Art Can Give Your Inner World a Voice
By Dr. Julie Davelman
Sometimes there are no words. The pain is too great or the experience too hard to be able to find the right words. When that happens, many turn to the arts to aid them in self-expression. Music, art, sculptures, and poems may help someone share with others what they themselves could not.
Finding a song that fits your emotions exactly may feel like unearthing a treasure. You may have felt that you were the only one who has ever felt this particular heartbreak or experienced a loss of this magnitude, but if you find a song with lyrics that put into words these hurts, you may start to feel less alone. These songs are proof that someone else has been there too. Others have hurt like you have and made it through to the other side. At other times, finding music that matches your mood may feel like you are getting permission to feel the way you do. Others have been angry when faced with your circumstance, so you feel validated.
This does not only apply to music. For many people, a work of art can make them feel like the artist saw inside them and put on canvas what was in their heart. This helps people feel seen and feel less alone, especially when things are very hard. That sense of validation may be enough to help someone keep looking for a way to cope.
Who doesn’t have an “angry,” “sad” and “happy” playlist? These carefully selected songs exist in part so that we can rely on the artist’s gifts to communicate to others what is inside us. Works of art turn from things that help us understand ourselves to pieces that help others understand us. When people try to communicate how they feel to others, sometimes words may feel insufficient, or one’s thoughts may be so jumbled that trying to put them into a coherent story that explains the internal experience is too difficult. At times like these, art often comes to the rescue. Finding visual images that reflect the turmoil inside us can serve as a tool of expression. Think of the people who are close to you. Imagine walking into a room and hearing a particular song. You may understand what your loved one’s mood is before they utter a word. The music had told you how they feel. Same may be true based on the movie they choose to watch or a book they choose to read.
That being said, it is important to remember that one’s experience of art is very individual. A song that may represent one person’s anger may represent power to someone else. You may see sadness in a painting based on its colors while someone else sees hope based on the movement depicted in the painting. Thus, before assuming you know what someone is trying to communicate through art, you should ask to make sure you are seeing and hearing things the same way. These windows into someone’s inner-most places are just that - opportunities to look inside. It does not necessarily mean that you know what you are looking at. Understanding is further complicated by the fact that meaning changes over time.
For example, you may begin to see resilience conveyed in a song that a younger you only thought of as sad. These tokens of communication may also change over time as the person’s understanding of themselves and those around them changes. Finally, sometimes different mediums must be used to convey the same feeling to different people. For instance, you may need to tell you partner that you feel like the guy depicted in Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” while you tell your best friend that you feel like person in Jelly Roll’s “Nothing Left at All.”
We often think of art and music as sheer entertainment created for our enjoyment. However, at times it can be so much more. It can give us a sense of a shared experience with the artist that makes us feel validated, and it can give us words to tell others about how we feel when we don’t have them.
Throughout history, access to the arts have been a privilege of the select few, but in today’s connected world, we all enjoy access to this powerful expressive and healing aspect of our culture.
