To be honest, I don’t know where to start with this essay or if you can call it that. I was just thinking of the things that happened in the past few days and I can’t seem to contain the things that I want to say. I seem to have a true love for poetry and after years of not writing, I started again. It’s my way of coping with anxiety and depression that gnawed my existence for a year. It was a fruitful way to express my emotions, doubts, fears, even happiness and relief. And it still is.
If I will be perfectly honest, I would say that arts in any of its form is what makes life beautiful. Without it, everything is boring. I read once that Science, Math and the so-called “academic” subjects makes our life better: technology, innovation, knowledge, creation of products and services. I will not argue with that because it is. However, arts, as author, Jhumpa Lahiri said, “I think that the power of art is the power to wake us up, strike us to our depth and change us.” Art is one of the best means to have an understanding of our existence. You might ask why. Because it provides lots of avenues to express who we are. It’s a way to show what we truly think and feel in a very creative way. It is also an opportunity to delve deeper into our soul, as I did. It can be in the form of dance, songs, lettering, embroidery, handicrafts, creative journals, even poetry which I came to love. I’m not expert on Arts so I will not dwell deeper on that. But two of this grant access to the deepest corners of my mind and heart.
My love for poetry enables me to express my feelings and ideas or perceptions on various things ranging from politics, love, happiness, even on certain objects like glasses. Weird right? But I did. I made a poem about glasses out of a request from a friend and I did it for 5-minutes tops. It sounds that I’m bragging, but no. I usually create poems for about 5-10 minutes. In the past, my poems were all about my feelings, my anxieties, my fears. To be honest, I don’t have any specific inspiration but whatever comes into mind, I write about it. The longest I wrote I think is for an hour. I have posted it in my Facebook account and the inspiration is about Covid-19, the disease that is currently taking a lot of lives in the world. And it’s a play of words for a simple thought I’ve seen in Wikipedia: Coronavirus is an anagram of carnivorous. And just like any carnivores, citizens of the world become a prey to it, claiming lives even at this moment while I’m writing this.
So, you might think that another novice writer is writing about Covid-19? No. I’m talking about arts and how it changes my life. My second art whom I love dearly for many years now is dance. Dancing has always been a part of me even I have “left feet” during my primary days. Dancing taught me that every move, every step I take, every gestures of the body, is choreograph to express a thought or represent the song it dances. I don’t have a formal training in dance, mind you, but I learned through watching and making the steps in my mind, literally. I choreographed several dances but my favorite genre is hip hop and contemporary because it enabled me to experiment on certain moves and create my own style of dancing.
Poetry and Dance maybe different form of arts but it did change my life and continues to change it. In this time that the world is facing a lot of issues and problem, leaning through science, technology, political science, economics, diplomacy even history will help solve this issue and once again provide the needs to the people. This disease also shows us the best and worst of mankind. But arts bring together the humanity of people. Today, if you’ll try to look on various media, you see people being creative in their own way. Some may see it as a way to waste their time as they are bored to death in their house and it is true. But some are using it to express their talents, their ideals, their experiences and even their fears. I would like to say that even in these trying times, let’s find ways to be creative. Let’s use the one thing that we can’t have back: Time. Let this be a time to rekindle our passion for whatever it is that makes our heart beat faster. Let us appreciate the slow pace of things and have a moment to pause in life. And what might be a better way than to lean on the arts and make something on the remaining days of the quarantine.
- Poetry and Dance: How it helps my Sanity - May 20, 2020
- Fortress of my Soul - April 16, 2020
- To My Long Lost Love - April 15, 2020
