Art

I have studied and taught philosophy, and I have found I am very comfortable with ontological, axiological, and epistemological issues, but that I feel like I am on foreign, shifting soil when I venture into aesthetics. I don't love or appreciate art naturally, but I have always longed to produce it. I have made nice furniture, exotic pens, and I try to write. But these are not examples of art, more like applications of art-like algorithms with their jigs, templates,and thesaurus. I think art should be an exposure of your soul that manifests itself in order connect to the souls of others. We move through our universe bonded by and limited to each other through light and vibration, but connected by art. I realize that this lack of communion with art is a reflection of my enduring alienation to those around me.
Unfortunately, I do not have a natural affinity to art, unlike beer that I loved and understood immediately. I now adore Van Gogh, but only after learning about his life and the etiology of his expression. I read books and poems, watch movies, hear songs, see paintings, but I don't often feel that connection to my soul. I am, however, often touched and sometimes momentarily inspired, but not connected the way I want to be. Oddly, even unfathomably, I see art elsewhere in the world. When I see a woman on the streets of Dar es Salaam, crippled and bent over, dressed in rags, walking with two sets of flip flops (one on her feet, one her hands), I feel what must be art. When I see teachers working in refugee camps, smiling as they patiently, lovingly work with students, I feel what must be art. When I watch artists working on their art, I feel what must be art. I just don't make that connection when I see the product once removed from its creative process.
Yet still, I want to produce art, I want to release a part of my soul through my hands. I want to create something that eclipses the context of its creation, I want to be artistic.
So maybe it is not art I should conceive, but the articulation of the art around me. Even as I am writing this, I realize I have misspoke - there is more art than I thought around me that connects me spiritually to others. The United Nations supervisors working in Jordan against long odds, who give everything to the schools there, their students, faculty and community. My friend who makes beautiful cakes that touch so many hearts, her friend and mine who writes jealously about his country and culture, a friend who lectures brilliantly and passionately about the beauty of antiquity,my cousin who watches Hamlet with his young son, an older friend who is enthralled by the extrapolative possibilities of technology in math, my daughters who constantly forgive me, a secretary who nurtures an entire faculty and staff, and a million less fortunate souls who manage to fight through their days with dignity and courage. There is art all around me.
One day though, I will produce a work of art that will inspire people to consociate, something that will reify a communal bit of our humanity without the necessity of explanation or analysis. There is inspiration all about, artists everywhere. I am working on it.