Art… I enjoy writing about art and all its aspects. Some people attribute the word art to anything they wish and many book titles will bear that name Art of…. Even War was made to be an art. Manipulating people, is apparently also an art form. Chairs… art, trees… art of growing them.
Loneliness, or that feeling of being alone when a crowd and then add the word Art to make it more attractive and let people know that it is an art form to be alone and that you don’t need to feel alone. There are quite a few books with that title and makes one think, what is an art form?
Art, according to Dictionary.com, is not only related to aesthetic, but also to “show imagination and skill, and have more than ordinary meaning and importance”. Anything that wants to qualify as art generally wants to attribute more importance to the topic than would normally be attributed to it, at least when using that definition. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, one of the definitions of art is “a skill acquired by experience, study, or observation.” So basically, become really good at something, and you can call it an art. This definition makes it even broader. Art can be anything once you become very good at it.
I love Psychology and learning about human foibles. I love reading, especially when a character is well fleshed out and goes through a transformation as the story develops. I also enjoy characters who let loose and grab life by its horns and just go for it, chase their dream, go on an adventure and live a fulfilling life. If I could, I would probably spend hours on end reading and forgetting about the dishes that are piling up, or even eating, which would mean dishes would not necessarily pile up. But I do reach a limit after binge reading series of 7-15 books. I then move onto non-fiction, or just need a mental break. I try to stick to reading in the early hours during breakfast, then lunch, then bedtime. During the other hours, I paint and do whatever responsibilities I, as a grown-up, need to put up with.
There is no art form to loneliness. To say you have become so good at being lonely and depressed that it is not an art form would be criminal. It is not something you want to be good at. It will be that feeling you can’t budge unless you do something about it. But you could potentially be in a situation where moving out of it is not possible. It could be physical even. It could be a deep seated psychological condition that is so ingrained within you that the thought of change is daunting. I recently read the book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt which is definitely food for thought as it is mainly about how connected we have become to the internet and our mobile phones. How we spend so much time “connected” that we have become “disconnected”. Constantly online chatting with several people you only know virtually who are friends one minute and that you easily lose touch with by simply no longer engaging with them. Which to me means they are mainly acquaintances and don’t necessarily bring any meaning to your life other then hi, bye, a few meaningful conversations until you lose that high of talking to someone new. It’s almost like flirting and falling madly in love where you talk all the time and then the conversations become repetitive and dull and you lose interest. It is the sort of dynamic your brain gets used to and then you start following a similar pattern of behaviour in real life, and your friendships start to lose meaning once you don’t get that high from them. You forget that deep meaningful connection requires work and being there for you real life friend, that person you can actually hug and go for long walks with even in silence knowing their comforting presence. There is no need to be constantly on, you can be AFK and still be feel that warmth as they walk alongside you. Someone who knows you for you and understands what you mean when you say something, they understand your silent moments, they get your moods. According to Haidt, these are things you need to learn, Building a connection takes practice and starts from the minute you are born and look at your parents’ faces, you learn facial expressions and micro-expressions, you learn body language, the intonation of a person’s voice. All these things cannot be learned online. Emojis don’t teach you how to read a person, or get a feel for a person. You can’t vibe with someone online because a vibe is something you feel, it’s how you react to someone else’s subtle emotions.
Reading, making art, going to an art gallery, all these things help you understand someone’s humanity. You will find that a book character, or a painting, speak to you because as humans, we all have similarities, feelings, a way of seeing the world that given that they are 8 billion people currently on this planet plus the creations of all who have come before us, we understand that there are other people out there who also feel happy, sad, sleepy, hungry, lonely. You can add any emotional state here and it is another thing that makes you human.
Feeling alone and being alone are different things. You can be isolated and not feel lonely, or vice-versa, as I said before, like feeling alone in a crowd. Leading a solitary life can lead to satisfaction, but feeling disconnected, alone, abandoned is different…I can’t speak for other people, but when I feel lonely it is usually connected to longing, wanting a certain type of person in my life that I don’t necessarily have, or if I have, they are far away in a different country and I long to sit with them, chat to in person, and most importantly, just give them a huge hug. What I want is sometimes elusive and I can’t actually pinpoint, it is out there, it is inside of me, it is something I cannot name. So when I get frustrated, I write and paint, or I just get out of the house. A lot of my paintings are about frustration and connection, hands that just want to wrap themselves around someone’s neck, or around the waist for an embrace.
So yes, I find books carrying titles such as The Art of Loneliness, or something to that effect, extremely condescending to the actual mental health issues that can be linked to loneliness because sometimes no amount of imagination can necessarily stop you from feeling lonely, or abandoned. Trying to spin loneliness into something positive, when it is something you don’t want to feel, is unhelpful. Having an imagination can temporarily mitigate that feeling, when you are lost in a task, even making art, but once it is done, that creeping nagging feeling that is haunting you, will likely return. It’s just a matter of how you manage it, there is no magic bullet, finding the right someone will perhaps keep it at bay for a while, but it mostly depends on you and how you manage it. Knowing where that feeling is coming from and trying to understand why it is there. I have tried moving countries, and am constantly tempted with just picking up my belongings and moving again, but I know it is not the solution. Finding meaningful connections in real life and slowly building your own tribe with multiple types of people and personalities could help. We are all different, but also similar, someone, somewhere, might be that magical connection. Or maybe you were just born in the wrong century – I wonder what it would have been like living in the late 1800s….
A good and well known example of an artist who struggled with loneliness and feeling disconnected from everyone was Vincent van Gogh. It is well known that he struggled his entire life with depression, anxiety, and epilepsy. It was hard for him to form friendships and maintain relationships which resulted in his feelings of loneliness and isolation. He felt like a burden to his younger brother, Theo, with whom he kept close contact. It was Theo who suggested van Gogh become an artist, and it was Theo who supported him financially as he struggled to sell his art.
When looking at one of his more famous paintings, Starry Night (1889), or the similar in style Starry Night Over the Rhone (1888), for me, I see escape, looking at the millions of stars and what kind of life could thrive there, how infinite the universe and yet how trapped we feel on our little green planet, in our little homes….But then we see his Cornfield with Cypresses (1889), which reminds me of The Starry Night in terms of composition, but it is a daytime version that grounds you and brings you back to Earth. Golden fields as far as the eyes can see, the dramatic clouds and the greenery, things that make life on Earth possible. He would then zoom in on flowers and their beauty, painting Sunflowers countless times. He would paint life going on around him as an observer, and in his portraits, he depicted human emotions. When you look at Woman Sitting on a Basket, Head in Hands (1883), it is possible to determine by her body language that feeling of exhaustion, or perhaps despair… but another viewer, depending on their mood, might be feeling impish and say she sat down after a bout of laughter and is ready to bounce back up in a minute.
Art is for everyone and tells a different story to whoever is viewing it. Knowing that van Gogh had mental health issues could influence the viewer on how they see each work of art, but it won’t stop them from bringing in their own experience and their current situation in life. Every time I look at the same work of art, I find something different in it, a different perspective, a different mood. That is what makes art so fulfilling, you can create it and once it is out in the world, different people will put a bit of themselves into that work of art and bring out new interpretations.
What are you really good at that you would now say it had become an art form?
Comments