I'm Not a Writer...

I’m not a writer.  I don’t write.  The words that come on to the page are simply my thoughts, sporadically jotted into what you all call words and sentences.  I don’t know why the all of a sudden curiosity in moving my thoughts from the abstract to the concrete.  To some they may think that I’m depressed or struggling.  I’m actually doing just fine.  Who doesn’t have a hiccup in the road sometimes?  I have found that even when the path looks never ending and relief feels that it will never come, it does.  Logically we know this, emotionally, we continue to relearn this every time something difficult confronts us.  So what do we do?

Well whether or not it is something hard and difficult that comes before you, or the greatest thing you have yet experienced, you struggle with a cavernous desire to express it, to get it out of your head and heart and into space.  Why is that?  Not sure exactly, but it has something to do with human chemistry; to reach for something to transcend the human experience.  When you feel so much that it seems to burst out of you and concrete ideas don’t suffice.  The only way to rid yourself of the rising pressure seems to be through the arts.

Honestly, no one can recall in written history when “the arts” started being used to describe the indescribable.  I don’t think it ever “started”.  It seems to me that they are used without beginning or end.  Every culture and peoples have songs, dances, arts, dramas, etc. to describe all walks of life and human experience.  You try to describe a human experience by explaining it through a supernatural one (most often).  You need the relief that comes from an extra-human interpretation of the things you go through and the ideas you have for a better life.

Have you ever looked at a piece of art and immediately felt your entire being transported to the setting, your heart changes it’s pulse to match the emotion of the painters strokes, and we feel as if we are not us for the slightest second?  You either forget what you are worried about in your life, or how you feel is brought up to your eyes. 

Have you ever watched a play and forgotten that the people on the stage are not real?  They are people created by a playwright.  The actors have lives off the stage where they may be completely different from the people they become when the curtain rises.  Their character transforms their character for two hours and their goal is to teach you something.  You feel that familiar change of heart pump.  You don’t even consciously know that it is happening but you crave that feeling the next time we are sitting in the audience, waiting for the curtain to rise. 

Have you ever been to the symphony and heard the colors being painted by the conductor?  You catch glimpses of every human emotion as it floats from the flutes to the cellos, back to the horns, then through the percussion section.  How can so much be interpreted by such unique sounds and colors?  How are they configured to create an emotion?  So a configuration of frequencies and timbres can portray human feelings and thoughts.  Cool.  Who knew? 

What about reading a piece of classic literature or poetry?  The symbols are put together to create ideas.  Humans call them words.  How can words be so eloquently sewed together to create a flow that rolls off the tongue and into the heart?  We seek to find ourselves in the characters on the pages.  You piece together a fragment here and there and you see things that you wish you possessed.  The pure forms of good and evil are seen with all their personalities in plain sight so we can see them in their disguises here in reality. 

When dancers shape themselves into inhumane figures and patterns, what passes through your mind?  It doesn’t seem possible that the human figure can be completely re-arranged with such grace and beauty.  You can’t look away and you don’t understand how the dancers movement is exactly how you feel.

 

Film is an art that is growing rapidly in popularity.  Unfortunately, film has a bad connotation because like a plague is has sought, unintentionally, to substitute in for the other arts.  But films combine multiple arts into setting.  It has a cross-art form that draws us in the instant the opening credits start. 

No one wants the ordinary, lackluster events of everyday life to be portrayed and that is why we always get a glimpse into the extraordinary and THAT is what we call art.  

Every one has that favorite song when they are sad or particularly blissful.  They have art hung on their walls of things that help them feel certain ways.  Their favorite movies are the ones they pop in when they are having a day of good fortune.  They go to see productions that make them cry, for joy or sorrow; and while they pretend to hate it, they secretly love to be brought to tears from the arts, for joy, sorrow, or pure art.  It doesn’t matter what the art form, but it takes you someplace else, so you are able to see more clearly where you are.  It is hard to see the here and now, when it is too close to focus on.  You need to step to higher ground in order to see the world in which you live.  The arts connect with your very soul.  When you leave an artistic experience, the feelings linger, sometimes for days.  You find yourself hoping that you could carry that feeling with you.  You long for the feeling to remain with you so you can escape the monotony of life.  You wish that life was an art.  That’s when it hits you that when you are part of the artistic process in any way, your life can be an art.  Living to the highest point you can, closest to the heavens, is the finest art there is.