One Apple A Day #1179

Art is remembrance.

Eurasian tree sparrow illustration from Bijutsu Sekai (1893-1896) by Watanabe Seitei, a prominent Kacho-ga artist. Digitally enhanced from our own original publication.

Art, created or experienced, is a practice of subtraction. 

Art lessens the distance between the subject and the object, between the experiencer and the experience.

In this sense, art is like love. It dissolves the separation between the subject and the object.

Isn't that what we feel when we love someone? 

As if there are no veils between ourselves and the ones we love. A sense of oneness with others.

Such is the power of love.

When we truly love someone or something, we unlock our true power. As if we expand ourselves and suddenly realize, in and through the object of our love, that we are more.

As Viktor Frankl wrote, "the more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself."

So, art has this fundamental role in our society; to remind us that we are one with everything. That we are so much more. 

"As such, the artist is a function, not a person. It is the function within humanity that serves to restore the balance where separation, despair, conflict and hostility have eclipsed the light of love and understanding that lives in each of our hearts. Art is remembrance." — Rupert Spira from The Nature of Consciousness

The image is inspired by a poetry reading I attended yesterday evening.