I cannot count the number of times I’ve remarked, “That changed my life.” It’s an exorbitant phrase, one that apparently—so I’ve been told—shouldn’t be used so casually when discussing art. I toss it around with nonchalance, proclaiming it at any mention of works that I adore. Accusations of recency bias have thus hounded me, my incessant passion denounced a diminishment of true artistic merit or simply something impossible to feel at every artistic turn.
There’s also the allegation of the phrase’s hyperbole: Do I exaggerate? Do I announce everything as my new ‘favourite’ to construct my changing preferences as an illusion of progress? If only it were so simple.
Art—music, film, writing, visual culture, and everything in between—has meant so much to me for as long as I can remember. It has taught me to fall in love with life, through the ways it thrills and warps and wounds and inspires. For me, the statement, “That changed my life,” is never an exaggeration. That is what art is for.
A few years ago, I read Richard Powers’ novel The Overstory, and—you heard it here first—it changed my life. Growing up in Northern California, I was constantly surrounded by the landscapes of towering trees; douglas fir, eucalyptus, and redwoods cascade through the sweeping turns of my childhood memory. Powers’ book sets its narrative within these familiar environments, weaving together the enduring presence of trees with human existence, as humanity sowed its harmful roots into the earth. I’d go through my days thinking about the trees’ witnessing eyes as I rode the MUNI bus through Golden Gate Park. The storms that washed branches and logs into the street as obstructions became a reflection of the trees’ ubiquitous becoming and death. It was an embarrassing realization, really, taking for granted something that so often surrounded me.
The Overstory made a mark on me. It demonstrated that artistic narratives had the power to infuse intense emotions into even the most common part of everyday life. Powers’ environmental novel transformed the way I saw my home, my childhood, and the trees in my garden whose shadows grew alongside me.
Art makes visible within me the emotions I would have never known were present. Music, especially, confronts its audience with intimacies of the artist’s mind, for its power is to harness sincerity and intention through an auditory soundscape. Magnificent songwriting elucidates this navigation of emotion and life: Joni Mitchell’s sombre Blue and Kara Jackson’s reflective Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love? are exquisite records that colour my perceptions of experiencing love and loss as a young person.
Unpalatable art also makes me love the world, in all of its complex states. Art isn’t just beautiful, nor does it have to be, as it demonstrates all the facets of our complicated world. It can be putrid and vitriolic; still and smooth; boisterous and unforgiving. It is anything the artist could possibly want it to be. Being shown this sense of interiority through art is what makes one feel less alone in our increasingly fragmented world.
The twanging teardrops of Bill Callahan’s melody in “To Be Of Use” are aching, haunting listeners with its sorrowful soundscape. Singing of his desires for purpose—almost to the point of commodified surrender—Callahan’s self-portrait is far from enjoyable. And yet, it lingers constantly in my mind with its uncompromising tenderness.
Creation puts a mirror to our reality as an intimate exploration of humanity’s endlessness. We experience so much in accessing art; it’s a privileged glimpse into our own interior lives that we could never begin to comprehend without it. For me, the creation of melody, visual art, or fictive narrative makes tangible the complicated nature of my own existence. In living within the worlds constructed by artistic visions, I come closer to finding myself in what feels like an unrelenting vastness.
It’s difficult to fully encapsulate into words all that art can do for a person. However seemingly minuscule its effects, it’s never wrong to proudly proclaim its influence on one’s personhood. “That changed my life” is never an exaggeration if it did, in fact, change your life. Through art, we know so many lives—first and foremost, our own.
