What are you looking for in a piece of art?

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What are you looking for in a piece of art? Doesn't matter the medium. I'm thinking broad here and looking at all of the arts. 



When you go seeking a painting, sculpture, song, photograph, novel, poem, movie, show, play, album; what are you seeking? Is it always the same? Does it change?


When you think about art that spoke to you? Matters? Affected you? What was it?


Were you chasing catharsis for something you were experiencing? Did you find something new? Was your mind expanded or affirmed, both?


Did you look into the creator? Or live in the moment?


Have you revisited it? Yes, no, often?


Did you share it? Attempt to? Or hold it tight? Did you seek more like it?


So many questions. Never ending I think. With as many or more answers possible.


Outside of my human relationships (romantic, familial, and friendly), I can honestly say that what has enriched my life the most is the arts. There's no question.


For me the mediums I find myself drawn to the most are music and written words. I can't break it down further than that.


It's interesting, funny even how my most influential and inspiring types of art bleeds into other mediums. The soundtrack of a movie matters a great deal to me. The dialogue of a show or play matters more than the set pieces to me. 


I see a visual medium, that photo or painting that speaks to me, and I want to write what I am hearing and feeling.


The inspiration is linked of course between the creation of art and the experience of it.


That's why I write so much. I've said before that I feel like I am chasing racing thoughts. That I must catch them in literal or virtual ink. Set to pages. It makes the line between essay and fiction perilously close at times. Leaving the poetry in between.


I've rarely shared a lot of that poetry. Just pieces here and there. The least vulnerable stanzas. And the short stories and novellas locked even deeper and further away. 


I write about my thoughts a lot. Attempt to ground them somewhere in logic and reason. Look at facts. Take the time for clarity in some deep hope for persuasion. I let the pen run well past the emotion.


That's just the tip of the metaphorical iceberg. 


So much more do I write. So much more often do I sing. But I hold it close.


There's a different type of vulnerability in the creation of art. In the freeing of the emotions and psyche that involves. At least for me.


And I want to share more. To crack that just a little bit. Share just a pieces or the pathos I lay out in some search for catharsis or fancied hope. 


Maybe I'm afraid I'm not creating what people will see.


Maybe I'm scared of being seen and misunderstood.


Once art is out there, it leaves your control. It's no longer only yours. Mine.


And maybe that's the scariest part. 

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