That Without Which A Thing Cannot Exist

Got the feels last night. Big time. Feels I haven’t had for a long, long time. 

But before we get to the feels, let’s talk about a long, long, time – like 30,000 years.

Student came in yesterday and we end up talking about her ec’s (extra curriculars to folks not in higher ed) and she mentions theatre so we start rapping about acting and what-not and somehow I find my way to the importance of art and reference the documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams. (It was about now when her eyes started to roll back in her head and she mumbled something about getting to class and ran out of my office.)

Think about this, some 30,000 years ago, there were people fighting the elements and beasts and expecting to die before a 30^th birthday but astoundingly, found it necessary to put art on cave walls.

Why? 

Simple: art is essential to what it means to be human. Unequivocally essential. Sartre taught us that we are beings such that our being is in question and there is no greater proof of this than art. You and me we are not simply organisms playing out the life-clock with physiological tasks like nutrition intake and homeostasis. No no, we question our existence. We ask why we are here and what it all means, what am I supposed to do and that art on those cave walls from 30,000 years ago is nothing but the mirror of the human predicament, the embodiment of those questions. Nothing but.

Why else would humans from 30,000 years ago take the time to render the materials and put art on those walls when there are so many other seemingly pressing matters like oh I don’t, know, survival?

So art is essential (from the greek ontos – that without which a thing cannot exist).

Now fast forward to October 6, 2016 and we return to the feels.

My wife and I went to see the band Lake Street Dive last night. You probably haven’t heard of Lake Street Dive and for that I am actually thankful because I got to see them at a really small venue – in this case Fete Music Hall in Providence, which holds just over 700 people. For my Athens peeps, think upstairs at the Blue Gator.

Just stepping into the venue, jam packed with bodies, working your way through the mass, to get to the bar with the opening band blasting their horn section, took me back to my live music days in an instant. The rush of not only performing but just being close to performers in a small venue where the bass gets under your skin and the room becomes a collective musical/emotional ear filled me with the aforementioned feels.

And then there was Lake Street Dive. Now I could go on about the talent of Lake Street Drive and I could wax poetic about the harmonies and how they get so very much out of the so very minimal, really I could. But it is better just to show you and let your ears tell you.

With art being essential to our human condition, this means that artists are essential. And we love to be in the presence of artists. We admire talented artists, we smile at their music and we revel in our feels when they rock a side pony 

or when we know what they mean when they sing that they wished they had met you when they were 17. 

So get out there, even if it is a Thursday and you have to pay a sitter an ungodly amount of money; go see some artists. Or better yet, create some of your own art. It’s essential.