Art Blitz

 Art is the most celebrated of cultural institutions, bringing to the world all that we've seen from painting, literature, poetry, cinema, theater, music, and so on.  What the artist wishes to express can best be described as an awakening to that which is beyond his or herself.  He or she does this by evaluating individual experiences and constructing them into worldly symbols for all their subjects to appreciate, whether the inspiration comes from historical or personal events, reflections on ideas, people of influence, or things of beauty in the natural world.  The painter paints what he sees, preserving on canvas a moment in time, or a surreal vision that couldn't stay in his head; the writer scribes what experience has gelled him into: a giver of information, a generator of imaginary places, or a poet who puts what a painter would have intended into words; the actor reaches deep into the shadows of his subconscious, so that he may immerse himself in the archetype that is needed for his role; the musician plays for the world what graceful arrangements of sound the world is capable of making, in order to enhance the emotional state of his condition. 

Art is the vessel which translates our inner most desires onto a display, so that others may identify with our dreams, and in so doing, preserve them through the centuries by igniting adaptations which build on themes that were born unto us when the phenomenon of culture first emboldened man to create works that symbolized his condition, his temperament, his uncertain place in the cosmos.  Art is a representation of our psyches put on paper to materialize the things in ourselves which we find too difficult to express in normal conversation, either because our ideas and feelings are so complex that we can't convey them at will, or because things are so beautiful that normal means of communication cannot do them justice.  Art is the process by which we infuse our divine inheritance with the real world, taking things that strike us as otherworldly and welcoming them into our own, thereby making the joy of creation an act of Providence that graces our souls with what gifts the gods provided us.  In turn this makes us greater beings, beings who can take the divinity of creation and give it to the hearts of men, which is why an artist has more of a right to feel like a god among his own kind than anyone else (yet he seldom does).  Art is the source, the summit, the sea of the soul, a cloud of latent memories in a storm of dreams.  It's the familiarity we left behind after we were cast unto the Earth in chains by the original sin of attaining selfhood. 

The ability of art to elevate the self beyond what it can merely see, over the hedges of certainty and into the mysterious beyond, allows us to momentarily loosen the binds that keep us tied to the real world, delighting us with an alternative view that may best be described as a religious experience.  For just as the mystics, prophets, and poets of proverbs were able to reach the source of existence via their enlightenment, artists do the same through their meditations on life.  By focusing on a single element of creation and bringing it forth into the world, they offer the same glimpses into the netherworld of the gods that the pious believe in and preach about.  To love a painting or a cathedral or a piece of music is to worship it, for it is a creation which has sprung from the same ingredients that God made the natural world with.  All art should be treated as such, as sacred objects of eternal worth.