Movies and books also help us untangle issues as we sit in relative comfort watching the lives of others going through similar experiences. When we watch a movie or lose ourselves in a good song, we give ourselves up to the experience, with no worries of everyday life, no responsibilities or the pressures of being good or right all the time. It also takes care of the numbness that many feel as a result of overexposure to negative news. For me this works especially through haunting music and great lyrics. The emotional rollercoaster a good artistic expression can take us on is a good way to purge our own emotional overload. To tell the truth, I am so caught in the grip of my imaginative experience that after some days I am left with the story and visuals that stay in my head – finding it tough to recall whether it was a book I read or a movie I watched! Often I lose sense of time or place while in the middle of a book, movie or song. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.” What happens to us when we are in the middle of a good book or movie? Our own faculties of imagination and intuition come into play to unravel the artist’s vision. In Oscar Wilde’s words, “No great artist ever sees things as they really are. The quest of a good artist, writer or songster is to unravel contemporary life with an honesty that has less to do with reality, and more to do with the artist’s engagement with his own filters of imagination, creative unrest and constant search for ideas and explanations. It is an intellectual experience, but also a highly emotional one. People may agree or disagree because everyone’s experience of creativity is personal, but what is important is that the creative arts make such a debate possible! Any work of art invites you to experience, to think and to discover. It arouses similar emotions in people despite cultural and sociological differences, and differences of gender or social stature. The same outstanding art, movie or book is enjoyed and discussed across the world. Such an immersive experience brings together people of diverse backgrounds and culture. We have all been moved at some point by a good book, a mellifluous song, an exquisite painting, or a great movie. The best art is that which has a transformative experience since it touches our emotions and helps us focus on a truth we can relate to. What if artists stopped painting and poets stopped writing poems? What if here had been no Shakespeare? A horrifying thought! Not only would literature have been so much poorer, but our lives also so much less explained or understood! Life would be so dull and painful without the benefit of the works of creative minds – works that tease our brains, help us explore our hearts, and as Pablo Picasso said “wash the dust of daily life off our souls.” The best expressions of creative artists do not tell us anything directly, but make us look beyond what is seen, read or heard, to figure our own truth and feel our own emotions. What if I complete reading all the worthwhile books in the world and watching all the good movies, and there is no more to be had? I shudder at the idea of such a banal existence. Sometimes I worry what would happen if people stopped writing books or making movies. What a debt of gratitude we owe to creative expressions of the human mind! To those creative spirits who dedicate their lives to creating art, movies, stories, songs and poems - leading us to hours of introspection, entertainment, catharsis and epiphany.
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