Why art?
“Satori” is a Japanese Buddhist term for awakening, comprehension or understanding. Jospeh Cambell, an American philosopher, once said that when we view a piece of art that is meaningful to us, it has the potential to give us the same thing that Buddhists strive for, which is “satori”. Cambell described this as a moment when brain’s chatter stops, just for an instant — a very precious instant. He termed it as “aesthetic arrest”.
I’ll be discussing 3 reasons why I believe art is important to our existence. Every child is an artist. We just don’t see them as artists because maybe we don’t understand its importance.
What is art in its most basic form? Expression. Just like in the sciences, where equations enable us to express a problem or phenomenon in a way that others can understand, arts enable us to express the human condition. But with arts, you have many modes of expressions available at your disposal — writing, sculpting, painting, music, poetry, film, theater and so many more. Each of these mediums have their own nuances, tools and jargon. One thing I noticed while I was writing this was that no matter what medium you choose to dabble in, you have to get your hands dirty — you have to do the practical. Apparently, you can’t major in theoretical arts. But some people still manage to do just that — they’re called the critics.
Art is universal. Okay, maybe not universal but it sure has a far bigger audience, and that’s because, we as humans want that connection with others. Let’s take music here as an example. People listen to music for all kinds of different reasons — when they’re happy, when they just want to groove to a beat or when they’re trying to get over a relationship or trying to cope with the death of a loved one. But to think that someone living in a different part of the world than theirs made a melody that brings home their feelings and emotions about a subject matter — that’s real power. About a couple of years ago, the vocalist of a band I used to listen to as a teenager died. Their initial stuff was pretty loud and angsty, and it made sense at that age. I used to do the whole head banging and silent screaming routine while listening to them — really took out all that teenage anger and frustration. So after he died, I went to YouTube to read people’s comments and reactions about his death and this is what I learned. A lot of people there had been very depressed in their lives for a lot of different reasons, some even to the point of committing suicides — which they didn’t because of the band’s music and how it helped them cope with their depression in their own ways. I think that says a lot about the universality of music, and arts in general.
The last thing I want to discuss is how arts connects us to our past. Art is to human race what your browser history is to you; it can tell us things like where we’ve been, what we’ve been up to, what we should’ve and shouldn’t have done or when we’ve been naughty or irrational. That does not mean that art only has meaning once its old. It’s a reflection of societies and their thought processes. It can tell us what a culture thinks about a given subject matter today — and by extension, where they could go from here in the future. To put it more precisely, art connects us to our past and gives us a vision for the future.
To sum it all up, the purpose of art is not supposed to just be beautiful and sit in a museum somewhere — art is supposed to be meaningful, controversial and challenging to our very notions and sensibilities. Because “the principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke”. Because its true purpose is to record the human history and propel us into, an ideally, better future. So I guess the idea is to not let that child inside each of us die, to keep it alive in some way. Because maybe we need to hear what it has to say.
“Hang on to your youthful enthusiasms, you’ll be able to use them better when you’re older.”
— Seneca the Younger
