The Need for Expression

The Need for Expression

    Why does a person need to paint, write, sculpt, sing or dance?

It is to express the self. To express the emotions, the energy that needs to flow. Because when energy stagnates, it produces negative effects. The need for expression is called ART. But this need of art, this need of expression appears absurd, unnecessary to some, just a whim of a whimsical mind.

     Art is a concept known to people only who are aware of the internal form of energy. Who can experience and know the parallel forms of internal and external worlds. Who is aware and believes that life is not just the physical or material self but it is a simultaneous existence in spirit and form.

Art or any expression is the extension of this spirit, while material gains and achievements are extensions of the form.

     When thoughts and ideas take the physical form, they are transformed as a beautiful painting, sculpture, writing, etc. that speaks for itself. They convey the message of the heart through these physical forms. And thus the best thoughts and ideas are conveyed as visible shapes and forms, visible to other people.

     When such art forms are created, out of pure impulse, they form a channel for the flow of energy and it gives immense pleasure and satisfaction to its creator. And when a purpose of serving humanity is attached to that art the achievement is immeasurable.

     Expressions of thoughts and ideas are therefore not a whim, but an absolute necessity. It is the need that lets the self grow, evolve, day after day, to attain that supreme contentment. It is very well explained by Ayn Rand,

“Art does have a purpose and does serve a human need, only it is not a material need, but a need of man’s consciousness. Art is inextricably tied to man’s survival – not to his physical survival, but to that on which his physical survival depends, to the preservation and survival of his consciousness.”

      The example of J.D. Slinger, born in 1919, in Manhattan, New York, the reclusive author of 

‘The Catcher in the Rye’, who died a natural death at the age of 91 explains the purpose very well. The book earned him fame and the title of a ‘Cultural Icon’ in 1951. Over whelmed by his sudden fame, he retreated to a hermit-like existence in Cornish, New Hampshire and fiercely guarded his privacy, as reported in the Times of India.

      What made Salinger do so we do not know. Was it to maintain his creativity or to defend his privacy?

Fifty years in solitude, away from the limelight and still writing. There was purity in Salinger’s separating from the world, whatever his motives. He did not care to be published or to be renowned. He just cared to write, to explore and express himself.

His silence and solitude for half a century speaks for itself and so will his work speak if it is at all to be published. It speaks about the core truth of the need and the affluence of the creative life, of the need for expression in one’s life.