Art and Emotion

Sometimes I wish I had a talent in art in one form or another whether it was dance, music, film, painting, or whatever.  I’ve attempted it and I am not very good at much of the options that have been given to me, but I guess I’m more or less content in just watching and listening to what artists do their thing.  I’ve been watching So You Think You Can Dance again recently, the only season I watched prior was the fourth which included Twitch, Katee, Joshua, Comfort and some other people who have friendly and interesting personalies and dancing ability.  It’s not really a show, at least from looking at the title, where talking about art and their emotional impact on people would come from, but it does have some very beautiful dances that I never really seen before in my life.  I never knew much about dance outside of the hip hop stylings and those relating to it such as break dancing.  So I just saw dance as more as fun thing to do without much of an emotional asthetic to it.  However the prominent style of most of the dancers in the show are typically contemporary, which from what I understand it is dancing in a manner that expresses their interpretation of the music.  So contemporary grants a lot of variety but usually involves extensions in their body which show how strong and flexible they are.  But there’s an interesting effect on someone who hasn’t really watched dance in this manner before and it’s hypnotic at times.  Sometimes you can actually feel the emotion they are trying to present with their dance even though it’s not explicitly explained at times (although they do go into the details of the dance from what the choreographer wants to present to the audience).  At times a dance would make me just happy through it’s silliness or just good humored fun or it would bring me close to tears of just how they move in elegant fashions while expressing a somber story through dance.  I’m fascinated at how art affects people and particularly my relationship with it.  I haven’t had the pleasure of creating art so I don’t know how that feels, but just through my experiences of just taking in what I sense, I can imagine that it would be something close to ecstasy or theraputic.

Music probably has the largest impact on me as far as art goes because I constantly try to have music around me at all times.  At the moment, I’ve been listening to older music such as from the likes of Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra but I also want to focus on Florence + The Machine who are a relatively recent band that has gotten my attention.  The thing that intrigues me about the band in particular is that the music they produce just makes me feel.  What the feeling it is usually depends on my mood, but the drums in the music just help bring out an emotional response out of me, and I think it’s rather beautiful even if it’s something as simple as slamming a drum.  It’s not even a drum beat, it’s just like someone pounding on a large drum a couple of times as hard as they can, it’s something primal about it and it just makes you want to dance or become involved somehow.  Although the songs themselves are great, the addition of the simple drums just gives it that explosion of passion that I sometimes feel is lost in modern musicians.  There are a couple of musicians who make me feel that way, and especially so if I ever had the pleasure of watching their live shows.  They don’t necessarily have to do anything crazy to get your attention, but you just feel how they view their own music and what it means to them.  At times I feel that the heart behind the music is beginning to be lost in music today, especially if they continuously rely on electronic beats or computerized techniques that are made to just grab your attention.  I’m not really condemning music today since I enjoy a great many of them, even those of the electronic brand, but I would love to hear more passion in music like they had in the 40′s and 50′s with singers like Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, ect.  They just made me feel like I understood what their emotions were at the time they sang it or just have a great rush in general.  I know that Frank Sinatra – My Way just makes me feel more masculine and gives me a willingness I didn’t have minutes ago.  They didn’t do anything crazy or wild to be able to express what they were singing, hell many of them sang the same songs but it presented a different feeling depending on the artist and the listener.  There’s plenty of good music out there, but it doesn’t get as much attention as those who have the catchier beats and rhythms which is a shame.  It’s possible I’m just focusing on the mainstream and the perception I get from occasionally listening to the radio and the steady popularity of shows like American Idol, whose contestants I don’t really find to be all that talented to be honest.  Music doesn’t require someone to hold a note for a long period of time to show their strength or having the better and catchier beats.  Sometimes it feels like artists today concentrate too much on those aspects rather than the reasons behind the music and the passion they feel in creating their art and voice.  But this is all the opinion of someone who has no actual artistic talent, but  just enjoys to feel it whenever I can to give my life a little more color.

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