There is a certain aspect in the creative world that gives off a sense of belonging and understanding. Words, pictures, visual and performing arts can be so powerful. They have the ability to personally relate to us on a variety of levels. It’s hard to wrap our heads around why these spectacles of beauty can elicit so many different emotions, some of which we may not have even known we had. I don’t know what it is, but it almost seems like there’s a kind of storage room in our brains where fixed words, chords and colors reside, waiting to be unleashed in the moment of sensory stimulation.
It’s odd how sensitive we can be when it comes to experiencing a pleasing sound or sight. Just a lyric can evoke a river of tears, and by then, we are only beginning to realize that we feel something within the music; within the melody. I'm stumped as to what I should call this. Emotional deja vu by sound? Or maybe just "relatable." It doesn't need a word. It doesn't need a definition either. It's a human quality we all share — this hunger for explanation and sympathy. We crave to understand and to be understood.
Creativity is compelling. Even if you aren't an artist or a dancer or a filmmaker, there is still this shared, natural admiration for expression. It boils up inside of our bones and keeps us warm. It brings families together. It tells a story, and it sings us to sleep as little babies. It makes us fall in love. It pushes us to do.
Art is an active form of passion. It doesn’t ask to be known or understood or praised. It exists on its own, purposely and within itself. As humans, we are always looking for ways to define these parts of our lives that we struggle to pick apart in common dialogue. Why are there so many poems about love, so many songs about struggle? Why are there so many paintings about sadness, so many films about mourning? These are all universal feelings that are incredibly difficult to explain in simple terms. So we try, and have tried since our first people here, to depict these thoughts and experiences in ways that make us feel as though we are part of the world around us — as though we are important.
We use these arts and right-brained gifts to unravel our hearts and expose the depths of ourselves willingly and without embarrassment. That’s the most trusting feature in creating something — knowing that somebody somewhere will resonate with it. There will always be that deep-breathed sense of relief in manifesting yourself through beauty that can be created and destroyed just as easily.
