First written March 2018
I believe that truly great art can only come from a deeply felt place of emotion. In my story, I’ve only felt that pull, that spark, from seasons of intense joy or unrelenting sadness. If we look to the four core emotions – anger, fear, sadness and joy – those are the two most powerful. Anger shuts me down, turns me inward and blinds me to anything good left. Fear limits how I see myself and what is still to come, immobilizing me. Joy allows me to feel like I want to live, and live to the fullest. And sadness… sadness speaks to the dark, broken, neglected parts of my soul.
From some of the most profound pieces of art, music, and beauty that is created by human hands, they are responses to truly dark and painful places within the artist. From places of extreme hurt, heartbreak, anguish and loss, there is some amount of that which makes its way into a beautiful creation.
For me, I find that in music. The way it touches a part of my heart, a place that I can’t enter because I’m so afraid of the darkness, of the wounds I’ve left there, yet music is able to touch it. In the chords that pull from me things no words could, to the words spoken from a place of raw and broken honesty.
A creator wants to make something beautiful, something worthwhile, something significant to share with the world around him, because whatever he sees inside isn’t worthy to be shared, isn’t beautiful. It’s dark, it’s broken, it’s so tortured and lost that it can only live in the cold dark reaches of his heart, far away where it can’t hurt anyone else. But if he can take that hurt, if he can touch even one life, then maybe it’ll all be worth it. Even if he feels too lost, too far gone, maybe it can lead another away. Maybe it can reach someone in a way he never did.
Out of pain, beauty.
Out of loss, hope.
Out of darkness, life.
The Writer in White 