Recognition/ Rage
Muse/Muse
HAPPY TUESDAY, F WORDERS!
This week, on THE F WORD: Rage! Art! Emotion! Fear! THOSE MONSTERS WE LOCK IN THE CLOSET!
Hey—did you know I think you’re super cool? You’re reading and I’m writing and we’re communicating and communing and collaborating. Whoa!
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Onwards!
Every once in a while you come across a book that makes you cry an ocean of tears.
Books are things of beauty: a turn of phrase, an illustration, an idea framed in a new way.
But perhaps the foremost thing of beauty in reading (and in listening to compositions, and in scanning a work of art with a discerning eye) is that art, as a whole, is a communion of souls.
Art is an interaction, a cycle of fellowship between the artist and the receiver.
Muse, create; share, muse.
You, and the artist. A connection, a conversation, a collective sigh.
People make art because they feel things. We receive art because it makes us feel things. But here’s where the real communion comes in; in that mystical place where artist meets viewer:
No good work of literature or cinema; of instrument or paint, can make you cry tears that were not already living inside of you in some form.
Yes, art [good art] holds the power of expansion. It can grow us, challenge us, shape us into new beings who can reach new heights. It can stimulate dopamine production and can make us feel physical sensations that we are not, in fact, experiencing, out of a sensation of connection to a work.
But when we react strongly to art, it’s because it touches a delicate, tender spot that was already delicate and tender.
The beauty is in the process: the artist birthed something into the world, and something not of us, found communion in our Self. A likeness. A familiarity.
In art that speaks to us, our soul recognizes something of itself.
If you have cried, as I did, (sobbed—great, big, messy, snot-inducing tears) at printed words on a page, you have felt this.
In my case, my leaking eyeballs were provoked by one man’s essays about the miracle of wonder and the mystery of death, because I have had previous dealings with the miracle of wonder and the mystery of death.
Brian Doyle’s words found purchase within that tender spot in my soul, because the spot was already tender. Even posthumously, we shared an experience: something felt poignant to him, so he shared it, and I, too, felt the poignancy. I understood him, as a person, and now I understand myself a little better, too.
In this way, a good work of art is a window into your own Self.
Art is the thumbprint of God; something already pressed into your soul.
As with any powerful, transformative experience, there is resistance. When people don’t want to cry, we close ourselves off to things that make us cry. Beauty and Poignancy and Loss and Fear and Death— these topics are dangerous ground; not because we don’t understand them, but because they make us so vulnerable that we lock them away in the coat closet of our souls.
If we open ourselves up to the deep bell-tone of art, we risk opening up that closet door.
What will come tumbling out should we let these feelings see light? Any emotion can be messy, complicated, painful, and overbearing; but BIG emotions are all those things, and can also be very, very scary.
Unleash a beast, and you cannot chain it up again. Take a wild thing out of a cage, and you will not be able to cage it again—at least not without it putting up a fight.
I have spoken to women (and men) who feel this of rage, of anger. Rage and anger, just like sorrow and joy, jealousy and shame, fear and excitement, are living, breathing things. For the sake of social propriety, conformity, shame, and sheer convenience, we collar them, leash them, cage them.
We fear the power these emotions have over us, and what it would mean if we do feel things so strongly. So, we subdue them.
But what if we did not do this? What if we did not push these emotions into the proverbial closet, where we hide all of our dark and dangerous things? What if these feelings were not believed to be dark and dangerous, but crucial parts of ourselves; ones that allow us to feel the full scope of human experience?
So much of art has do to with sorrow and rage; violence and devastation, because these things exist within all of us.
What happens when we let something out that we can’t control? What will our monsters do? Will they tear down the curtains and flip over the furniture and claw at the wallpaper? Will they eat the family dog?
Will my anger destroy my relationships? Will my anger make me unlovable?
And so, for the curious, for those who seek to know them Selves and understand that to know our Self is to be closest to a Divine Power that we can be,
To art we go, to seek answers to our questions.
Until next week.
Love, light, and unleashing,
Steph xx