powerful art, a thought

or, art as enjoyment as life

I promised an essay about Laputa: Castle in the Sky today but I’ve been monstrously sick basically since Christmas (more on this later, maybe) so I’m posting this already written essay instead. Expect the Laputa essay…later.

Also, for those interested, I had a short story published somewhere. It, uh, well, the experience of being published here is an odd one. For one, the formatting employed is a nightmare for anyone who actually wants to read. I may write about this later too. Anyrate, click here to read about cannibals.

I couldn’t tell you exactly why I decided to listen to an opera with my son this morning, but I can say I’m glad I did.

I’m not a musician and I don’t know anything about music theory, but I do have two ears connected to a heart. And I love opera. I love strings and horns, love the way a human voice can expand beyond what seems possible to form its own instrument.

Few people have created the ecstasies of Richard Wagner as he wrestled with the limits of human voices, of human patience. And so we were listening to Wagner.

(As an aside, if anyone wants to read me talk about opera or Wagner specifically, I’ll give it a shot! I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about opera and Wagner specifically.)

My son became transfixed. First, it was merely a backdrop to his imaginative game about fighting monsters and bad guys with swords and axes. But gradually he paid more and more attention, asking me questions about what he was hearing.

He wanted to know what was happening.

So I found the above video of the Ride of the Valkyries and let him watch.

He fell into the performance. The costumes, the stagecraft, the music, the direction—everything. I watched him watching, seeing how this work of art swallowed him. He was transfixed and then transported to this otherworld of gods and warriors, of music so grand it fills up a lifetime.

It got me thinking of a recent comment on one of my essays here. How there are certain works of art that burn into us at such an early moment in life that they become an indelible memory. They don’t so much shape our lives as cause our lives to bend around them.

There are moments so deeply a part of me that I cannot imagine life without them. Some of them form my earliest memories. And I wonder if this is why I’ve always aimed my life in the direction of art. I crave art to experience but I also cannot stop creating it, dreaming it.

I do not know who I’d be without the art that has shaped my life. But also I don’t know who I’d be if I didn’t spend hours and years of my life toiling away at stories almost no one will ever even know exist. It is a stupid way to spend a life, and yet it is my whole life.

All that I am. All that I want. My whole life determined by the art of others, by my own fumbling attempts at making it myself.

Probably I’d be happier without this need. Probably life would seem easier and some of it wouldn’t hurt me so deeply.

Watching my son watch The Ride of the Valkyries reminded me of Michael and Janet Jackson’s Scream. A video so vivid in my memory that it sometimes returns to me at strange times.

This isn’t my favorite Michael Jackson song or video. It’s not even that good! It’s not one that most people probably think about when they think about him, but it is burned inside me. I see his elfin face filling up my vision surprisingly often.

I remember being alone in my basement recreating the dances from memory almost immediately after first seeing it the first time. I was seven or eight and already I felt this need inside me. This explosive sensation that only art could give me.

Watching my son experience art as he grows up reminds me of the me I once was thirty years ago, discovering life.

Will this become a memory that he remembers decades from now?

Watching Richard Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries with me.

This is an interesting question to me because I remember being alone for almost all my strongest childhood memories related to art. Whether it was playing videogames or listening to music or watching movies. It seems like the moments that stand out to me are not the sharing of those experiences, but of me engaging with them alone.

I know I played Mario with my friends and brothers all the time as a kid. But I remember the times I played alone strongest. I remember music not as something shared, but as something I experienced and engaged with alone, in a cold basement. I remember movies late at night, watching them alone, after everyone else went to sleep.

I hope my son remembers life differently. I hope I’m there with him in his memory.

Having a child has cast me spiraling through time and I’m continually flooded by my own childhood. It might be the only real reason this newsletter exists.