Emptiness

Why can’t art come from emptiness? For all artistic expression, the artist must be filled with some emotion. It can stem form anger, despair, elation, or confusion, but I have never seen anything grow out of emptiness. I guess the main reason would be that there’s no conceivable way to portray it. Thousands of years of creative expression and we have not come up with a way to show it except for extreme monochromaticity of black or white. Anything else and another emotion overwhelms. Even writing is constrained by this. Trying to write about emptiness really stems from the despair or anger that you feel empty. Those are the emotions that are portrayed through the writing, not the sensation of emptiness.

Emptiness needs expression because it is valid and it’s a unique temperament that may be alien when first encountered. It’s something that is easily ignored, but is always present. You don’t think about it until you start feeling guilty about it. This usual lack of emotional variance is worrisome, but it can also be relieving. You can express all that, the guilt, worry, and relief, but it doesn’t get to the heart of the matter. We make art to make a connection. We can’t make art about this because there is no way to truly represent it. Even the past passage is framed solely by emotions because there is no other way to describe it.

How did expression evolve through all these years without being able to express this? It’s curiously missing, yet most people must feel it at some point. It’s a loss of intensity and a general washing out of sensation, yet that’s not wholly it. There are ways to express nothingness, but nothingness doesn’t cover what this is. It’s something more, nothingness is just a part of it. It’s this enigmatic difference from nothingness that makes it impossible to describe.

I want to express this part of myself, but I can’t. I often feel empty, but I don’t have an easy way to represent that to the world. I want to connect to others through this, but I don’t have the resources to.