Art

Art is very hard to define. What may be priceless art to me might be nothing but pure drivel to you. Oftentimes, this is harmless - you and I may perhaps disagree on the work of an up-and-coming artist where one of us likes the work while the other doesn't. Sometimes, this takes on a darker tint like the book-burnings of old, when oppressive governments willfully destroy knowledge to maintain power. Or the destruction of the places of worship when there is a religious regime change, where whole temples with their amazing artwork and sculpture are burnt and torn down, never to be appreciated by later generations.

However you put it, I believe that each and every one of us has a specific artform that speaks most directly to us. In my case, it's music, food and stories. Music has always spoken to me but if and only if there is the human voice at its core. Pure instrumentals do nothing for me. I can't explain why this is any more than I can explain our purpose for existence; it simply is. The right singer with the right song will evoke strong emotions in me every time. This does not mean that everyone who sings has this power over me; there's a lot of drivel out there.

Gods, I miss being able to sing. :(

Paintings, sketches, still drawings of any form evoke zero responses from me. Nothing. I can look and look but I simply can't relate. Believe me, I've tried - I once spent the better part of the afternoon at the Victoria and Albert museum in London and came away completely unmoved. Sculptures twig my interest meter a tiny fractional amount. I've been at the Louvre and British Museum and found them somewhat interesting. Nothing to write home about in my case though.

I dance but for me that is a very personal expression of who I am and how I feel. I don't expect anyone else to understand this nor have I been able to understand it in others. Don't get me wrong, I can appreciate a good dance performance when I attend on. I just can't emotionally connect to it unless if I'm the one dancing. Odd.

I can relate to food. I can relate to the artistry not just in the food itself but also in the presentation and pairing of the foods to wine, even the order in which the dishes are served. This I can understand and it feeds the soul as well as the body.

Stories are core to me though. Music stirs my emotions but stories pique my imagination. I love curling up with a good book regardless of whether it's fiction or not. Strangely, I can't really connect to movies - I'm part of that dying generation of book readers who prefers the story seen through the age-old lens of imagination than that of a movie camera. In fact, I prefer radio serials to movies. I guess I'm not a visual person in that regard.

What sparked this line of thought? I'm working through Torchlight, a computer game that I picked up very recently. This is the first game I've seriously played in a long time, as in years. It's not a memorable game although it's quite fun. While I was playing it this morning, I realized that I was playing on the easiest setting unlike most of my other friends, who crank up the difficulty to maximum every time. I guess I'm more interested in getting to the end of the game and finishing the storyline than the game itself. My sis has a similar outlook even though she doesn't play computer games herself. We used to follow Valkyrie Profile together, where I'd be playing and she'd be watching with one eye while she did her art. The thing that bound us both together was the storyline behind the characters.

In the end, I think we'll find that art, amusements, stories, song, dance and all the millions of expressions lead ultimately to one thing: communication. I think we reach out and want be reached out to. All this allows us to try to understand something that someone else has done, so that we can forget that we are all in the end very much alone in our heads.