A World of One: Another perspective

Hello again! I have another response on the topic of the arts and the civilization contract and belonging. My first cousin once removed, Pat, (who is a much closer family member than she sounds according to that description!) sent me her thoughts on why she makes art, bringing an interesting perspective to the topic. If you'd like to take a look at Pat's paintings (which you should, they are beautiful), here is a link to her website. She also sent me a link to a London Times article about the cellist, Vedran Smailovic, and why he is not at all pleased about the publishing of the book, which adds yet another dimension to this discussion. I will share my own thoughts on all of this once I have had a chance to gather them. In the meantime, enjoy Part III of our series on the arts, written by Pat Stanley.

"Unlike your dad, I have no sense of “belonging”, and no desire to belong to any groups. I know that I appear to “belong”, to certain families, groups, societies, etc. But I am, in fact, a world of one. Everything that I am exists inside my head. No matter where I go, I am taking my world with me. I project outwards what is expected of me, what is expected of a civilized being, but it is a charade. I operate on the assumption that everyone feels the same (even if they don’t). I try to behave towards others in the way that I would like them to behave towards me. That’s all I can do. So, here I am all alone inside my head.

For a lot of the time that’s enough. I read a lot – that’s someone else describing a whole fictional world inside someone else’s head, and the parallels with parts of my own world make me feel a connection to others. But sometimes I want to describe part of my world to others. If I talk to people about how I feel, for example about the beauty of our environment and what “groups” or “civilization” has done to the natural world, I’m going to sound like I’m a bit obsessed, and I expect people will turn away. Plus I’m not a good talker. But through my art, I can express those feelings. If someone outside my world of one “gets it”, I’m very happy, because it means I managed to send a message out of my head, and someone received it. If people get different messages (not the intended one), that’s OK, at least they got a message, but it’s not nearly as rewarding to me as when they get the intended one as well.

So I paint things that are, to me, simultaneously beautiful and tragic, and I put them out for others to respond to emotionally (or not). Maybe the cellist was doing the same thing, showing beauty in tragedy, and hoping that people would receive his message, and respond emotionally. The goal is to have someone outside your head experience the same rush of emotion as you had when you did the painting, played the music, etc. So it is a connection, just not (for me) anything like “belonging”, more like causing another being to vibrate on your frequency, if only for a moment."