People always ask me, “Why do you do it?”
Why do I study art history? Why do I go into a field without prospects? Why do I subject myself to forced graduate school? Why do I make it so difficult?
For those of you who know me, I’m literally the living definition of a Type A workaholic. I’m OCD, frantic, over caffeinated, moving at the speed of light, always trying to think five steps ahead and overachieve. I also have exactly three emotions: exhausted, angry, or in desperate need of caffeine.
As I wandered the Walker Arts Center today, I figured out why I do it.
It’s for that one moment.
Today, it was staring at "Cut" by Kara Walker. I did research on her and her connection to Michel Foucault for about a year.
You know how you hear the hopeless romantics talk about that moment that took their breath away? The surprise gesture? The first kiss?
For me, it’s art.
Art is my love and my drug. I turn a corner to a new piece, and it takes my breath away. Further contemplation creates this twinge as I ponder and lose myself in the piece. I fall into it and began to feel the same emotion and the same moment in time that’s in the piece.
It’s watching a work of video art and losing yourself. That eight minute video loop seems like 30 seconds and you just crave more. You want it to go on longer. You suddenly become one with the piece, and it creates this experience.
It’s about the experience where you feel something because you’ve simultaneously lost yourself and found yourself in that moment.
That’s why I do it. Because I crave that moment. Art is my drug. I need it to survive. I need my days at the museum and free time spent with art books to be complete.
And to me, the brief moments where I feel that twinge and find myself in a work of art are priceless. To me, years of graduate school spent pouring over books so that I can understand and experience these moments is worth every second.
Who knows? Maybe I’ll learn enough that one day, I can teach someone else so they can have these moments?
Why do I do it?
For the moment.
Being there in that moment with you is amazing. I have learned so much and experienced great moments with you, thereby creating my own moments with certain works of art!! Keep going for those moments!
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