The Joy Of Art

Something I think people who don't do art really do not understand, have no conception of, and won't know until they themselves start to do some art of their own, is just how EXCITING art its.

If you've ever daubed some watercolour in some class kinda hopelessly at an unfortunate piece of virgin paper, or you base your ideas of what art is really on school experiences, you haven't lived yet.

It is understandable that someone with such things in their background should think that art sucks, it's pointless, painful even, but that's not art.

I was engaging with a painting last night and I was shaking with excitement, completely breathless, my heart was racing and I was laughing and crying at the same time. I was engaged in a process that is unlike anything else in the world; that FEELS like nothing else in the world; I KNEW I was not just touching magic, but making magic.

Energy was everywhere and I was a part of it, and the planes came together, hard and the others, and it was sheer enchantment, sheer excitement - what could ever be more intense than that?

So many energies, so many emotions.

So many thoughts, so many movements. So much colour, so much JOY ...

Oh I've had this with music too, with writing songs on the guitar, in the studio with electronics and keyboards. I've had this with sculptures when they shaped as if they had a mind of their own. I've had this with energy dancing when my body started to make movements I had never experienced before, producing energy flows and emotions I have never experienced before.

Of course, I've had these moments with writing - stories and poems and hypnodreams, and it's all the same, it's the joy of art, when you become bigger, wider, OTHER THAN, and touch these other worlds, and they flow into you, flow through you, bring you to alive, MAKE YOU FEEL ALIVE in every way, in every sense, every sense awakening ...

When I talk of "joy" of art, I don't mean being a bit happy or having a nice time.

• I'm talking of JOY in the biblical sense, moments where you just break down and cry because you're so happy, so amazed, words fail so absolutely and YOU KNOW YOU ARE BLESSED IN EVERY WAY. 

That is REAL ART.

That is the EXPERIENCE OF REAL ART.

That is why people should do it - there is NOTHING like it, nothing like it anywhere, nothing like it at all.

A first glimmer of that can literally transform your incarnation.

In a way, it doesn't matter any more what shit happened in the past, how crap your present or doomfilled your future; it's not important any more.

This stuff that dominates the lives of the non-artists RECEDES to meaninglessness because there is this OTHER WORLD, and you have touched it, you've known it, you are a part of it.

Might that be valuable to you?

Might you like to feel that way - just once, and know what that is?

Might this even be what you've been missing all your life, and you couldn't find it in prayer, or in other people?

Perhaps art is not for "everyone".

I think it is.

I really think if it's done right, in the old fashioned, human, primal way, art is what the doctor ordered to bring JOY into our lives, absolutely, and for real.

When my art moment had passed last night, I noticed that on the TV, there were people doing triple somersaults on a ski slope "for excitement".

I looked at them at smiled.

Silvia Hartmann

Feb 18th, 2010