The short version

What’s in a name?

An aesthete (noun) refers to those with deep sensitivity to the beauty of art or nature. And syn- (prefix) means “things that are like one another.” Put those definitions together, and you describe a collective of people with intense appreciation and curiosity for the world around them; an endangered hallmark of humanity.

I believe commitment to beauty in our lives will save us from self-destruction; as the Ancient Greek word for beauty was kalon — related to call — beauty compels us to heed unspoken words to dive deeper, explore, stay a while in something profound and unexplainable, and eventually work to preserve it. I endeavour to flesh out this concept for life, through words and visual media.

Necessary disclaimer (because I’m sure your alarm bells just went off at those semi-colons and m-dashes): No, I’m not a ChatGPT agent — and no, I never fucking will be. Yet you will take antiquated punctuation out of my cold, dead hands.

Also: I cuss. Quite a bit.

Also also: I am a continual, imperfect work in progress; which (as a reforming, crippling perfectionist) I’m attempting to embrace and be real about via my creativity.

The long version

“So, who is Syn — Syne…sss — thate, theet…what?”

I wasn’t sure how to explain my creative niche to people until I read a book called Braving the Wilderness by Brené Brown at the beginning of 2020. (And now The Second Mountain in 2025.)

In one chapter, she refers to a term coined in 1912 by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim in his book, “The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life.” The term is collective effervescence, and describes “experiences of connection, communal emotion, and a ‘sensation of sacredness’ that happens when we are a part of something bigger than us...it is an opportunity to feel joy, social connection, meaning, and peace.”

I couldn’t believe there was an existing psychological term to explain this phenomenon.

Back in 2020, it encapsulated my artistic history and interests perfectly: my desire to depict travel beyond the palm trees and white sand beaches, and instead search for customs and rituals that distinguish individual cultures and epitomise generations of history; my feelings of unbounded acceptance and equanimity at music festivals; my curiosity for foods that can’t be consumed without enacting a series of precise steps and often investing hours of one’s undistracted time; my aspiration for communicating issues surrounding environmental stewardship and social empowerment.

The definition also fit nicely alongside my business name, which I had only recently chosen:

syn- (prefix): things that are like one another.
aesthete (noun): someone with deep sensitivity to the beauty of art or nature.

Put those definitions together, and you describe a collective of those with intense appreciation and curiosity for the world around them.

They’re the kind of people that light my soul on fire. They’re the realms where I feel most at peace and inspired, and decided to spend most of my life inhabiting and endeavouring to capture through words and pictures. The pressure to “specialise” in merely travel or music or performance that once tamed my wildness and traverse-ability was eased, for they’re all inextricably linked — as we are to each other — beneath this protective canopy of collective effervescence.

All manner of things can, and did, happen beneath this canopy. Up until now (2025), they’ve been the various music festivals I’ve had the pleasure of attending as media crew since mid-2018. Before that, they were the bubble-shattering encounters from numerous years on the road and 30+ countries.

The previous decade or so of wandering and experiencing and saying yes filled my tank with humility, perspective, and the courage to get closer to my subjects. To fully unfold in the presence of other aesthetes, and share what traits and treasures we can with one another before time elapses. (I also became a far better writer and photographer throughout this continual pulsing-out and moving-in process; a spiralic concept to be explored in a really big book project I’m chipping away at.)

At the time of writing in 2025, though, the meaning behind my work in the world — and ethos I embed within my professional title — has shifted somewhat (thankfully in a direction that justifies clinging to said difficult-to-pronounce professional title. I still think it’s awesome). Built upon, even beautified itself.

There is a lot of wild shit going on in our world right now, seemingly more so than ever before; maybe you sense this already. By many accounts, we are in the beginning stages of civilisational collapse. Most, if not all, systems and structures we have taken for granted our whole lives and grown up believing would serve and protect us have begun to crumble, or soon will. This is already creating staggering turmoil and will continue to do so: as our corrupt economy corrodes to be hoovered up by the privileged 1%; as Artificial Intelligence warps the boundaries of reality and creativity; as millions, if not billions, are displaced by war or climate change or [pick any arm of the metacrisis currently sharpening its blades on our will for survival]...

We will collectively freak out. We will have a much, much harder time discerning fact from fiction, friends from foes, sanity from insanity. We will struggle to cling to the essential, timeless, and irreplaceable qualities of our humanity — borne of nature’s inherent beauty and interdependence — that, and only they, alone can coax us to lower the flaming torches of tribalism and quell our capacity for self-destruction.

Amid many pearls of wisdom I gleaned from a recent reading of The Second Mountain by cultural commentator David Brooks, one that stood out was the Greek word for beauty: kalon, related to call, and Brooks’ observation that, “Beauty incites a desire to explore something and live within it.”

Of course it does. Beauty makes us linger; makes us stay. The presence of beautiful things and experiences awakens us to our own inherent beauty, and that within others.

Beauty compels us to heed unspoken words to dive deeper, explore, stay a while in something profound and unexplainable, and eventually work to preserve it.

Beauty is kindness, beauty is love. Beauty is what compelled the musicians to keep playing on the deck of the Titanic, aware that doing so would cost their chance of survival (when they could have spent their time trying to clamber aboard a lifeboat). Beauty is what we must offer each other — beautiful thoughts, beautiful words, beautiful visions, beautiful intentions — when the ship we live in together appears to be sinking; when the anchors and rafts to which we’ve held fast start to evaporate in our hands.

To quote one of my favourite lines from The Alchemist (which, if you stick around my Substack for long enough, you’ll hear much about): “It is we who nourish the Soul of the World, and the world we live in will be either better or worse, depending on whether we become better or worse.”

I remembered, upon reading Brooks’ words — and after a considerable period of forgetting, as life is wont to make us do — that this is my work: To heed unspoken words to dive deeper, explore, stay a while in beautiful things and experiences — both profound and unexplainable — and try my darndest to preserve them;

to flesh out these concepts — the beauty that binds us within collective effervescence and begs we stay a while — for life. Which may encourage other aesthetes to do their unique work to preserve them. To preserve ourselves.

This call was more like a whisper at first; in my ear when I was, say, dodging fireworks and watching Taoist devotees pierce their faces during the Phuket Vegetarian Festival. Then a nudge with its elbow as I gawped over kinbaku performances and cacao ceremonies during Elements Festival in 2019. Much later, a full-on, wide-eyed beckoning as I crawled out of the murky depths of burnout and into the formidible fires of a collapsing world order as we know it.

It patiently asked whether I had noticed the thread running through my greatest passions and yearnings of the heart — culture, music, art, nature, food, people, love, joy, connection, vulnerability, meaning, peace, and so on — those things in life steeped in rich beauty and history, purveyed with painstaking care and fondness for detail. Those which strike us as sacred and not much worth living without…therefore we must collectively work to remain present to and preserve.

Now I can call it right back, I feel compelled to run at it full-pelt, link arms with fellow aesthetes, and — as community leader Jen Hatmaker named it in Braving the Wilderness — have a “wilderness dance party” beneath the canopy…and of course, write and take pictures whenever I’m not totally lost in the beauty and uncertainty of being alive.

I hope you’ll follow me in.

Lauren x

For my subscribers

For now, my content is openly free and accessible, and just knowing there may be people out there who want to read it is immeasurably valuable to me. I’m experimenting with tentatively dropping letters in bottles into the ocean to see if any come back to me; and if so, then I’ll consider playing with tiers and perks and things. If I figure out how to drop the “buy me a coffee” prompt in my posts then I’ll do so, and support of that nature would mean the world as well.

As yet, not many bottles have washed back to me — feeling pretty alone out here in this virtual ocean! — so I haven’t got a whole lot of testimonials yet about why you should lend your precious time to my thoughts. Here’s a start though:

From Andy, fun purveyor at music festivals and the Giftiest of the Gabbers you’ll ever meet:

“Dear Lauren, Your writing is exquisite. Your mind, whirling through vapours of existence, darts at shadows of illusions of dreams, your hands out in the murk, startle you by touching bedrock, and your delight at discovery inspires you to share that wonder with us, your readers. I know you will doubt from time to time about whether what you express is good enough. This subscription is to say ‘YES’.”