LOVE OF ART OR ART OF LOVE? What is love? Its a fundamental question. And no one has ever been able to adequately answer it. No philosopher, psychologist, psychoanalyst, or social scientist has ever been able to satisfactorily account for it. Probably the most exalted attempts to express the nature of love are found in art. Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, Tristan and Isolde, etc. Whether presented in a play, ballet, opera, musical, poetry, prose or film, love is most successfully captured through artistic expression rather than through reasoned discourse. The lunatic, the lover and the poet/ Are of imagination all compact, Shakespeare tells us. Thus, love is an irrational emotion that cannot be rationalized. That is why it is most successfully captured and expressed through art. As soon as you attempt to rationalize it, you have lost the essence of what it is. That is why it is impossible for a rationalist to understand someones love for a Divine Being. It is completely irrational admittedly. However, so is poetry or a feeling of the sublime or any exalted emotion. So Shakespeare is correct. The poet and the lover have the same state of mind as the lunatic: One sees more devils than vast hell can hold— That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt. The poet’s eye, in fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to Earth, from Earth to heaven. And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. - A Midsummer Nights Dream People say love is blind. Of course it is. It is blind because it is irrational and lunatic. The lover sees what he wants to see. Don Quixote did not see a scullery maid named El Donza in the tavern inn. He saw Dulcinea, an angel from heaven residing in a castle. Of course Don Quixote was delusional, a senile old man, more deluded in his senses than King Lear. But even though he was motivated to fight windmills, he was happy and believed in higher ideals such as love. It gave him a sense of purpose and inspiration, a raison dêtre. Love fills us with inspiration. It gives the poet, the musician, the singer, the inspiration to move their audience with their lyrical verse and songs of love like the troubadours of old, who went on the road with their songs of love. Ask the poet about love and he will recite you a verse. Ask the singer about love and he will sing you a song. That is because art is the highest expression for an irrational subject that is beyond rhyme or reason. The rationalist holds love cheap because he doesnt understand it and cant rationalize it. But for we irrational artists love is understood. For us it is best explained in a song, verse, dance, painting or IN MY CASE, A FILM. In fact, LOVE was probably the inspiration behind the song, poem, ballet, and work of art in the first place. Can I explain it? Id rather sing you a song. Better still, as a filmmaker, Ill probably FILM IT. https://m.youtube/watch?v=PjtJkBUVFVY
Posted on: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 04:19:55 +0000
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