“Do we need art in our life?”
You can give it a simple ‘yes’ to this question but those who are involved in art with a little more depth, can’t often stick to this simple answer and ask this very same question over and over throughout the life, because when pursuing art you are likely to encounter many situations where you find the society or people don’t seem to give any space for the art.
The artists consequently tend to carry this feeling that we have spent so many precious hours of our life for something that the society don’t even care. Then come to a little shady corner of the life and say “Maybe art is not necessary for our life”
Indeed, although with full of irony, Irish writer Oscar Wilde did put, “All art is quite useless” in his famous novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Though Wilde’s real intention of this statement being somewhere else not just limited to simply irony, maybe it has some truth in its literal sense, at least it seems.
Then what do artists do? Look for the proof that can favor art, as nobody like to think we spent our time and energy for something that is not worth a dime.
Some might hold onto the fact that art has been with us since the ancient times and say, “This is the proof that we need art”, or some might try to remember the time the art was well received by the audience and say, “See! The art penetrates someone’s heart, that’s why we need art”.
Unfortunately the comfort that those remarks give might not last for long. At least it didn’t for me, as soon after, I encounter yet another situation where someone or some fact seem to insist the art is meaningless.
Then we have to go back to the very first question and start the same routine again.
A few years ago, I came across with a book, “Art of Piano Playing” by George Kochevisky in which the author/pianist describes the relationship between the brain function and piano playing. The insight he gave in this book was not only fascinating but helped me a great deal in actual piano playing.
From there, I started to wonder about so many other things, as to how the brain works, how our body works, how the instrument works…..
I am not the kind of person who often read books about Math, Physics, or Biology, or any kind of science. My grade on those in schools days used to be horrible.
So I can only wonder, except for a tiny bit of knowledge gained from certain books.
Even so as a non-scientific person as I am, the other day when I was fiddling with the piano action model, trying to understand the mechanism of the piano and how it produce the sound, it all suddenly came to me with a clarity:
when I play a piano, the brain control the body, the body operates the piano mechanism, then the string produces the sound and it vibrates the air. This involves Human Anatomy, Philosophy, Physics, Acoustics, and many other things in natural science that I don’t even begin to understand.
It’s like a nature where we see beautiful sun rise but so many things I don’t even understand are happening within the nature to create that beautiful scene.
This tells us art is like a nature. We are a part of the nature. Therefor the art is simply us!
Everything where the natural science is involved there should be an art.
So, not only there is an art in the nature, but there is an art in a human being even if he or she is not an artist, there is an art in steel building, in a packed train, or even in the traffic jam.
The art is everything in our daily life.
The only thing is whether or not we can see it.
Do we need art in our life?
The question was only irrelevant after all.