It Lives In You

There is art in everything. From the tedious strokes that were at the forefront of the American renaissance, to the architects who meticulously worked to design and build the likes of the colosseum, and the Roman Forum. Even something as simple as your favorite fast food restaurant, down to how the food is placed in the bag. There was always something about being able to fold the bag at its corners into itself that made it perfect for transporting. The reason I say this is because recently I took up something that is more closely associated with art in more circles then all that I previously named. I always loved reading growing up, I thought it was such an amazing escape. I remember the first time that someone had to raise their voice to pull my attention out of whatever realm I had entered when I picked up the book and started to read. Sure there were movies and tv shows that could make you feel as if you were transported into some place where anything was possible, good or bad. But so much of the magic comes from the words that are chosen, and how carefully they are placed so that the gravity of their message resonates with its audience. I decided to start writing later in my life than most people, especially the ones who would even consider a career that was even associated with it. Which is scary, I used to tell my sister that if you wanted to be a doctor you should want it from a young age because as you get older, and you start to think about how rigorous all the schooling and the workload would be, it can overwhelm you. Maybe it would scare you, if you actually did decide to go through with it. Of course there are people that want something so badly to be unsuccessful isn’t an option, but that is more rare than the former. I started writing because I had something to say. I think I had always thought about doing something of this nature, but I would talk myself out of it. I think the biggest culprit in my congregation of my fears and doubts was that, how could I ever write something that has never been said. I mean I’m not the smartest person who’s ever lived nor the most intelligent, so how could I after all this time say something that would engulf you in a state of mind where maybe it’s only for a few seconds you feel like your whole world just washes away? Where you’re able to live in the fabric of your own reality, to interpret how you see fit. It is the magic that I felt when I read the first line of a new book, or hear the first line of a movie that will shape how I feel about that moment in my life forever. Of course throughout time different phrases and sayings come and go, and proceed to make their way back in some medium or another, but for the most part the words we use everyday don’t change. So again I asked myself why would I be the person who will capable of finding a new way to say the same thing? Something that’s been uttered and recycled for decades? But then it hit me, it wasn’t about finding a new way to say the same thing. I mean the writers that I loved didn’t necessarily do it either, but that wasn’t what shaped my thought process. I started to think about why I loved what I do, I mean really think. Why I can watch procedural romantic comedies that honestly have become mad libs with the same template just different people inserted into subject lines. It’s because it wasn’t so much about the words, but the people who are saying them. Everything that they have been through in their lives that led up the “ I love yous” or the “goodbyes”. I cared because I cared about them, the words were just their tool to manifest all their passions and emotions into a tangible place. This could apply to any number of the perceived arts, whether it be music, literature, or actual paint to canvas. The point isn’t to recreate the wheel, it’s about finding ways to manipulate it to your own interpretation because no matter how fast or slow it spins, or which way it goes it is still just a wheel. Words by themselves have no power, that all lies within the ones who wield them. So I write, well as much as I can anyway and yes, sometimes I wish I had never started or that I could just be done. Of course that isn’t possible now, because I’ve felt it. What it feels like to wield something as timeless and as effective as the language we use to navigate our everyday lives. To use them as a weapon in infiltrating whatever impenetrable fortress someone might have up, but without me, without being the renewable energy source that fuels them. They have no power. On its own there is no single article that can dig so deep that it pokes whatever it is inside of us that makes us want to rise up and touch greatness the way that true art does, whatever it may be. Art isn’t an object, or sound, or even words. We’re the art.