lately

WHY DO WE MAKE ART.

I have decided it can be boiled down to two very basic human impulses: The desire to communicate, The desire to create. These two impulses have served us well. When you combine them you make art. The desire to create is an essential desire. It allows us to propagate our species, to leave something of ourselves behind, and to live beyond our times. This is what we all wish. The desire to communicate is an essential human desire. We are social and function in a collective. Communication is necessary.

As long as I can rememeber I have had these desires but  until now have not known why. I do not know why or if I believe it to be important. It is important to me. I know that it is important to many others. I think that may just be enough. Art is communication. It can communicate, much like music,  an “essence”. The thing that eludes words. It is essence  which moves us, incites us to feel and exalts us. Is this important? Maybe?

Closer

I was driving down the road the other day, and it dawned on me that my child and any child for that matter is as close as we can get to ourselves without being ourselves. As the progenitors of another  life we are the originators and the closest to those little beings. Obvious, I know, but this is why we care so much. If they were any closer they would just be us and then we would not care at all. They are at that very special point, an apex. They are the us that breathes outside our bodies. The beating, living, breathing parts of ourselves over which we have no control. This is scary, being a parent is to risk losing something more valuable than yourself.