In his novel Timequake, Kurt Vonnegut wrote that art is important because, “Many people need desperately to receive this message: ‘I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.’”
I think this is true, especially when the person who sends the message can write or paint or sing much better than the recipient, who then not only feels less lonely but also, benefitting from the creator’s more effective expression, knows herself better, too.
I bet there is a handy German noun for this notion and if there is such a word, it would have been a good runner-up title for Wallance Shawn’s collection Essays (Haymarket Books, 2009). Read the rest of this entry »
