“Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.”
–Berthold Brecht
I recently came across a post that read how art is an escape- how people confide in any form of art only when they lose hope, they can’t find light, or hit a point in their life when nothing realistic makes sense anymore. Realistic, practical, is perhaps anything but art. And I thought it was quite true. I haven’t been able to get one line out of my mind for quite some time, because I am dealing with reality. Or so I thought. Previously, when I wrote, I was quite sad. And for the past year, I thought I was no longer sad. Hence, no solid thought remained with me. Or again, so I thought. You see, the whole point of having this blog is for me to write anything that helps me grow and understand the world around me better. I am not a fancy writer, but I manage to get my thoughts on the surface as good as I can. Interesting, isn’t it? That my understanding of reality align with what I write, or the art I think I make?
I’ve never seen an insane painter, writer, or singer. But I have read about painters going insane, writers losing their minds. That makes me think, is art really just an escape? Does art only come to someone when the reality they fight to live in is maddening enough? Or do people hit rock bottom when they cannot express anymore?
As a child, and while growing up, I always knew, if not anything, I’ll always have my words. And that alone will make sense of it all. I wrote when I was happy, and I wrote when I was sad. I also wrote when I felt nothing. I could always write because it made sense. But I also realized how, over the years of growing up and accepting “reality” and “practicality” as it is, I have lost my words. I lost the essence of being able to come home and write down about how the tree moved and the wind touched my face, and how a happy girl walking down the road made me feel so alive. Because that isn’t so practical, is it? That couldn’t be. That’s what I’ve been trying to believe for a while. And previously, only on occasions, but now more continuously, it has begun to haunt me. The rules have begun to haunt me. The tragedy of not having thoughts that made me feel alive is haunting me. It is making me feel I was better off as a sad girl. Because then I’d have something so innately my own; my sadness.
I often referred to myself as drowning. I thought the hollow, empty void in my mind was an ocean. A ferocious ocean that never calmed. It had huge waves that, one after another, took me to the dark depths of the unknown. And when I wrote, I came up to the surface, gasping for air. The constant feeling of being pulled into the dark and returning to the surface made me feel so damn alive. It made me feel I was undefeatable, in my little world where I played with water. But now, I’m floating. I’ve not met the unknown for so long.
You see, I’ve never not been sad. I’ve never not been lonely. I’ve just been escaping into what people around me said was right. And to find the reality around me, I stopped feeling anything deeply whatsoever. And you know what? I lost my mind. I’ve been losing the only thing that actually makes any sense to me at all.
So I think again, the ocean that pulled me in was never mine, was it? It was what man made. What has been mine is the swim up to the surface. And how I did that is the only thing that makes sense, that is real, that is true.
I refuse to believe art is an escape. Something so real, so honest, cannot be an escape. Art, expression to be more exact, is the reality we have all been denying for so long. I think we have forgotten we are human. And how being able to feel, think, express, and live as we decide is our greatest gift. And I still can’t figure out why we changed the rules?
Course of Growth 