.”
“It’s art!” cries out Watson, causing the other students to laugh.
With a wry smile and a lift of her eyebrow, Betty insists, “The right people.”
Van Gogh was seen as childlike and erratic. Nobody liked Vermeer. Monet was dismissed as nearsighted. What other great art was under-appreciated or undervalued in the name of aesthetic rigidity? It’s complicated.
But I stand by the initial question and its importance because deep down, in a very real way, I feel that our dismissal of Good Art has brought about a very sad, sick, strange society, quite truly warping our tastes to the most base and remote and inhuman.
The news has been hard for me to read lately. I feel absolutely assaulted by the grim realities of a world starved for Beauty and Goodness. I feel the lack of Good Stories in the grey, flat sphere of world affairs and personal horrors.
Roger Scruton again said it well —
“Take away religion, take away philosophy, take away the higher aims of art, and you deprive ordinary people of the ways in which they can represent their apartness. Human nature, once something to live up to, becomes something to live down to instead. Biological reductionism nurtures this ‘living down’, which is why people so readily fall for it. It makes cynicism respectable and degeneracy chic. It abolishes our kind, and with it our kindness.”
― Roger Scruton, Face of God: The Gifford Lectures
So really when I started Born of Wonder this question of Art - its meaning - but also its powerful ability to restore us to a basic soul-level humanity, to elevate the human experience - both the mundane and the sublime - to its true and rightful heights, was deep in my heart. And it is a question I explored through a myriad of ways —
banjo playing priests, Icelanders who believe in Elves, the charm of Nora Ephron and You’ve Got Mail, the liturgical year, Taylor Swift and collective experience, unicorns, humanity over politics, the Battle of Helm’s Deep, Maria Von Trapp, praying in graveyards, Kristin Lavransdatter, How Agatha Christie saved the Latin Mass, the theology of Harry Potter, Sylvia Plath, Audrey Hepburn, The Peace of Wild Things, and so much more.
I published my first episode 2 months before my first daughter was born. She is now nearly four years old. I feel that I have grown into motherhood and faith and self through this project and I am proud of the 116 episodes I published.
I remember distinctly trying to record this episode on what it means to be human while I desperately distracted the baby, recording with a shotgun mic on the ground. When I chatted with my sister about the comic genius of Frasier, I bounced a 6 month old on my knee until she became too fussy. I sat outside in springtime and recorded the sound of the birds and read “The Last Dream of the Old Oak” by Hans Christian Anderson. Donkeys nudged me as I escaped the kid chaos to record this episode on motherhood while sitting outside the barn. My three year old introduced us to the joys of analog life in this episode.
This is a project that has been a part of my life, truly, in every possible way.
I have connected with fellow writers, bloggers, mothers, and met new friends. I was able to lead a pilgrimage to Ireland. It gave me things to think about beyond milk and sleep (or lack thereof) during early motherhood haze.
And as I learned long ago when I first started working in radio, having a podcast gives you an excuse to ask anyone to talk to you. I kid you not, I even emailed Enya’s PR team once to try to interview her about her cat filled castle and her serenely addictive music. Okay, they didn’t get back to me, but I asked! Lots of other people2 did get back to me though, and we discussed books and art and science and parenting and I am grateful for every single person who took time to talk with me and put their ideas on the air.
I am ending this podcast not because I don’t love it (I do) but because it simply seems to have run its course. I have not been able to stick to the sort of publishing schedule I want and often when I want to do an episode I look through the archive and realize, I already did that topic!
My creativity seems to be leading me in other directions. I have the vaguest of vague outlines for a book. And hear me loud and clear, I’m sure I will be podcasting again soon. I have plenty of other ideas for shows and perhaps in a year or two years, or maybe in a few months, I will give voice to those ideas. We will see.
I have also been given opportunities professionally in the audio sphere that are crowding out my time at the moment. I am grateful for these projects and I enjoy them but the sands are shifting around my own schedule and what I should prioritize. Right now - writing, reading deeply, and being present to my family are top of the list.
I will continue to be writing here on Substack, though probably just a little less frequently as I try to address my dopamine addiction and create without needing immediate feedback.
(One of my new year’s goals: “Write more. Write less (publicly).”
So! 116 episodes, 76k+ downloads, and we’re calling it a day.
Tune into my short sign off episode and let Anthony Hopkins and R.S. Thomas wrap things up much better than me. I also had to end the series with a grandiose movie score because I’m dramatic like that.
Also, if you email me (marquettekatie@gmail.com) a list of all the references/voices you hear in the Born of Wonder introduction (and don’t google!) I’ll send you a bottle of holy water I collected myself from a well in Ireland. :)
[just the first three people, it’s not magical refilling water, at least I don’t think so…]
Thank you to my children for occasionally sleeping and thank you to my husband for never hesitating to take the kids on an adventure, rearrange his own schedule, or just make me an extra cup of coffee so I could get an episode out.
Thank you sincerely for listening and sharing this podcast over the years. I hope it has given you wonder and delight and reminded you that it is a beautiful world we live in (truly) -
“we make idols of our concepts but wisdom is born of wonder.”
Cheers x
Katie
Explore the Born of Wonder podcast archive on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you download your podcasts!
If you like Born of Wonder I think you’ll also like:
’s Old Books with Grace
The ladies at
The Rest is History
“Beauty is an ultimate value—something that we pursue for its own sake, and for the pursuit of which no further reason need be given. Beauty should therefore be compared to truth and goodness, one member of a trio of ultimate values which justify our rational inclinations.”
― Roger Scruton, Beauty: A Very Short Introduction
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