Emotion and Art

Emotions are a curious thing. I spend a lot of time thinking about them and the way they affect me and the way they affect other people. I think that maybe I do this a little more than most people do, or maybe it's just that they affect me in different ways. I know that my imagination plays a very large role in this. It is one of the reasons I read as much as I do, it is the main reason I don't participate much in the genre of Horror, and I believe it is why I keep myself a bit more distant than most from society as a whole. I do not enjoy my emotions being toyed with and I have a hard time letting things go in the way that most people seem to be able to. Aside from all of this, I find emotion to be one of the most interesting things about people as a whole and I think it takes a special understanding of it to be a good writer or artist of any sort.

For instance, I find that the violin effects me in a way that most instruments do not. Listening to a skilled violinist can, and often does, evoke emotions in me that run the gamut from joyful to melancholy, nervous to relaxed, and anything in between. But how does someone do that with words? There are a million different ways to describe the slow pull of a bow across strings fingered in such a way that the tones, clean and sharp, hang in the air, permeating everything they touch and causing the world itself to vibrate in time while pulling like gravity on hearts and souls and stretching them to the point where they could, and probably would, break at any moment. Yet they don't, because just before that moment comes the bow lifts, the tone fades, and the listeners let go of the breath of air that up until this moment they didn't realize they were holding. There are infinite ways to say this, but each way subtly changes the perception on the other end.

This is what connects every form of art. It is, in my opinion, the reason for the existence of art. It is how we connect ourselves to everything else. A song, a word, a smell, a taste and countless other experiences great and small can instantly connect you to or remind you of other experiences, visions, or dreams. I think, however, that while some people perceive these connections only occasionally, others recognize them so frequently that it is almost a different form of breathing. I think that these people, the minority among the masses, are the ones that we call artists or mystics. I think they are the people who find the connections in unexpected places, who make the connections that others wouldn't, and who use the mediums that they feel the most affinity with to share those perceptions with anyone who will listen.

Art is an incredibly difficult thing to learn. It is very similar to, and sometimes the same as, trying to find God. There are millions of people willing, sometimes chomping at the bit, to tell you what they think the answer is or where the path lies, but none of them can actually tell you the right way. It's not that they are necessarily wrong, although I think that most people that will tell you they have the answer have really just stopped looking, its just that there are probably as many answers as there are people and probably as many paths as stars in the sky. Whatever Being you believe in, it is probably not one that can fit into a book, a box, a church, a world, or a galaxy. That's the beauty of the search. That's the beauty of art.

How interesting would life be if someone really did have all the answers, or even The Answer? Or even better, if someone did and was willing to tell it to you, would you believe them?