Do you think art can ever truly influence someone?
I have a a handful of books, songs, films and art that to me stands a million miles above anything else I've ever seen or heard. In the moment of experiencing them I receive great pleasure and tranquility. They really feel like an expression of someone else who sees the world as I do. But truth be told, if I was on my deathbed, I don't think they'd matter all that much to me. I like them more than anything else in this world but I honestly believe they're still just escapism to help me forget life for a few minutes or hours. As much as they speak to me, they haven't changed me.
No, you have to be a pretentious dolt to even think it can in the first place.
Cameron Anderson
i think it can show you perspectives that you wouldn't have arrived at before in the same way or as soon, or maybe ever. as far as that goes, how much your perspectives change the way you feel or what you do is up for debate and probably depends greatly on the specifics
in that same vein, it begs the question whether art can also fuck us up. maybe we can really like some piece of art but in that liking it is appealing to something fucked up in us that is then becoming more solidified?
who tf knows, but i ask myself these questions too. not all art is equal, and im sure results will always vary person to person. it cannot be argued with that really deep emotional or spiritual experiences change people, so if art can invoke that for a person... well, you can get into all kind of fuckin semantics. art has SOME worth and also some danger - in the whole, who knows how much? and the proportion between the two, is that fundamental to art, or the product of a specific society and the people in it and the perspective they are hashing out?
Elijah Robinson
i think, in a way, becoming overdependent on art to be the source of a lot of your connection with other people and the world (and insights) can maybe sort of infantilize you... like you can turn into, or at least FEEL like you are turning into (which can be just as bad), some kind of baby suckling at some kind of almighty teet of earth art - while at the same time eroding the feeling that you are a human being or any kind of entity with free will and depth and a soul.
art has its place but i think it can also be kind of a gaping maw that can suck you in and turn you into a gaping maw yourself with no thoughts of your own. you just have opinions about things other people do without feeling your own unadulterated feelings, which you need if you want to experience your life authentically and with meaning
Ryan King
of course then the tendency can be to react in the fashion of, well you should swear off art and just try to have relationships, adventures, travel, whatever. well, yeah those are important. but, nonfiction for instance can tell you a lot about the world and help orientate you a little bit more in it
Levi James
>I honestly believe they're still just escapism to help me forget life for a few minutes or hours. They are life, though, and not different from it at all. Whats the problem here? Escape from one aspect of life to another? This is neither unusual nor bad. Who is to say what is important and what is not? Who is to say that what is important must be done? Who knows what will happen on ones deathbed. For me, art keeps me away from the deathbed. Death is very cozy, I need even more cozyness in my life to keep wanting to live. In that way, art keeps me afloat. Maybe I'll forget on my deathbed how I see art now, but the fact is that art was a very important thing to me. I change everyday because of it. Although you cannot help but to change each day.
that's a perspective I often take. art is just a form of communication. the person or people on the other end of that communication are just as real as you are, albeit separated by time and space
Jayden Martin
>can art can ever truly influence someone?
of course it does. people constantly look for their overt and obvious influence while failing to even look for basic identification. they ask themselves stupid questions that go to the extreme, like "can a video game cause someone to shoot up a school?", instead of the correct one being "do i identify with the characters in this story and thusly modify my behavior because of it?". so if you've never modified your own behavior or interests because of a piece of artwork, you've only consumed garbage art, or don't have the capacity to learn much of anything.
Julian Garcia
I think stupid things can be more inspirational. With smart work it's very easy to feel like you knew the moral all along.
Bentley Morales
Maybe it is a form of escape - but you are not leaving this place alone.
Michael Price
escape from what, hardcore physical reality and its worst features? are feelings and thoughts and ideas (and even dreams or hopes) any less real than physical material things? would you argue that math is less real than an object, for instance? math is entirely conceptual and immaterial but replicable and generally regarded as "real"
Gavin Anderson
there was once a time when humanity and human beingness with all of its internality was viewed as being of preeminent importance to reality (if not THE importance), not treated as some kind of inconvenient dalliance unworthy of in(tro)spection
David Lewis
or that human beingness and the experience of being alive was the fundamentally defining feature of reality, not mere physicality
Levi Clark
i think someone talked about this on here once as how society has shifted from viewing humans as subject, to object
