{"id":11530,"date":"2019-10-21T17:26:33","date_gmt":"2019-10-21T21:26:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/?p=11530"},"modified":"2019-10-21T17:26:33","modified_gmt":"2019-10-21T21:26:33","slug":"being-moved-by-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/2019\/10\/21\/being-moved-by-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Being Moved By Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are periods in my life where I completely fall out of love with fiction. I\u2019m not entirely sure why it happens, but suddenly there\u2019s a switch that goes off in my brain, and I hate even the concept of fiction and media– the falsity of it, the mere entertainment, the meaningless indulgence in the aesthetic, as we all slink closer and closer to our deaths, and the earth keeps turning, and we watch a movie or turn the pages of a magazine or forget a poem.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For example, at some point in sophomore year of high school, I read <\/span>Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe<\/span><\/i> by Benjamin Alire S\u00e1enz, a coming-of-age novel about the unparalleled bond between two boys. I still remember crying on the floor of my bedroom past midnight when I was supposed to be doing homework, and just let the book completely wreck me (it\u2019s a <\/span>very<\/span><\/i> good book, you should read it), and when my mom walked into the room, I had nothing for defense except \u201cIt was a good book.\u201d I realized that I couldn\u2019t invest my time into a book without getting so attached and emotionally invested. It controlled me. After that, I went for months without reading anything– I got too invested, it hurt me too much, it surprised me with the pliability of my own emotions. I wanted to dominate my emotions, not let fiction dominate them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I got over that, of course– it\u2019s silly to have such powerful connections to books and movies and take it so innocently for reality. I developed a crucial distance from literature, almost as a defense mechanism to not let to get it to me too much, not allow it to break me and tear me apart, scare me or enthrall me. I started to see it from an \u201cintellectually\u201d distanced standpoint, observing it from the superior perch of examining craft and theme and symbolism, stroking my monocle and saying things like, \u201cAh yes, the intertextuality\u2026\u201d, or, \u201cThe symbolism of this hat demonstrates that\u2026\u201d And that helped me understand art, helped me tame the wild and crazy and unexplainable forces of literature.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Coming to college, things started to feel too crystallized. I stopped connecting to the things I was reading as much, and that may have just been because even though we were reading \u201cdiverse literature\u201d in my English classes, it was still taught by white professors to a mostly white student body, creating a strange dissonance with the work. And more than that– the Western-centric perspective of everything I read was so glaringly obvious to me, I couldn\u2019t connect to it at a personal level. The emotional connection I\u2019d once had to art– the kind of cosmic, universe-warping feelings that had made me cry in my childhood bedroom– had all gone. They were replaced with terms and definitions and critical theory. Wasn\u2019t it supposed to move me?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I can\u2019t say I\u2019ve found conclusions to my constantly fluctuating relationship with literature. But I have found a little reminder of why I love what I love. <\/span>Columbus<\/span><\/i> is a movie about the unexpected friendship between a homebody architect-enthusiast and the son of a renowned architect set in the town of Columbus, Indiana, known for its modernist buildings. In one of the lines in which the main character is trying to explain to Jin why she likes a building, he stops her and asks if she likes the building intellectually.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m also moved by it,\u201d she admits.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“Yes!\u201d He says. \u201cYes, tell me about that: What moves you?”<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI thought you hated architecture.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI do. But I’m interested in what moves you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As I most likely move towards a career that intellectualizes art, I must ground myself to my own heart, and remind myself to stay true to the contents of my mind. I want to be committed to that which moves me. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are periods in my life where I completely fall out of love with fiction. I\u2019m not entirely sure why it happens, but suddenly there\u2019s a switch that goes off in my brain, and I hate even the concept of fiction and media– the falsity of it, the mere entertainment, the meaningless indulgence in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2194,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9,1380,153],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11530"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2194"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11530"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11531,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11530\/revisions\/11531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}