Art Is Who We Are

Creation are the ties that bind human beings, the strings that lace us together through emotional excess. Artistry is language, the rhythmic sounds that live in your stereo, the pigmented liquids that soak up a canvas or the fine-grained natural soil held in both hands to mold, and the words that are strewn together with ink in a labyrinth of beauty or utopia of fantasy or intelligence to heighten our awareness, expand our vision and enchant our senses with curiosity. There are many instruments to which one finds the pathway to the exploration of the complexity of meaning in these vessels that unleash the unconsciousness of self into the artistic realm; a vehicle to balance the mind, a vignette to soothe. Most of us go into art not solely to escape but to restore and reflect, it is our soul’s bandages that help heal and understand.

Expressiveness can be born from an overflow of the psyche and the courage and persistence to reveal. Some writers are trained to divulge almost nothing about themselves but most artists tend to disclose some aspect of themselves whether in disguise or intentionally and accidentally or by the sheer revelation in a stream of unconsciousness. Under the layer upon layer of human shields, in which we so often hide, in fear of ridicule, there is a human with their own individual thoughts, ideas, and gifts that the writer or artist is willing to share for us when we alone cannot.
The very act of creating can be a comfort at your side, the notebook in your bag, the brush before the canvas, the clay on your desk, the pen in your hand, it is the moment where we are quietly listening to the echo of ourselves. As human beings, we walk along the soil of the earth but artistic expression can help us rise and soar above life’s roads into the clouds of imagination that propel us into another world where we are the creators, writers, painters, artists, and visionaries. Creativity carries the blueprints for our dreams. When one goes into the depths of themselves, what we all have come to know as “inspiration” can flick on the dimmed lightbulbs and create a state in which we melt all the parts of ourselves into an elaborate mosaic with every vital organ of our feelings and nostalgia, a novocaine for the soul and medicine for the healing heart. There are some that create, solely for the act itself, as goes the slogan fin-de-siècle “art’s for art’s sake” and what we all know to be “Inspiration” can fade just as quickly as it has graced us with its presence and needs only the smallest of triggers to recur. Many of us, try to hold on to this invisibility, hoping we can keep it trapped in amber or in some sort of mason jar of the mind but unfortunately, inspiration can blow away like dandelion puffballs in the wind as we make a wish for its return.

One can spend hours frantically clicking the keys before them only to strike out when the erratic rethinking kicks in, our very own internal editors. It’s always been fascinating to me when one reads a piece of literature or hears a piece of music or lays eyes on a creation made by human hands despite how many years have passed, a part of it always stays with us, an invisible tattoo in your being, rooting itself to become part of us and can change who and what we become.