As teens, we tend to think every sad song is about a boy or a girl. We don’t have the vocabulary for existential dread yet. But over time, life sharpens your senses.
You listen to these same songs you have always listened to, and suddenly you realize the heartbreak was never about a lover leaving. It was about your ego dissolving a little too late, and your faith returning at a moment in time where you can no longer save your true self from the impact, and the agonizing process of having to look at your own broken reflection and figure out how to put the pieces back together.
For me personally, I’ve always been drawn to painting. I passed it off as being more of a skill that has less to do with technicality and more to do with freedom. Once I got into high school, I found I just didn’t have the will to precisely and accurately draw every line.
In a lot of ways, yes that was true. I loved the way the colors mesh into each other, creating a cohesive piece. But something happened the other day – I realized that painting, as a form of expression, is similar to my own thought process.
You can paint something, let it dry, consider it finished. Come back to it a week or two later and add to it. You can cover up mistakes. Build off of the mistakes. A painting is something that is never truly done, just like my own stream of consciousness.
These things I’ve experienced have not only changed the way I create art, but how I consume it.
I take a lot of comfort in the music now because, while I struggle to process the meaning and understanding of things that have happened, I do see other people who almost share the same language. And for myself especially, I can no longer listen and unhear the larger themes and meanings the artists are trying to convey.
Even new artists, I pick up on the undertones right away. “Oh, this person isn’t singing about existential dread. They’re singing about the question of what the purpose of surviving something horrendous is, and what it means to be alive after the fact.”
And I think for many people, myself included, we simply say, “I like the artist” instead of, “I resonate with the artist. They touch on something that has affected me deeply.”
So then it becomes this: art isn’t just a means for self-expression and identity; it expands into a shared experience, vocabulary, and community.
Leave a comment