The Sixth Sense: Biological right to art

Author: Kushal Chaudhari

Every human being, each one of us, is indiscriminately blessed with a sixth sense, which by all means distinguishes us from the rest of living creatures. Even you —the reader —as you read through, are wielding that very ability, to discern the appeal these words bear. This evolutionary inheritance, which helped our forefathers to reign supreme among all forms of creation, still flows through you. This is nothing but your natural ability to appreciate and interpret art! Spotting the colour contrast between fruits and leaves, forging symmetrical tools, and finding resourceful landscapes were skills essential for the caveman. Through these initial endeavours, we can trace our evolutionary preference to aesthetics.

Even today, every time you see a Dahlia flower and find it elegant, every time you buy clothes that suit you, every time you choose a picture for your profile among all those you have clicked, and every time you pause to see the regular arches on a bridge, you are unknowingly utilising this ability to enrich your life. You need not be a botanist, a fashion designer, a photographer, or an architect to do this. Your pursuit of all that is beautiful is an integral part of being human. As Dieter Uchtdorf, the acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, once said, “The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul.”

Yet, today we see people who say, ‘I am not a creative person’ or ‘I don’t have the taste for art’. These self-limiting beliefs are based on fallacious notions. If you hand crayons and paper to an infant, you will see it go around fidgeting with the material and come up with some incomprehensible shapes and forms. The child is simply exploring the materials it has been given. As the child grows older, this exploration of materials takes a more coherent form, and the child learns to draw. It starts to record shapes, ideas, and experiences on paper. But, as it grows older, it is planted with the ‘fear of failure’ and is thereby discouraged from experimenting. Now, the individual is more burdened by the concerns of ‘what is apt’, ‘what works best’, and ‘what is not cringe’. The high social cost of failing replaces the virtue of wandering creativity. In this sense, we can say that children are the most fearless creators — the engines of diverse possibilities. We all, therefore, had these qualities as kids, which we carelessly dropped somewhere on the path to ‘maturation’. So you see, the ownership of creativity is not exclusive to the artists or the chosen few.

Now, one despondent being might still observe that he finds himself incapable of expressing in the florid style. And to this despondent being, I might answer: It is not that the creator has discriminated in bestowing that ability upon you; it’s just that you’ve been so passive about its use that now it has greatly weakened. If a knife is locked away in an old closet, abandoned and forgotten, growing blunt and rusty, it would not adequately respond to your wishes when you remove it and try to use it. Likewise, this appears to you as an inability.

Creativity, just like most other proficiencies, is an aptitude to build with practice and not a rarity to possess. But, it is easy in a world of instant gratification and colourful rapture to ignore the patient appreciation and involvement required by art. That’s why art is seriously lagging in the commoners’ lives. Do you remember the last time you sat down with pencil and paper to draw (not to create a masterpiece, but just for the sake of it!), wrote a verse on your experiences, or explored some form of art? So, it is quite imprudent of you not to have made use of this faculty to your own benefit.

So, if your artistic aptitude has suffered long in the isolated caverns of your negligence, is it all lost now? Can nothing be done to remedy this situation, and to raise an aesthetic asset for oneself? Certainly not! You must recognize art as a ‘must-do’ activity. If you mandatorily input creative pieces into your brain every day, you will receive from other artists the splendour that radiates through their works. All you have to do is closely observe and carefully note the qualities and merits of an artwork. As the ancient proverb says, ‘Your gaze is your path’, so wherever you focus your attention, your life will head. Slowly, you will notice a transformative change in your perspective, and you will also be able to come up with original creative ideas from this daily habit of creative observation.

You can raise this pursuit of renaissance to a shared social experience. If you join a group – like a poetry or reading club, art community, or sketching group – you can remove the isolation of modern life and replace it with shared creative energy. You must battle passive and rapid consumption of content with slow and contemplative observations. Simply observe an object or an incident for a minute, and describe its unusual details that you’d otherwise miss. This activity will convince you that you are surrounded by a plethora of inspirations that we would only notice if we just pause and look.

But all this is futile without a crucial mindset transformation. You must look at the practice of art not as a pursuit of creating an elegant finished piece, but as an experimental process to willingly suspend your self-imposed expectations and escape into a realm of endless creativity. You must permit yourself to make terrible art and focus instead on the neurological shift you gain from doing it. The verses you write do not rhyme? Fine! Experiment with how you can record your subject in those lines. The cat you sketched looks like a potato? Fine! Focus on how crayons can bring it to life. Your singing is a nuisance for the neighbours? Fine! Try to imitate the intonations in the original songs.

So whatever you do, folks, you must make art. In the words of Neil Gaiman, a British author: “Go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make. Good. Art !”