Art For When Life Sucks
“We have art in order not to die of the truth.” —Friedrich Nietzsche
Every human endeavor, activity, discipline, phenomenon strives, correctly or incorrectly, to make life better. Art is one such endeavor. What is the relationship between art and life? There are many different types of relationship that can exist between art and life. Relationships are determined by purpose and function and quality and depth. Art can perform many different functions and there are good and bad examples of each. There is the escapist and distraction relationship. It is good entertainment usually effective in the short term mainly for the duration that you are in the world of the book, movie, or piece of music. This is nothing to sneeze at. There is a time and a mood for everything. There are good and bad examples of everything. Some great examples of escapist art are the novels of Stephen King and Michael Crichton. They create terrifying and interesting worlds that you want to visit and then quickly be able to leave. Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain is the definition of a page turner. That’s the power of terrifying, imaginative horror stories and gripping thrillers. Their weakness is the initial excitement wears off once you finish the story since they are so plot and pace dependent. If we were to compare this to human relationships, it would be the equivalent of an infatuation based on interest and excitement that deserves to be enjoyed and appreciated but perhaps doesn’t touch the deeper parts of us. We are spectators. Then, there is the better world and simulation relationship where it is not just a distraction or entertaining escapism but a preferable world, an ideal world that one would prefer to live in. The principle difference between this type of relation is that it is more nourishing and lasts longer and actually changes and affects the person in a more salubrious way. It makes you glad the book and the person who wrote it exists. It becomes a way to experience and feel things that are lacking in real life such that it feels more real, more authentic, more replenishing than real life. That could be love, joy, beauty, power, justice, vengeance, order, meaning. Examples of this type of art will be different for everyone since everyone is missing different things from their life. On the side of the creator, there is a relationship of catharsis, therapy, self-realization, and self-actualization between art and life. It is said of philosophy that it is not supposed to be merely for study for cloistered professors tucked away in ivory towers but that its purpose is to cause us to examine ourselves and our life and learn how to live better. I would argue that art should do the same. It has the capacity to make us better and to make our life better. Whether that be by distracting us from our woes for a short amount of time, giving us a separate, better, more interesting, more beautiful world to live in, introducing us to better people who become more real and more known to us than the phantoms in our own life. It goes without saying that life influences art but art also has the power to influence life. When done right, when felt right, it is much more than an aesthetic illusion.
“A book must be an axe for the frozen sea within us.” —Franz Kafka
