The Thursday! Newsletter 2-4: Is Art Useful?
Volume 2, Issue 4
I've been thinking lately about the utility of art.
Mostly, my thoughts have run toward "why do I even bother writing this stuff" when I see yet another Flying Stick of Dynamite soar over an utterly indifferent world. But that's all of us sometimes, isn't it? Don't we all wonder why we put such effort into what most of the world would consider frivolity?
Except art isn't frivolous. Art is necessary. Art is useful.
I'm not going to make the argument that we should make art because art is useful. You shouldn't do anything simply because what you're doing is useful. You were not put on this Earth to be a useful machine. None of us were. We should not structure our day around efficiency and productivity by itself. However, we should strive to be as useful as we can be given our particular gifts and talents and skills and experiences and likes and loves.
Did I waffle there? I admit I did, just a little bit. I spend a lot of time wondering if I'm wasting my day because I'm not out there making something right now. Am I a slacker because I've lifted my nose from the grindstone? Have I put a strain upon society because I am not, at this very minute, making a thing of value. Maybe. Sure. It's possible that our entire world is build around goods and easily-exchanged value..
I doubt it, though.
Some of our world needs things. Let's not go overboard and say that our society built around the free exchange of labor for goods is a blight upon all of history. It's not. We progress because of our daily negotiations around capital and work and value and all that stuff. The history of humanity everywhere, especially the past century or two, has been...stunning. That fact, though, should not take us too far in the other direction -- humans as commodities. We are not widgets and we are not frolicking spirits of the earth. We're humans who need a little of this and a little of that. Some hours we need to be diligently about our work, whatever work that is, and other hours we need to run barefoot through the daisies buzzing like drunken, insane hummingbirds.
This is where art proves its utility. See, art may seem frivolous. A painting on a wall does not heat a room, feed a hungry stomach, nor fuel a car. It does, however inflame a passion or feed a mind or fuel an imagination. That painting is a portal to something the painter saw, either with her eyes or her mind. You may share her emotion as she conveyed it to you, and more. You may even share more than one emotion. Isn't that useful? Isn't it useful to have your mind a little bit larger now than it was an hour ago? I certainly think it is. Art is useful because art is the best way we have to convey emotions from one person to another.
Think about that for just a minute. I can write you an essay in which I tell you just how I feel. I can explain my emotion to you in great detail. I can tell you why I feel how I feel and what that feeling feels like to me. You will have a solid understanding of my emotion. Or, I can write a story and share that emotion with you so you can feel it for yourself. Which is better? Which increases understanding? Which broadens horizons? Which makes our world more diverse and interesting? Which engenders better understanding among people with entirely different lives and histories?
I've been reading a collection of poems by Paul Laurence Dunbar, who wrote in the United States just a couple decades after the Civil War and Reconstruction. He lived in Ohio his parents were emancipated slaves from Kentucky who divorced when he was very young. In nearly every way, he and I are different. When I read his poetry, though, I feel what it's like to be him, for just a little while. I hear the stirring revival preacher or the longing for a home country he's never known. I feel the love he has for the United States despite how poorly he was treated by ignorant and hateful people. I feel what the ignorance and hate makes him feel about himself as well. I would feel none of that if he had written essays. I wouldn't have those experiences tucked away in my heart if not for his art. That is the utility of art. That is why we make art -- all of us. That is why we must share what we see around us -- bad and especially good.
Art is not frivolous. Art is not a luxury. Art is not just pretties hoarded by the wealthy. Art is a song, a story, a piece of history spun into grand legend (you think Paul Bunyan or Trickster Coyote would endure today if they'd remained in history books?). Art is the thrill in your heart as the sun cracks open on the horizon and spills warm orange and yellow across a still sea. Art is the sigh you let out as you realize the scared flock of birds looks a lot like you feel today.
Share that. Let me feel what you feel. Expand my world. Broaden my experience. Show me the world through your eyes so I can be a little bit bigger and wiser than I am today.
Your art is useful. Gimme.
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What I Wrote this Week
"Monologue from an Alley" is a quick little eyewitness account of an unusual robbery.
"Four Advent Poems. I: He is Coming" is the first of four Advent season poems that, I hope, capture the spirit of each week's theme.
"My heart feels like a flock of grackles" is the first poem I've done without a formal title. It's also the first where I played with where I put the words.
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