Art is like a well.
And when we open a book, or press play to listen to a song, or go to an art exhibition, we are drawing emotions from a veritable well.
We are drawing out sadness, joy, hope and fear, and the whole range of human emotions.
The true beauty of art is that it is truly a .
And the great advantage of being human is that we can drink from that well whenever we want or desire.
Art does not make you feel a certain way; it actually contains a feeling.
The melody does not convey the composer’s sadness to our ears. Instead, the form of the music—its tension, its structure, its peaks and troughs, its rhythm and melody—mirrors the structure of human emotion.
The feeling is not communicated, but rather revealed. It exists within the art itself, in its very form, which lies ‘waiting to be drawn’ from the bottom of the well.
The feeling of art cannot in fact exist outside the work. The feeling was created and generated in the construction of the art itself. And if we destroy or eliminate the art, the object of art, we destroy the associated feeling.
If we burn a manuscript, or erase a recording, or destroy a painting, we end up destroying and eliminating the feeling that exists nowhere else.
Every book, every shelf, every library, gallery, every music playlist is a line of ‘wells’, each containing emotions that no other human is currently feeling, and which are waiting for someone to ‘lower the bucket’ and seek out their inner magic.
Image by Etienne GONTIER from Pixabay
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