My junior semester is ending and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m feeling reflective and wistful and seriously stressed and time-crunched and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll probably do poorly on my exams \/ final papers, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m thinking about how or why I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ended up becoming an \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcarts blogger\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and vaguely thinking about things like \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcwhat is art\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcwhy does it matter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 or \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcwhat does it mean to me,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and before long I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m realizing that \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcart\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 in general is pretty much the one thing that seems to \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcmatter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 to me, and I recently read this thing this philosopher guy Ludwig Wittgenstein said\u00e2\u20ac\u201dWittgenstein said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It’s impossible for me to say one word about all that music has meant to me in my life. How, then, can I hope to be understood?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (which is broody and philosopher-y but so trueeeee, right?)\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand I stopped and thought about it for a minute and was like, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcwhoah,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and I just instantly wanted to write similar things about \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcall that music \/ literature \/ art in general has meant to me\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 in my life, even though it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s kinda impossible to say how much they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve meant and I know that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clich\u00c3\u00a9 to say but I also know it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s true. Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s face it we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re bombarded with art-talk almost constantly in this day-n-age, what with the internet and 18 credits of humanities courses and blogs like this one etc., but maybe it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be cool if we all took a moment, as this semester ends, as beautiful spring begins, to breathe and think about what art \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcmeans to you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u201dmaybe people can like comment on this post, answering the question \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcwhat does art mean to you?\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 (nobody will do it)\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand breathe in and out, slowwwlllly, and maybe just, like, appreciate (?) those moments in your personal history where a song made your stomach flutter or a film made you cry or a book made you think and maybe just, like, feel good about how sometimes, despite the generalized shittyness of existence and final exams and essays, things can be beautiful?<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, I read a post (http:\/\/www3.arts.umich.edu\/ink\/2012\/02\/15\/looking\/<\/a>) from my arts, ink blogger friend Jessy Larson that said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153After 2.5 years of being an art history major, I have watched myself care less and less about what a work of art actually looks like\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I rarely have that \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcoh this sculpture is so beautiful!\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 feeling anymore.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It made me feel sad. Because I know the feeling\u00e2\u20ac\u201dor lack thereof\u00e2\u20ac\u201dall too well. The \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcnothing really seems oh-so-beautiful\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 feeling. And to hear the feeling from one of my good friends, well, that hurt. I mean the older I get the less mystical and mind-blowing and wonderful a lot of art seems. A lot of it just seems like average things average people make, averagely. A lot of it seems shitty\u00e2\u20ac\u201dlike that episode of South Park where Stan starts seeing everything as shit (http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/You’re_Getting_Old<\/a>). That episode is really good. Watch it, if you haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. #Disillusionment. I often can watch a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dctear-jerker\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 film and feel Nothing. I can read a novel in one sitting, without once feeling excitement or suspense or sorrow or empathy or anything really, with complete knowledge of how the story will end before I reach the final page, with vague antipathy towards the author for writing a predictable story, with vaguer antipathy towards myself for predicting. I can listen to a song without really \u00e2\u20ac\u02dchearing\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 it. Maybe I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m just getting older. Maybe I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve oversaturated myself; after 21 years of book after book after song after song after film after film, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve all started to \u00e2\u20ac\u02dctaste like chicken.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Etc. Etc.<\/p>\n But as my\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u2122aesthetic experiences\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 (?)\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6become rarer, they also become more precious. And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s night\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like these, when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m pounding on my keyboard in the grad library and have 10000 papers due soon and finals to study for but won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t study for, when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve just read a deep-seeming quotation from an Austrian philosopher, that I feel compelled to drop the ennui and the blas\u00c3\u00a9 and the jaded and the three years of A-grade analytical essays re art for university courses for a second and feel compelled to just run with my inexplicable current passion vaguely about \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcart\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and to acknowledge its ability to make me tremble, cry, hope, acknowledge its ineffable…something. <\/p>\n So these are some of my top \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcaesthetic experiences\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 I could remember. <\/p>\n 1. In 7th grade, I was just starting to learn how to play the drums and was like \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcstudying\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 John Bonham (Led Zeppelin), who is probably my favorite drummer, and I remember this one night: there was a thunderstorm and I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sleep and I was worried about going to school the next morning for some angsty seventh-grader-y reason\u00e2\u20ac\u201dmaybe I had a presentation, maybe some kids were going to pick on me\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand I was listening to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Stairway to Heaven\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on my first CD player ever, which was a P.O.S. Sony, via big whole-ear-covering headphones and I cranked the volume all the way up and sobbed uncontrollably and made vague promises to myself about \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcbeing a better person\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 at school the next morning and about getting good at playing drums so that I could be a super famous drummer and so that I could always have music in my life. <\/p>\n 2. In 11th or 12th grade I was grounded and alone in my room and bored and decided to read for whatever reason, so I downloaded \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Catcher in the Rye\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and read it as a Microsoft Word document on my like 7in.-by-12 in.-netbook screen in like two sittings, and I liked it, so I Googled \u00e2\u20ac\u0153books like The Catcher in the Rye\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and got the result \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Perks of Being a Wallflower\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and downloaded it and read it as a .doc too, in one sitting, and loved it and felt like the protagonist in it was pretty much me exactly and felt good knowing there were \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcpeople like me out there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and decided\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand I mean decided\u00e2\u20ac\u201dI needed to \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcparticipate\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 in life more\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pretty much like the whole point of the book: you have to participate, in life, instead of just being a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcwallflower\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand now I still think about \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcparticipation\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 in life very often, and if I hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t read that book I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d probably participate in life less. <\/p>\n 3. In high school in my first band ever we covered the song \u00e2\u20ac\u015399 Red Balloons\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and every time we played it I would get PUMPED and hit my drums way harder than normal\u00e2\u20ac\u201dlike to the point that my entire arms would hurt from it and my hands would blister\u00e2\u20ac\u201deven when we we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re just playing in my basement for nobody, and but one time we were playing at a stupid place called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153His Rock caf\u00c3\u00a9,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which was basically a medium-sized stained-carpeted room with musty couches pushed up against the walls and shitty lighting, and after we played some shitty screamo band played next and their guitarist jokingly played the 99-Red-Balloons riff as they were tuning up to like make fun of my band or something, but I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even mad\u00e2\u20ac\u201dI felt like \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcI don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care if anyone thinks \u00e2\u20ac\u015399 Red Balloons\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is a lame song because when we play that song we kick its ass and nobody can tell me otherwise, ever, especially not this stupid screamo guitarist kid.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 <\/p>\n 4. Summer 2010 I was jobless and had way too much free time\u00e2\u20ac\u201dit seems like most of my best \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcaesthetic \/ art-related experiences\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 happen during periods of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dctoo much free time,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 I just noticed\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand drove myself to Borders (RIP) and bought the 1,000 page behemoth Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, which my creative-writing teacher whom I liked way more than 95% of my teachers had suggested I read over the summer, and for ~2weeks I read it for ~7hrs. every day and only stopped to like eat or urinate or stuff like that, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll probably never read so consistently constantly intensely deeply ever again ever, and it made me fall in love with reading\u00e2\u20ac\u201dI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d always liked reading, but I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t take our relationship to the next level before that fateful \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcinfinite summer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand made me realize other people exist. \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcMade me realize other people exist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122? Yeah, well, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s kinda hard to explain but when you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a jaded, big-university-attending, blas\u00c3\u00a9, rocker drummer cool guy like me you tend to be a little solipsistic and self-centered and egotistical and oh-so-alone and lone-wolf-y, to the point that skepticism about other\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s consciousness isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t all that far-fetched. But in Infinite Jest I saw a conscientious human on the page, for 1,000 pages, and I \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcinterfaced\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 with him, and I realized people exist outside my head, realized that although I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m literally at the center of my universe, because of how perception works, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not at the center of The Universe. <\/p>\n 5. Every time I hear the Crime in Stereo lyrics \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It comes around when I need it most \/ it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mostly closer to me than anything \/ closer than you could ever be \/ the antidote for everything\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (which reference music), I think something like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00e2\u20ac\u201dSchopenhauer.<\/p>\n 6. Summer 2011 I could never sleep and would always stay up until like 5 a.m., and music was beginning to lose its luster for me\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthis was the summer I really started developing that \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcnothing feels oh-so-beautiful anymore\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 feeling\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand so I started listening to Godspeed You! Black Emperor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Attenas to Heaven\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (which is my favorite album title ever btw) every night to fall asleep, because some of my friends had told me they listened to \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcpost-rock\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 to sleep, and, yeah, it helped me sleep every night because every night I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d sorta \u00e2\u20ac\u02dclose myself\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 in the music and \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcget carried away\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and sorta enter into a trance or something and meditate and think about things I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t normally think about, like God or lack thereof (maybe I just thought about God because of the name of the band \/ album [but I like to think I thought about God because of the music itself]), and one night I literally Lifted My Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven during a big climax in one song\u00e2\u20ac\u201dif you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know anything about post-rock, it has like ebbs and flows and \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcclimaxes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand held my fists up for like two entire minutes, in the middle of the night, lying supine on my bed, looking out my bedroom\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s big window, at the stars \/ \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcHeaven,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and my stomach was dropping non-stop. <\/p>\n 7. Once I thought, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Art, in general, is the only thing about the world that seems prima facie \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcmeaningful\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 or \u00e2\u20ac\u02dclife-affirming\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 or \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcGood\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 to me, and without it I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m literally not sure I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d have \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcthe will to live,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in a near-silent large arch-ceilinged room in a graduate library while all around me students idly typed things on computers and coughed and flipped pages and maintained facial expressions communicating \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d rather be dead right now than doing this mind-numbing school-related thing.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My junior semester is ending and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m feeling reflective and wistful and seriously stressed and time-crunched and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll probably do poorly on my exams \/ final papers, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m thinking about how or why I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ended up becoming an \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcarts blogger\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and vaguely thinking about things like \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcwhat is art\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcwhy does it matter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2468"}],"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\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2468"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2472,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2468\/revisions\/2472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}