Have you ever thought what role the arts(very very loosely termed)- books, music, painting, movies- play in our lives? Do they even have a role to play? These are what we can term (again very loosely) fringe benefits. They are not integral to our survival. Food, clothing, shelter is. These supply our basic demands. Our very human animal needs. It is only after our bellies are full and we sleep securely in warm soft beds at night and our banks are stuffed with notes that we even contemplate the existence of these arts. To most they are peripheral. To some, only a few, they are integral to survival. But they do have a role to play in all our lives. The role maybe marginal but a role it is. Having established that, I'd like to proceed with that role they play.
Why is it that a book written by an unknown author from an unknown country I might never have visited reaches deep inside and touches me? Why is it that a painting by a painter I've never met and whose existence I've never been aware of speaks to me in ways I cannot even begin to enumerate? A song by some unknown singer moves me to tears? A movie by some director makes me sit up and think? These might be people I've never heard of or met before in my life. But through their work they speak to me. Establish connections that are so intimate that they reach inside me. Inside my head. Inside my soul- if you believe in its existence. (We believe in so little these days. Can you blame us?)
What is this connection between individuals who have never met each other and who might never meet ever in their lives? A book that gives you solace when you most need it, which makes you feel you are not alone in this wide world or even one that makes you smile at a time when you have nothing to smile about- isn't that a connection? The connections between family and you, between friends and you, are ones which are voluntary. Blood ties. Friendship ties. What ties are these that touch your soul and leave you the more enriched for it and ask for nothing in return? Because before that day you might never have heard of that author or artist, or director or musician. The person in question might not be aware of your existence or of the change his or her work wrought in your life. He or she might not even connect if you meet in real life. But inside that other world where all art takes you the connection exists. So the next time you feel inclined to look down and sneer upon art because it cannot be equated to the work that an engineer, doctor or businessman does stop to think. Of all those times when you laughed at something written by another, when you paused and stared at a painting marveling at the artist's dexterity, when you shut out the world to listen to the voice crooning in your ears, when a book spoke to you. Then you might acknowledge what you've always known but not admitted that arts are not marginal. That connections can be formed between strangers. And these connections make us human.
