Reiterating Awe

In my first few posts and some Google+ updates, I've talked about movies, music, and art inspiring awe. It seems though that there is something about nostalgia and tiers of awe that have popped up in comment discussions on these posts and updates. What does that mean?

In my tutorial meeting, Dr Burton suggesting looking at reiterating awe, or how different forms of content can revisit moments of awe. So I wrote a bit about it in my wonder journal. Then I opened up this Google+ discussion asking "Reiterating awe? Tiers of awe? Theories?" Here are the responses I got:

Shelly Jebe

10:28 AM

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I think there are definitely tiers of awe. When we first started this class, I was only able to think about awe in its highest form, because those are the experiences I remember most. But since then, I have realized that there are so many types of awe and that some are more powerful than others, and that's okay.

Kenna Blaylock

1:18 PM

I agree with Shelly. Sometimes the awe that gets me the most is the little kinds that catch me off guard.

Andrew Perazzo

3:48 PM

Would those be classified as "awe" or "wonder" or "the sublime," and what are the differences? 

Amber Z

4:14 PM

I'm not sure how I'd classify any of them... but how about this: what happens when you re-experience awe? For example if you read a book and then watch the movie adaptation, can you feel awe again? Or from movie to book? Or audiobook to book? Is it the same awe or something a little different?

Shelly Jebe

4:34 PM

In my own mind it sometimes goes wonder, to the sublime, to awe in order of least to greatest. Though now that I am actually thinking about it, I realize how many exceptions exist to that. And Amber, I definitely think you can re-experience awe, even the same kind of awe, though when you switch medias, I think new parts of awe are created because you are changing the experience.

I remember when I read Life of Pi, I was awed at the scenery in the novel. Out there in the middle of the ocean with so much sea life, and yet no life at all. Pi was alone, with his self projected tiger image of himself for company. When I saw the movie adaptation six years later, the scene of him floating around in the ocean at night with glow in the dark fish and the whale breaching the surface inspired awe in me again. I was seeing on screen what Pi had experienced. I felt that awe twice, yet it wasn't the same exact feeling. What made it different? Was it just because the same content was in different forms? Was it the time difference of six years from reading the book to seeing the movie that changed something? Did I change?

+Tara Piña gave a Google+ update saying "Even when a teacher returns to a favorite text year after year, the text retains its wonder because different readers if given the freedom to deal with the text on their own terms will come up with unexpected new readings." This makes me want to reread or re-experience some of my awe list." How else is re-experiencing wonder possible? Some possible answers:

1. Awe can change us, and changing can inspire awe (a question Shelly brought up in this post). When we revisit an awe inspiring source (whether in its original medium or different medium), our changed state allows new perspective and vision to revisit awe.
2. Nostalgia may consciously or subconsciously make us susceptible to re-experiencing awe. I've talked about this concept in comments when +Andrew Perazzo posted his top ten list and in my first attempt to formulate awe.
3. Different tiers of awe allow us to re-experience it. Looking up "awe," "wonder," and "sublime" in Webster's dictionary, here are perhaps the ways we can define these different tiers without saying one tier is more important or better than the other:
• Awe: an emotion variously combining dread, veneration, and wonder that is inspired by authority, the sacred, or the sublime
• Wonder: a cause of astonishment or admiration; rapt attention or astonishment at something surprisingly mysterious or new to one's experience
• Sublime: to elevate or exalt especially in dignity or honor; to render finer (as in purity or excellence); to convert (something inferior) into something of higher worth

This is the early stages of my deeper research. I've put out a few of these same questions on a personal blog and have gotten a few responses already! I'm going to curate that research and give it some more time to get responses to get more opinions. I think, at the core of it all, there is something subconscious or conscious in us that finds awe relative to who we are or what we are looking for. That is why awe is so personal and undefined. It changes for everyone. Doesn't mean we can't reiterate it.