A way of seeing, a stance, an aesthetic

I'm reading in Mark Doty's memoir Heaven's Coast, and he talks of the lasting influence on him of his close friend, the poet Lynda Hull, who died in a car accident at the age of 39.

"We shared a sensibility, so much so that I can't help but think of Lynda now as almost a way of seeing, a stance, an aesthetic. (Is that one thing the dead do for us, become a set of codes, an approach to describing the world?)"