"you built me palaces out of paragraphs,
you built cathedrals"
-Lin Manuel Miranda, Hamilton.
Some say that Pliny the Elder, an ancient Roman author, recounted the story of how the art form of sculpture was born out of love. According to the legend, a young Corinthian maid traced the shadow of her lover before he set out to war. On the days to come, when she felt lonely, the young woman would fill the outline of her tracing with clay. Slowly but surely, the Corinthian maid created the first statue.
Today we know that the first forms of what we could consider art (illustration, creative writing, songwriting…) were not actually art. This is to say, their purpose were purely practical. Painters would craft portraits reminiscent of ID’s, the first scribes would synthesize the world around them into letters and numbers for later use, and song writers would craft rhymes that served for no more than memorization of how many steps to the left was the river. Art was a gradual creation. A highlight in a painting, because it would look nice. A hand furiously writing down last night’s dream. One word more than necessary, but that completed the melody just right.
Art became the express lane between the mind of the artist and the rest of the world. Suddenly we could speak in rhyme, and metaphor, and simile. We could illustrate things that used to only live in our imagination. We learned to riff, and to use melodies and motifs. Through art, the first creatives were able to escape the prisons of their own mind, and let their consciousness migrate into physical, tangible works of passion. We opened Pandora’s box, and we haven’t looked back ever since.
The arts became records of the human experience. Artists document the world around them, not as it is, but as it feels. Through art we travel back in time. You can pick up a book and fathom the aching heart of a greek king trying to get home. You can look at a painting and feel the fiery will of a french revolution. You can listen to a song and be possessed by the pains of an immigrant, rising up. Through art, we are given a frozen snapshot of not only the affairs and times of the past, but of how the artist felt them.
Words became magic. Paragraphs became design. They can transform, twist, and bend unto themselves. Not because they are thoughts, it means that they are not real. Many imaginary things hold power over us. Money, laws, the very concept of a nation. Ideas shape our reality. Whose profession is this, become something bigger than themselves. The apotheosis of the artist; every time I write, I am creating. I am shaping the world around me.
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