Now, I'll admit that I'm biased on this topic. I'm a professional musician and composer who also dabbles in painting and creative writing, and I'm married to a writer. Needless to say, art has had a profound impact on my life. Art is the reason I have a life at all.
I feel like artistic creativity is one of the most beautiful gifts God gave us. The ability to express ourselves, to take a piece of our soul and share it with other people...it can be amazingly powerful.
Music, obviously, has always been the most profound for me. I feel like music (at least certain music) is as close as we can come to hearing God's true voice here on earth. I regard many of the great composers almost as prophets, delivering words from God in a universal language that everyone can understand.
I started piano when I was five, but it was when I was seven that I think my fate as a musician became sealed. My mother took me to a performance of Gabriel Faure's Requiem, and I remember thinking that I had never heard anything so beautiful and it seemed to me like magic, or like God Himself was speaking to me in words that I didn't understand, but never wanted to stop hearing. After the concert, my mother took me back stage (she knew many of the musicians) and one of her friends let me hold his violin. It was a life-long love affair at first sight. My mother promptly found me a teacher and I started lessons. I guess the rest is history.
We're the only organisms on Earth that have artistic creativity, and if that's not proof that God loves us, then I don't know what is. Granted, not everybody is artistically talented, or even cares much about art of any kind, and that's okay, but never a day goes by that I don't thank God for both my musical talent, and an environment that nurtured it early in my life. I feel like I've been granted a divine privilage, been let in on the most beautiful secrets in the world. Music, far more than conventional prayer, is how I've always communicated best with God. I never feel closer to God than when I'm playing. When I play, all my anxieties and self-doubt melt away and I feel like it's just the two of us, speaking in a way that transcends human language.
Something my partner and I have often talked about is how many, even most people who are truly artistically talented are...well, not very good at life, or are dealt a very rough hand outside of their artistic talent. Drug addiction, various mental illness, troubled relationships (both romantic and otherwise), often tragic early death. I'm certainly no exception. Frankly, I'm a total basket case and it's a miracle that I'm alive typing this right now. From about the age of 15 onward, I was quite certain that I would never see my 30th birthday. For a great deal of that time, I was fairly certain that I didn't even want to. But I celebrated my 31st birthday on the 13th of this month (I'm never offended by late gifts wink ), and I couldn't be more grateful to have been proven wrong. I'm still crazy as a loon and have a great deal of wounds that I very much doubt will ever fully heal. I'm not looking for pity. Quite the opposite. Perhaps that's the price I pay to have been granted such a wonderful gift. Perhaps one has to know great suffering to better understand great beauty. I don't know. But I wouldn't trade it. I'd go through it all again before I'd lose this amazing musical connection that I have. And if that's not a sign of my total and utter commitment, I don't know what is, because my past very nearly destroyed me many, many times. It's only through God's infinite mercy that it didn't.
I'm damaged, but I'm not broken, and to be perfectly honest, all the damage has done wonders for myself as an artist. Maybe that's why so many brilliantly gifted people have suffered so much. It's the artist's job to turn their suffering into something profound and beautiful that can change and inspire the lives of others. Perhaps artists suffer to bring them closer to God. Jesus suffered to save mankind. If that's not proof that profound goodness can come out of suffering, then I don't know what is.
So, I guess what I'm asking the rest of you is two things: firstly, how has art (of any medium) affected your life? Secondly, if you've ever had to suffer severely, do you feel that there was ultimately a purpose for it? Do you believe that perhaps God sometimes allows us to suffer because He knows that it's something you need to go through to do the work He has planned for you?
Reply
