About A Song That Made Me Cry

I recently discovered a song that made me cry. I cherish that feeling, it doesn't happen very often, and it certainly doesn't occur with many things. 

This time was different, though. It's none of those cases where you have a prior "connection" with a piece that brings your most vital reactions out. There's no previous history, no narrative, nor anecdote that links you to it in any specific way. It's not related to the message, the whereabouts, or the people that could potentially be associated with. 

This sensation sparked instantly with the minimum expression of an artistic bit of creation. It's that sudden rarity that goes straight to your heart. A bullet of pure emotion targeting your soul. 

The primary or elemental part of such a forceful whole already has the potential to mark you forever. Simply a fragment. There is no need to contemplate the entire picture, the full work of art. No need to listen to all the instruments in the song, the complete melody, the meaning of the lyrics, the complex harmonies, or a beautiful voice. There is no need to be in a magical place or surrounded by people you love. 

There's no need for something else to elicit this raw feeling: only the first four chords suffice. Just 10 seconds. 

I believe that was what we called beauty. It is typically understood as an essential quality of something that arouses some type of reaction.

That brought me to one of the most controversial topics in Western philosophy: is beauty "in the eye of the beholder"? Or is it located in the object itself? Is beauty a subjective pleasure or rather an objective quality? 

If the latter was true… everybody would experience the exact same response with this song. Since this is not what follows, one might think that beauty would be, indeed, subjective. If the former was the reality, if beauty was purely a matter of personal taste or preference, how do we explain the general consensus on certain aesthetic judgments? How do we justify the existent common grounds outside cultural facts and trends? Aren't we humans drawn by a particular attraction to symmetry? Most people would say that "Yesterday" by The Beatles, The Taj Mahal or a radiant sunset on the Aegean coast are beautiful things, don't you agree? 

What is beauty, then? Is it one thing or the other? Or a bit of both? Or something completely different that we got wrong all along? Is it an ever-changing feature?

And the most relevant question:

Does it really matter to theorize about what makes something beautiful when it holds power to stir your emotions?

P.S. Aren't you curious about the song?

The Golden Ratio (also known as Phi, or the Fibonacci number) is the mathematical symmetry algorithm that underlies our perception of attractiveness, AKA "the mathematical formula for beauty"