Art, a Self-Soothing Exorcism
It's something that just kind of happens - a piece of you being chipped off into your art - it seeps through the work even when you're not intending for it to. That is why it’s hard to let people see it and consume it. People now get to take something intimate of yours into their mouth (so far so good…) and chew on it (less fun). Maybe they’ll spit it out in disgust or worse yet, find it tasteless.
Which piece of you precisely gets imbued into the art is out of your control. Sometimes, it’s the best of you. Other times, parts you wish didn’t exist. In this way, art can be an exorcism. You can let your monsters loose in a way that’s plausibly deniable, like carelessly forgetting to close the gate on a bunch of demonic farm animals who will now stampede towards the nearby town.
In business, many great companies were started by the founders trying to solve a personal problem or create a product that they themselves wished they had. Art can be much the same way. You will often find yourself making beautiful things that you want to have, to possess, to inhabit. You make art that gives you a sense of comfort. You’re showing the world things that give you emotional security or aesthetic respite. This is the flip side of exorcism, it’s crafting angels into existence.
So art can be a vehicle for absent-minded demon farmers or a conduit for comfort, and many things in between. For me, it’s a self-soothing exorcism.
This little ramble was inspired by a post on SuzyQs' Letter but I won’t tell you which one. Go check it out if you’re curious.
(Amusement) - Meanwhile, I cut myself open and let the drops of my essence form words on pages. Staining the pages until they're wet and dripping and saturated, unable to take more of me in for having been soaked through and through. Each piece of writing imperfectly capturing a portion of myself, but almost always capturing the most important elements I wanted to pin down. There is the illusion of volition in that, the illusion of some amount of intentionality at play, but since the best of me is captured in the moments of semi-fugue flow states and it feels like something coming through me being called to the page, I can resonate with the bit about it not always being under our control. Many a daydreaming wanderings have occured where I try to grasp at a mere fraction of what I felt and saw in such dazed states of deep playful imaginative immersions in other world and other states of being.
Anyway, well done, enjoyed the article.
Catharsis. Filling the blank canvas or sheet of paper with visual imagery, words or even musical notes. There is something about our mind that needs to “finish” or “add” things when the eyes are presented with white. White has to reflect what we have absorbed within. It is a cumulative experience on the inside that is given shape, form, colors and words on the outside. And a lot of times we remain unaware of those things that lay dormant underneath the folds or hidden in a corner somewhere. And whoever sees/reads that inner world has reactions based on how they see and experience things. It isn’t an objective truth a person may find disturbing. It is the demon we have buried underneath the surface that shows chaotic reactions and discomfort when presented with light and put on a stage, front and center. But as long as art provokes reactions (be it soothing and pleasant or disturbing and causing discomfort) it means that the process is successful - both for the creator as well as the audience.