Let’s Make Something: How art opens new worlds for us
When I was a kid I used to love to write and draw. Not to brag, but I even won a holiday card design contest in the second grade, though I never told anyone about that. The stories I wrote were weird and wild like anything a 12 or 13-year-old does, but I loved writing them. Slowly though, like many, I lost touch with that part of myself. Anxiety and depression sapped any motivation I had to express myself, and I turned to more passive activities. My peers who didn’t have the same issues also lost that desire. Partly it was because their parents, teachers, or friends didn’t encourage it, but our generation of teens also had so many competing areas of interest. We could distract ourselves at any time with burgeoning social media apps like Snapchat, countless mobile games, and all sorts of other digital things all within arms reach away. It was impossible to be bored, we no longer had to try to find things to do, we could just open up our phones or hop on an Xbox. There wasn’t a blank space for us to create things anymore. With that, we lost touch with one of the most fundamental things about being human, which is art and creativity.
Some of the earliest evidence of consciousness comes from cave paintings. We can see that early humans recognized themselves in their environment and wanted to represent that externally. They wanted to bring what they felt or observed and show that to the world. We’ll never know what exactly sparked this, but these paintings allow us to get a glimpse of how they viewed the world. This urge never left us. Young kids love making things, and you can learn a lot about them from what they make. You can see how they view their families and themselves. Their hopes and dreams are also there. This is what art lets us do, it allows us to create something purely from our point of view and present it to others. It’s something that is wholly us but also a part of the world. It’s pure expression, you’re only constrained by the medium. Even if the end product isn’t great, the intent and expression are still there. There doesn’t even have to be some greater theme or message, sometimes just the act of making something helps us connect with ourselves. That’s why it’s such a big deal that we’ve lost this part of ourselves to technology and the age of distraction. We don’t take the time to reflect on how we see the world and then express that through some medium like art or writing. Everything is viewed in the eyes of consumption, it’s all labeled as content. We then spend all day binging that content then occasionally we’ll rattle off 280 characters or post a story, but it’s all in service to the greater ecosystem of distraction rather than ourselves.
The disappearance of creativity also hinders our ability to heal. When we’re suffering, the constant stream of content can help distract us but ultimately we’re still hurt. The root cause is still there. When we choose to actively create something though, we have to be fully present with ourselves, we have to work with ourselves. There’s no running from your problems or avoiding them, it’s just you and your medium. You’ve chosen to put yourself into action and make something. The initial movement and momentum can be incredibly hard to overcome especially if you’re struggling, but once you do things start flowing. You’re able to channel all of your thoughts and emotions through the process and create something out of them. In those moments of struggle, we can see that we’re more than the struggle and that despite everything we’re going through we can still do something. There may not be some incredible epiphany but at least there’s some perspective. No matter how successful you are there’s evidence that you did something. You have a work of art that shows that you did choose to act and not just watch Netflix all day or scroll through Instagram all day.
Engaging with art also has immense value. It’s like a form of empathy where you see something that someone else has made and you’re transported into their world for a bit. This can happen with any medium, whether it’s Movies, books, paintings, poetry, or sculpture, anything that takes an act of creativity has this power. Whatever it is was made for you to interact with and leave some sort of impression no matter how big or small. This act of interaction can also be a bonding experience when it’s just not you engaging with the art because at that moment you’re both in the same world. This experience and others like it are also being affected by our use of technology. It’s hard to scroll through Instagram and appreciate any art you see because it’s designed for you to tap the heart and then move on. The same goes for watching a movie, you can’t appreciate it if you’re doing 10 other things. Even in museums, you’ll see people treating it almost like physical social media where they’re “scrolling” from one piece to the next. To truly get the benefit from art you have to engage with it intentionally. Consuming content is passive but when you actually see, hear, or read something it’s active despite you not being the one who created it. You can feel something inside of you come alive.
That coming alive is where I think art also has the power to heal. There’s something about a piece of art that truly speaks to you that changes you. You yourself feel seen or heard, and something inside of recognizes whatever is in front of you. Sometimes it’s the sheer beauty of a landscape, at other times it’s the emotional journey of the protagonist, and sometimes it’s even just the way the piece was made. In those moments you realize you’re not alone, that someone else feels something. You get this sense of oneness with the artist and what they were trying to create. It’s why we need to get back to actually engaging with the things we encounter, instead of just viewing everything content to consume and move on. Real contemplation leads to introspection.
I’m not naive to the fact that a lot of people don’t have the time to make things. Whether it’s an overworked single parent or a college student trying to stay above water, our system doesn’t always allow us to be the creative and introspective people we desire to be. I wish I could change that, I really do. To those caught up in the system, I would just offer up what I said about trying to do more than merely consume the things you come across in your daily life. See if you can actually engage with something that you see, hear, or read in your daily life. Even if it’s just for a moment, there might be something insightful or joyful that comes out of it. There’s way more art in the world than just what’s in museums. Again though, I don’t want to sound patronizing here, because there are real systemic changes that have to be made. so we can all live more fulfilling lives. Lives where we get to create and interact with things that bring us joy, rather than just being rats running on the wheels of capitalism.
Despite the challenges we face from a systemic standpoint, I choose to have hope in our ability to find self-expression again. We’re more than just ad-viewing machines and mindless scrollers. We have the ability to create things and meaningfully engage with the creations of others. That’s the power of art, it gives us freedom, it gives us purpose, it gives us feelings. There are so few things we have control over, but our ability to create something out of nothing is one of them. We also have the ability to engage with things that others have made and see new ways of viewing the world. It’s something that’s innately human. We all have this desire deep in our cores, it may have been calloused over or been overwritten by societal norms but we have it. At some point in our lives hopefully, all of us can return to that childlike sense of joy that comes from a blank piece of paper and a crayon.