I was originally going to make my customary weekend posts this week. But amid everything going on in this country, and the changes to my own way of thinking, I decided to write about something different:

Why art is important.

Over the past year, something happened to me. It started last summer when I began listening to classical music. At first, it was just another one of those things millennials like myself do: trying to improve my body and my mind. Realizing I didn’t listen to classical much, and understanding the positive effects it has on the brain, I started listening to classical music at certain times of day. Initially, it was mainly while walking or reading.

Because I’m me, I also started researching classical music. The history of music, styles, composers, and so forth. I began mid-summer by listening to music by Baroque composers. A month or so later, I moved on to classical. Then, as summer drew to a close, I found my way to the Romantic period.

And then, everything changed.

I began to listen to classical more and more often. I started listening to it when I wrote. And when I worked. And when I was relaxing. Years after I stopped playing piano, I rediscovered my love for Romantic composers. It was like catching up with old friends, and remembering what I liked about them.

Soon, listening to classical music went from something I did out of a sense of obligation to something I looked forward to. I began to look forward to it, rewarding myself for completing important tasks with a cup of tea and the latest flute sonata I’d come across.

Over the past year, my writing style has changed dramatically. I dare say it’s been very much for the better; after spinning my wheels since the pandemic, I took a huge leap forward. I credit that partly with reading more fiction, especially newer fiction (for years I’d mostly read the classics of science fiction, most of which were written in the sixties). But I also believe a large part of that progress is due to me rediscovering classical music. Its affect on my mind, my thought process, my emotional awareness.

Since that realization, I’ve made it a point to immerse myself in art. I read more. I watch videos of people painting, or performing concertos, symphonies. And I truly believe my experience of our world is richer for it.

Unfortunately, right now in the United States art is under attack. Not just in the obvious ways, like banning books, but in other, more subtle, more insidious ways. From changes at the Library of Congress and the Kennedy Center to attempts to defund the National Endowment for the Arts, there are forces in our country that are trying to limit not just access to art, but art itself. And if they succeed, we will lose the one, big thing that makes our species unique. Much as I hate to admit it, even science is not enough to set us apart. Science is universal. Intelligent beings elsewhere in the universe have probably had their own Einsteins, or Darwins, or Hawkings.

But none of them have a Mozart. Or a Shakespeare. Or a Rembrandt, or Da Vinci, or Van Gogh. Those are ours, and ours alone.

Of all things, the final step in this personal revelation I owe to Peewee Herman. While reading an article in The New York Times this morning about an upcoming documentary on Paul Reubens, I learned something that shocked me: Paul Reubens was a patron of art. He was an artist himself, his Peewee character being the most obvious example of his work. But even Peewee was meant as a form of art: a satirical depiction of a man who desperately wanted to be a stand-up comedian but would never make it.

And Reubens devoted his life to art, hosting shows and fostering talent, mentoring actors, comedians, musicians, and other performance artists. Most of all, he showed up: when he attended shows by fellow artists, he always sat front and center, lavishing them with laughter and applause. Because he knew the best thing anyone can give an artist is an audience.

So I want to offer this vital, timely piece of advice: experience art. Immerse yourself in it. Revel in it, in all its forms, whether it looks like something you’d like or not. Even if you don’t appreciate the material, appreciate the process. The technique, the talent, the work. It has taken me a long time to accept that, as a fiction writer, I am an artist. But, speaking now as an artist, I can tell you that every artist ends up on the page, or the canvas, or in the notes, the lines. Art is a labor of love, and also of anguish, joy, suffering, loss, and recovery.

And perhaps most of all, art is a key part of our shared humanity. Our art, in all its forms, is what makes us us.

In our world today, the internet places the sum total of human artistic expression in our pockets. Yet we fill our heads with pre-digested nonsense, playing mindless games and binging on TikTok and YouTube. We watch videos of people ranting and raving, when we could be watching a painter paint. Or an orchestra performing Prokofiev. When we could be watching humans doing human things.

So do yourself a favor: experience art. Visit your local museum. Attend book readings and concerts. Study paintings and listen to Beethoven. And in doing so, celebrate the one thing that makes humanity precious. The one thing that makes us who and what we are. – MK