This I Believe...

A fun paper I did for one of my college courses recently. A meditation on the value of art to both societies and individuals.

This I Believe...
By Ben Bjostad

I freeze in a crowded room at the National Gallery of Art; my eyes lock on to a painting hanging on the wall, a shadow-drenched portrait of lonely souls wandering the desolate streets of the city that never sleeps. I see my reflection on the canvas, a half-century away. Bandwidth opens across the temporal separation and I know that Edward Hopper has felt what I feel. He has captured my inner core with paint years before I was born.

I skip class to finish a novel, lost in a crowd of people at a boarding school where it seems as if no one cares whether I live or die. There is no place where I belong. I am Holden Caulfield, and J.D. Salinger has told my story through a fictional creation.

I am walking across campus; my iPod feeds sound waves through my headphones, and electronic beats combine with the string section of a symphony orchestra to create a tapestry of emotion in my head. My fingers move to the beat; my soul plugs in to the band, Hybrid, through the electronic gadgetry that transmits it to me.

Art is the lens through which I can see myself for who I truly am. Art is the medium in which I discover myself. I connect to others through the creative artifacts that they leave behind, and my own art is meant to open my own soul to the world.

I seek to clarify and explore the recesses of myself through creative expression, to mine my soul for truths that I cannot find in any other way. I find those same truths in the art of others, in any form that it takes. Creative expression is a form of interpersonal bandwidth; it is a way to break down the walls between souls, across time and space. Those connections help me discover new ways of looking at myself and the world around me.

I believe that art is my most pure reason for living; it is the most enduring and meaningful remnant of a civilization. Art allows me to transcend myself. No one will care, years from now, about the cars that I’ve owned or the places that I have lived. No one will connect with me through my resume. Art is eternal truth. Creative expression is the universal language, the conduit in which my soul meets the world.

This is the greatest gift that art grants me. This is art’s undeniable value. Through the connections granted by artistic expression, I know that I am not alone. Through my own art, I reach out to others, and open up the bandwidth to communicate with no barriers. I leave my mark on the world in the hope that it strikes a chord in others, and others mark my own soul in return.