Creating with Intention

For a bit of time, I've felt tension on figuring out what to write about. It's not unfamiliar from some former tension — what am I now throwing into the digital void? These spaces aim to provide people a way to bridge one another that aren't as easy to cross physically. What we lose in the physical, we try to emulate in the digital to varying degrees of success. Social media is one form of this emulation, blogging; another. I'm finding that instead of participating deeper in what right-wing Internet relish^[1], that I should be trying to participating the age-old tradition of making art. That's if I want to add something to pool of instantaneously archived information we swim in on the Internet.

When one thinks of art, it commonly goes to the idea of providing room to convey the idea of the expressions of expensive (or stolen) works in publicly available (but privately owned) viewing houses. This is one of the accessible form of public art for those living in the metropolis zones of the Western World. Computers and the Internet provided an exploration of extended forms of media distribution. Video games are an interesting introduction to this space. It's only about 30 years old in its form. I mention it because, prior to video games, a public art that could immerse people in a semi-autonomous way would be the theatre play. Stay with me — the way a performance of a play can be unique for each audience based on their response; video games can provide a unique experience for the player — an emulation of a play. They both allow (and sometimes require) engagement from those spaces. Social media has provided something of a glue layer for other forms of art that you can see happen a lot more whenever a notable artist releases music^[2]. Instead of folks jumping up and dancing together at a concert; in its best form, social media depicts a open music cafe with folks listening and engaging with music together.

When the art is something that provokes thought and conversation while being engaging and record-breaking, we get very rare moments for growth in our collective understanding. One example of this is when Beyonce's Lemonade album was released. We got conversation about abolition coming to the table within an ecosystem that would have talking on anything else^[3]. Many have ideas as to why things might have not materialized in some institutionalized way. It'd be a distraction from the work that does exist and grew in numbers in reaction to these ideas — still strong to this day.

Art is what pulls people across class, regions and other markers of division together. The ability to produce art in this time is vital and controlled. I always encourage folks to check out the independent arts of every medium to help give air to stories that you want to see more of — photography, food, music, clothing, jewelry; you name it. I'm glad to see many of them grow over the last decade^[4]. There's a lot we can do when it comes to having more control over how we tell stories and what we can teach each other. Art serves as a medium that can be as accessible, if not more so, than reading. In a well planned out approach, it could help improve our intelligence in multiple ways.

This has faintly been on my mind since 2022, when I was considered going back to school for music. I was thinking about learning how to play the saxophone again. Life got quite complicated around then so I halted all thinking about it. But the idea of producing art, especially something that I could speak on, was important to me. I'm opening this up to anyone else who's been nervous about the idea of making art. It doesn't have to win an award, but it can be just a way to express yourself. Self-expression guided on one's own means is needed in a curated world such as ours.