Ethan Hawke Quote on Art and Why Human Creativity Matters

“Do you think human creativity matters? Well, most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about poetry, right? They have a life to live and they’re really not that concerned with Allen Ginsberg’s poems or anyone’s poems—until, their father dies; they go to a funeral; you lose a child; someone breaks your heart. And all of a sudden you’re desperate for making sense out of this life. ‘Has anybody felt this bad before? How did they come out of this cloud?’ Or the inverse—something great. You meet somebody and your heart explodes—you love them so much you can’t even see straight. You’re dizzy. ‘Did anybody feel like this before? What is happening to me?’ And that’s when art’s not a luxury—it’s actually sustenance. We need it.”

Ethan Hawke, TED

Beyond the Quote (276/365)

Has anybody felt as bad as you might be feeling? Yes. And worse. How did they come out of that cloud? They wrote about it. Talked about it. Created something with it. They expressed it. Connected with other people about it. And many of them left it there for people, like you, to find and possibly connect with, too. Have you found what they left for you? Or have you been distracted? Have you even tried to search or are you too busy not looking? Human creativity—art—is the sustenance we need to nourish our souls.

Art is not a luxury. Art is exactly what we need when we don’t have the luxury of feeling normal. When we’re feeling normal—when we’re not feeling good or bad—just content, art isn’t really on our minds. Just like when we’re feeling satiated—when we’re not hungry or overly full—when we’re just right, food isn’t really on our minds. It’s when our equilibrium leaves us and we become hungry again that food dominates our thinking and eventually becomes the ONLY thing we think about. With emotions, when we lose our equilibrium and start feeling high or low, then it is ART that we need to regain our balance.

What I think is an important point to ponder is, how often do you feel normal? As in, how often do you not feel deviated one way or another and just feel… content? With the ever changing world and the constantly evolving emotional landscape within, I’m willing to bet that it isn’t too often that you’re not leaning in one direction or another. In my estimation, we’re constantly ebbing and flowing, feeling high and getting pulled down low, overthinking and under appreciating, and we’re constantly trying to figure it all out as it happens in real time. It’s how the emotional roller coaster of life tends to go, eh? And when we get stuck in a dark cloud or when we’re dizzy from the rush of love, art is what can pull us back to equilibrium. But, many of us don’t go to art, do we?

Where do we turn instead? To distraction. We turn to passive entertainment, video games, social media sites, and never-ending news to get our minds off of our imbalances. We try to forget rather than understand. We try to suppress rather than express. We try to avoid rather than confront. And we pay for it. How? By making the swings of imbalance even more dramatic. Our highs swing higher and our lows swing lower because we don’t reset our emotional center back to neutral. If you push someone who is sitting on a swing, they will move a little. If you push someone who is already swinging, they move a lot. The same is true for us.

So, if you want to remain more centered when life pushes you from outside circumstances or inside emotional storms, turn to art. Both for consumption and self-expression. Because as Hawke points out in the same TED video quoted above, in order to express yourself you have to know yourself. And you get to know yourself by challenging yourself, confronting your inner workings, and trying to make sense of what you discover. And as you begin to (and continue to) express what you find, you’ll form bonds and connections with others. Real bonds. Not fake, “we’re friends on Facebook” bonds. I’m talking about deep emotional “we’ve been through some sh*t together” bonds. And THAT is how we heal.

We heal through dialog. And art is the ultimate platform for dialog because it’s self-expression at its finest. It’s self-expression in its most raw form. It puts us in our most vulnerable state and allows us to share with others who we really are under the masks, shields, and walls we’ve built up. If you look closely, that’s where all of the best art in the world comes from—a place of vulnerability and deep feeling. The more superficial the feeling, the less special and noteworthy the art. So, when you’re feeling out of balance and you don’t know where to start—start by consuming the art made by others. Has anybody felt this explosion of love before? Undoubtedly. Have they learned how to make sense of it? Yes, that too. Then, as you continue to consume, remember that dialog is a two-way street. Respond with your take on what you’re feeling and make/ create something of your own. And so it goes.

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