Thoughts on Art

I am of the opinion that all the fine arts are connected and all help one another.


For instance, just yesterday I performed Lady Macbeth’s monologue at the theater festival. Afterwards, I came home and practiced a session of piano, specifically Chopin’s 1st Concerto. Now, I’d been thinking about ballet as my multi-genre paper for creative writing is closely tied to it. And as I played this giant 50-page piece, I couldn’t help thinking about all the other performing arts I’d ever done. And I came to the conclusion that they help with my music a lot. And, probably, vice versa.

You see, theater helps with music because it helps you learn how to find and express emotion infinitely better. And it helps you take something like a script or notes and turn it into something more, the way a good play or true music will be. You learn to see all the hidden nuances behind the little black marks on the page.

And dance helps with music because you can visualize dancers as you play. Costumes, moves…it helps you see what, perhaps, your audience is seeing, and it reminds you that things have to flow from one thing to another, not suddenly, but with grace, as a dancer does. Swift fingers do dance across the ivory keys, controlled, creating something beautiful.

With the help of other things, the art of music can be furthered in many respects.

It works vice versa, too. The knowledge of music helps you understand and feel when you dance. If you don’t know anything about music, how can you relate and react to it when you dance? And music is often a part in theater…music brings intensity to movies, everything to musicals, interest to plays. And you never know when performing experience comes in dead handy. Dance helps you learn to orchestrate movement in theater and to be on time, precise, and controlled—and theater teaches dancers performing and emotion.

After a while of this, you realize, of course it’s interconnected. All life is interconnected. Everything you do in one walk of life can be transferred to another somehow—because although you learn specific things for each, you also learn lessons about confidence, about learning, about different parts of life and about different kinds of people. You learn how to work with others instead of against them, you learn how to strive for your very best; you learn patience and determination and perseverance.

I guess that’s why I love the arts, even though sometimes they drive me crazy. Art can give meaning to the rest of life. It can enhance the experience we have on earth. Art can drive us to realizations as we explore its mysteries, which we may not fully understand (/reference to a poem from 4th period), but which can stir something inside of each and every one of us. It lends another dimension to the theater of life, something both real and not, something strange and surreal and infinitely beautiful.