May 18, 2011

Every Piece of Art has a Feeling

Every piece of art has a feeling. Every abstract shape or impressionist painting, every single song, each story: there is a feeling imbedded in its essence. It is something that vibrates off of the whole of a statue or from the center of a sonata. But it is at a wavelength barely detectable to the human mind, yet sensed it can be. It is just as real as any chord, but of a frequency most in the room cannot or will barely notice. Past the people and movements, past the instruments and notes of color, deep within the sound, the feeling can be felt. How much or how little is as much up to you as it is the artist. Awareness of this invisible thread running through our existence is not taught to the masses. It is rarely even discussed. It survives on our world because artists, often unwittingly, keep carrying it in, keep making it manifest. The way some species of trees and flowers survive because of dogs. Artists continually open little windows of opportunity and those who are able to feel the feeling gather and take in. It may not be more than a candle in an enormous dark room to some, but to others it might swell the inside of the mind so much it pushes out tears. A river running over into fields. Not because of sadness per se, but rather because it was real. Alive. Intense. Present. True. Pure within their being, expanding like a glow. When you look over as someone has a visceral reaction from an inanimate object, from a unique combination of sights or sound, know that it is an ability. They are receiving something you are not, fluent in a language that is unspeakable yet understood, caught in the middle of a transfer of vivid sensation that is beyond what you can “know.” Some can control it, some can not, and some are deaf and numb to its existence. It is up to you though. It might not have been before you read this—if you’ve never had an experience like the one above—but now that you know where it exists, it is up to you—whether you ever let the feeling in. Whether you take the sandstone of awareness and rub away the calluses of this self. Peel back the caked layers of falseness and fear and faked strength. It is there, the potential and possibility to feel like you’ve never felt before, to communicate with a dance floor, to dovetail a brushstroke, to be the microphone of all that is. The cup that runneth over need not ever leave your hand. To resonate with the world around you couldn’t be the worst of fates. Those who do might cry easily, but they laugh the most for sure. And who could look at laughter and not see it’s full of life? Just know that when art speaks, it conveys a world within a world: one that is full of wonderful details, and one that is full of gold. Most never get past the obvious or open up unto the whole, but for some it as if the art were aliveand they are communing with its soul.