Art, Beauty, and the Indescribable

I wrote this as a response to a post by Joel. I thought it was worthy of its own post:

You’ve hit on some of the ideas I have art in general (music, fiction, poetry, visual arts, etc.). There is something about a good story, painting, song or musical composition that is simply indescribable. Critics can analyze the living daylights out of it, and their conclusions might be completely accurate. But if it is a truly remarkable work of art, there will always be something more. Something beyond words.

I think the experience of art is a very spiritual thing. Robert Olen Butler, with whom I took a creative writing workshop, used the word “yearning.” To a more atheistic mind this might be understood as subconscious (another understanding of the nature of the same phenomenon). The best way I know to describe it is “spiritual resonance,” a deep, sometimes overwhelming familiarity we do not and probably will not ever understand.

The word “beauty” is also applicable. In my experience, “beauty” is not necessarily pleasant, happy, or uplifting. Ernest Hemingway’s best stories are not usually happy or pleasant, but they are always beautiful. Or think of a good blues song: “My baby done left me…” Blues singers have some of the roughest voices, but there is such passion that it doesn’t matter. It’s beautiful. Again, not pleasant. Not happy. But beautiful. The outpouring of a soul chock full of pain, anxiety, and worry.

For me, the act of worship is very similar but intensified and usually coupled with a feeling of happiness or joy rather than the deep sadness that usually accompanies some of the best novels I’ve read or a good John Lee Hooker song (“There’s a red house over yonder; that’s where my baby stay”).