Art, Emotion, And Muses

A repost from October 2009

Michael and I

I got to participate in one of the coolest things ever.

I got to experience a photo shoot with the hugely talented and visionary Michael Baxter. Internationally known as the premier belly-dance photographer in the world, he was willing to meet with me and work on some portrait and retro-style pinup photographs.

Michael is the sweetest person you'll ever meet. He's generous, kind, and the very definition of artist. In between shots, we talked about what makes a photo or a paragraph or music into art, something transcendental.

Not to get all Aristotelian on everyone's asses, but we kept coming back to the idea that art evokes emotion. For example, tragedy arouses fear and pity, then creates a catharsis for those emotions. All art forms revolve around emotion- the arousal, examination, and release thereof.

Aristotle, author of the Poetics.

The visual arts can suggest a story in a single image. The written arts can suggest actions and meanings that re-create or imitate the world.

Thank you, Michael, for being a Muse for me.

Blast from the past.

Here's a  post from December 2009. Yeah, I've been here a while now!

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Gilgamesh and Enkidu

The most powerful myths are about extremity. They force us to go beyond our experience. There are moments when we all, in one way or another, have to go to place we have never seen, and do what we have never done before. (p. 3)

Bernini's Apollo and Daphne

[Myth] enables us to place our lives in a larger setting that reveals an underlying pattern and gives us a sense that against all the depressive and chaotic evidence to the contrary, life had meaning and value.

A Short History of Myth by Karen Armstrong.