It's kind of amazing how songs pull out truths you'd never have thought of on your own. In a sort-of-kind-of-diary entry (I really can't call them that) on my comp, I wrote how, to me, logic is expressed by words and feelings are expressed by art.
No, that wasn't it. *soft laugh* It's funny, I can't even explain my view of feelings in words right now. Hm. Must not be feeling very artistic. Well, after rereading it, the original explains it so much better. And, B, there are so many tings I want to talk to you about, so many new ideas I've had that I want to share, but for now I only have this imperfect medium to work with - and it doesn't express enough. I guess we'll just have to wait. For the moment, pay close attention to the last paragraph. I don't know. Hopefully it'll get something of what I'm thinking across (PS these are for the thoughts on the 'shattered mask' bit - mind you, not the shattered mask, but the thoughts).
4:28 PM Thursday, February, 21, 2008
Art is intense. I was sitting in History, studying for my exam (which I should be studying for/taking right now), when I noticed a phrase describing what makes up civilization – something akin to “a sophisticated interest in art and science”. It was at that moment that I had an epiphany that has been pulling at my mind unbeknownst to me since. Science is man exploring the limit of logic, and art…art is man exploring the limit of feeling.
Now, I know that isn’t exactly earth shattering; but we may know something our whole lives and never realize it, while the things we do realize shake us to our core. They stick with us, bleed into our bones till everything we do is eternally altered because of that one simple thought.
This particular epiphany gained strength when I sat down in this cozy little alcove on the fourth floor of the JFSB (my fav building at BYU), and started looking even more into miss Cornelia Parker of Great Britain. I saw several sculptures that intrigued me even off of Google Images, but it wasn’t till I saw what she did to Rodin’s The Kiss that I knew I was forever hooked.
Don’t ask me why – I’d never seen this particular sculpture before, though it’s apparently quite popular, and all she did to it was wrap string all over it. But in it there was such an invocation of feeling that I suddenly knew what art was meant for. Art is meant to put into expression what words cannot. Art is pure feeling, of all sorts, and is the outlet for all the imperfections and shortcomings of our mode of language. All the meanings left unsaid, simply because they cannot be said.
*sigh* I crave sunlight. It’s like my manna from heaven, my own personal plant food. I don’t need it, but by golly if I’d thrive without it.
Like most epiphanies, this one didn’t just hit me, Bang!, then walk away. I had to simultaneously analyze my love of all things artistic (which translates to my love of feeling) and my own sense of wanting to live. Just to live. But marching firmly against these personal factors of mine are my perceptions of my religion (not my actual religion, mind you, but the perception of it) and the worry that I could fall into the trap of only feeling, never thinking. My over-fondness for stimulation (and I mean that as in emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and physical stimulation) has gotten me in trouble in the past.
But feeling, living, seeing, is such a part of my existence, that I’m afraid I’ll repress it too much in an attempt to simply temper it. At times I feel as if I’ve held too much in and I have to let it out. That book, A Bright Red Scream, noted that come people start cutting because they’ve repressed feelings or secrets for too long, feelings or emotions that have to come out and cutting acts as an outlet for them. Literally taking a blade to your skin and opening yourself to the world in the only way your shut off mind knows how.
Needless to say, we don’t want that. All these thoughts and maunderings have led to one coherent fact. Like many realizations of mine, I decided that feeling and thinking are things we must do in moderation. It seems to me that only feeling, never thinking, leads to chaos, and likewise only thinking, never feeling, leads to nothing. So all that’s left is for me to find the middle ground. Or the ground that I can stand on and not go crazy. *Sigh*
3 comments:
You should read Nietzsche.
But thanks, Tia. I love reading what you write.
(Isn't it interesting, then, that one form of art IS writing? And hence words are used to convey feeling... not just logic. Which is perhaps one reason why texts are so amazing... why texts are what are delivered by an angel, not a Rodin sculpture covered in string... )
Yeah, I thought of that, too. I had to mentally except artistic (intentional) writing from the list.
From your writing what I got was that you can't hide and you shouldn't explode either. Nither is the higher path or sorts? Like if you try to hide to much then you live a life that isn't your own, and if you life to much in the open you more or less lose your life and all that it contains? I am not sure, but I see the connection to what I wrote. I am glad you saw the point. love. . .I can't wait to see you. And just to let you know, the more and more I think about this weekend, you are right. If I see you here I just get a bad feeling. So I stand by you one hundred and ten precent. . . LOVES babe and never stop.
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