What If My Heart Were To Burst?

“The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.”

There isn’t a right or wrong answer when it comes to art. There’s just an answer. If you showed three people the same art piece, you’d get different answers based on each of their interpretations of the piece. The thing is, they’d all be correct. One of the main concepts of art is that it’s all a matter of personal taste, and all tastes are equally valid.

The entire objective of art is to express oneself via a medium and to make someone feel something. It’s like the reason people cry after watching a sad movie. Because in that moment, however fleeting the feeling, they felt something. Something that invoked an emotion out of them.

I think too many people focus on the nuances of what constitutes art, and some are hellbent on trying to discredit others for not being artists. These types of people are typically shackled by the limits of traditional pedagogy. “Those brush strokes weren’t used correctly,” “that’s not how you shoot a scene of a monologue.” The only rules you should follow when it comes to art are the ones you’ve set for yourself.

Aesthetics are a fundamental human technology. We extract the beautiful parts of the world into a concentrated form. We use them to reduce our pain and increase our happiness. We use them to communicate with other humans. It’s one of our oldest technologies.

I believe a lot of people find the key as artists quicker than others. It’s a key everyone has, but not one that everyone is willing to use. We’ve all been there. You’re an artist. You have a vision. You want to create. But then you’re confronted with the reality of your own incapacity. You’re a fraud. You’re a charlatan. You can’t paint. You can’t write. You can’t dance. You can’t do anything. I believe acknowledging all of this is the first step in realizing that you can actually do any and all of these things.

Art is one of the most important things we do as a species. Art is when you impose divine meaning onto desolate reality. Art is when you plant the flag of the mind onto the cold rock of the world. Art is a product of culture. Culture is a product of civilization. Civilization is a product of intelligence. Art is the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination to produce works that move or delight us, and it's the only religion left.

It’s about the sensation of the sublime. Writing stories, creating music, painting, all of it. It’s the apex of human creativity. The highest form of life is to create things that have no other reason for existence than that they are fun and beautiful to look at and listen to. It doesn’t even need to be beautiful. It doesn’t need to be profound. It doesn’t need to be anything.

I really hope and look forward to the days where all that’s left is the pure, unadulterated, creative imperative, where we all permanently take part in things that only feel like fun or play, rather than labor, the way a dog chases a stick a million times over.