The Art of Art
Today I had eight hours of sleep. That’s an hour more than what the doctor’s recommend for someone my age, which means that I shouldn’t have felt tired. But, I did.
My entire day was ruined. I was sluggish, unmotivated, and unprepared to deal with every problem that came my way. Hell, even my hand-eye coordination was off. I had fallen victim to waking up on the “Wrong side of the bed”. It ruined a day that I’ll never get to see again and though as upsetting as this was, it made me curious about the whole notion of waking up on the “Wrong side of the bed.” I mean, why is it that we feel tired sometimes even when we’ve gotten a full night’s rest?
I’ve read a lot about the human mind and why we sleep and although I can’t even begin to call myself a professional, I can tell you that other professionals have reached some wild but reasonable answers to this seemingly frivolous activity. And, what’s really cool is how they utilized science to explain why we do it, which has subsequently given us something to ponder on regarding the reasons for why art exists in the first place.
Let’s start with why we sleep…
There was a time when people thought sleep was an adaptive trait developed over time. The yearning to go to bed caused us to seek shelter from danger. Of course, this isn’t true because nature would have had us evolve in a way that would allow people to be awake at all times. After all, that would have been the best adaptation. But, this didn’t happen and it certainly doesn’t seem like we’re going to stop sleeping any time soon.
Over time as our knowledge of the mind and body progressed, we started thinking that sleep was our way of conserving energy throughout the day. In the past this would have seemed plausible but, in our age of abundance? Give me a break. With a decent job in the West you can pretty much eat and sit around as much as you’d like. If anything, we conserve too much energy, which is why we’re all so fat and out of shape! Indeed, sleep does help us conserve energy but, it does far more than that as we’ve grown to learn through the expansion of science.
Though even to this day we still have yet to know exactly why we sleep, physiological evidence suggests something much deeper than what was previously thought. Many are now beginning to think that we sleep because it’s our way of rejuvenating the mind and body. Scientists have discovered that we have many restorative functions in our bodies from muscle rejuvenation to the release of growth hormones. And a lot of these functions can only occur when we’re asleep.
For instance, the brain releases Adenosine after a neuron has been activated, causing the chemical to build up throughout the day. When we sleep our brain discards it so that we feel more restive in the morning. So in other words, if we never slept our brains would be chock full of Adenosine and who knows how we would behave…
Well as a matter of fact, we actually do know how we would behave. There are numerous case studies involving patients who could not fall asleep. Every one of them died within months but, not before losing sensory and motor functions. This further strengthens the idea of rejuvenation because if sleep was simply a matter of adaptation or conserving energy then, we wouldn’t die from lack of sleep. But low and behold we do because without sleep our bodies couldn’t carry out important functions that restore the body.
But, it gets even crazier when you combine this understanding with the Brain Plasticity Theory. Not only does our body rejuvenate when we sleep, we also produce stronger and more efficient neural connections. Our neurons are literally in constant motion when we sleep, processing our day-to-day experiences, which seems to appropriately connect to our reason for dreaming.
Think about the last dream you had. Hell, think about every dream you’ve ever had, from funny and goofy to tragic and sad. Every single dream, minus a few outliers, has been conflict driven. You’ve always been chased by something, gone through an embarrassing situation, lost a loved one, or went through something that required you to respond to a pressing matter. So, why is this?
Are we producing stories and instances in our dreams because we’re re-arranging our neural pathways? Is this our way of processing the emotional responses to everyday experiences so that we’re better prepared for the next day? Perhaps the phenomenon of dreaming is nothing more than our way of simulating experiences like they did on, “The Matrix”.
Now, obviously we’re never going to forget to put our pants on when we go to work and, it’s likely that we’re never going to get chased by a mountain lion but, we may find ourselves in an equally embarrassing or threatening situation that requires us to respond appropriately so that we can come out on top.
Perhaps that’s the reason why our dreams are so conflict-ridden. Maybe, we’re meant to dream because its nature’s ways of perfecting itself; like we’re nothing more than iphones plugged into an outlet only, instead of simply charging we’re making ourselves into better people.
Now here’s where things get a little weird and this is something that a lot scientists and filmmakers never think about. If you were to pick up any scriptwriting book they would teach you about the simple but eloquent “Story-Arch” structure. That’s single-handedly the most common way to structure a story and what’s interesting is that it’s ridden with conflict or what writers call “plot-points”, which drives the story to some sort of conclusion.
It’s essentially the structure of every story you’ve ever viewed on television, movies, and the Internet. Even films that are presented in alternative structures are still in some way, conflict driven. It’s strange that conflict defines media and art, which is very telling of what films mean to us.
If our dreams are driven by conflict because our neurons are making better connections and, if the standard for film is all about driving conflict to tell the story…Well then, maybe we create movies to better process and understand the problems we face, just as we do when we dream. Maybe there’s more to film than we think.
We always see film and art as this intangible abstraction that has little meaning or real value. That’s why we always go for the engineering jobs and of course that’s ok but, it’s important, especially for artists, to understand why we make it to begin with.
Film is nothing more than a byproduct of our struggle to better ourselves and the World around us just as dreams are a byproduct of bettering ourselves when we sleep. We re-create hypothetical situations just as we do in our dreams because we want to examine what those situations are like and how we can better deal with them.
That’s why we always have sex, drugs, and violence in shows and movies. It’s not because we idolize vice. If that was the case we’d be more violent but, what’s interesting is that we’re actually less violent than our ancestors.
Now of course we had violence in plays and stories that were written when neighbors were legally killing neighbors in Western Society but, what differentiates our violence to the kind of violence that was depicted by our ancestors is that back then, it seemed to have more meaning and intent. Today, our violence in media seems senseless. There’s less of a purpose in the actions of the characters so their crimes seem less meaningful. Granted, there are exceptions to this standard but the vast majority of films? They’re kind of stupid and at times, down-right horrific.
And what’s funny is that most people see this as proof that society is going down the shitter. Many are saying that we don’t have moral values or a sense of right and wrong and that senseless violence in films is helping our culture sustain these principles or rather lack of. Yeah, just because a few dozen kids shoot up schools over the course of a few years doesn’t mean we’re all out of control.
Let’s step back and use our heads here, for a moment. If our media is infested with senseless violence then based on everything science says, we’re actually progressing. The very reason why we have so much senseless violence is actually because we don’t have as many conflicts in our daily lives to process. If we were doing worse then, our stories at least would be better.
Our stories aren’t as enriching simply because our personal lives aren’t as enriching. Think about it. Most of you who are reading this are either doing something they kind of enjoy or absolutely hate. There isn’t any real conflict or movement in the ordinary life. We get up, go to work, come home, watch tv, and then go to bed. Sometimes we go out or go on a week-long vacation but for the most part, we work to live and we live to work without any real obstructions.
We’re not facing wars or family rivalries that get out of control. We don’t have to deal with food shortages or complete mind-fucks that alter our collective paradigms much like the Protestant Reformation.
We’re just stuck in this idle state where we’re neither living nor dead. We live comfortably but without any purpose or, so it seems. That’s why conflict in film has run amuck because to simply put it…There is very little more to process and understand…Or so it seems.
I think one day things will get rough. Maybe they won’t but, who knows? And if that happens, film and other mediums of art will suddenly have more purpose because it will seek to espouse a solution to the problems that everyone may collectively face.
Art exists for a reason. It may be fluid and arbitrary but, that doesn’t mean it has no reason for existing. It exists because we want to perfect ourselves. We’re hard-wired to do so. Sure, not everyone wants to pick up a laptop and type up a 120-page screenplay but, we all dream.
And if we always dreamt of a stranger in an unfamiliar place, experiencing non-conflicts that have no relevance to our lives then, we wouldn’t feel connected to the dream and therefore, we wouldn’t be able to make the right neural connections to maximize our response to situations that happen in our everyday lives.
And that’s why we need to be more responsible with our films because our films do what our dreams do; they help us understand our problems and aid us in better handling them. We can’t just produce mindless indulgence filled with conflicts devoid of meaning. The formula that high-paid producers use is archaic. They base it off of story-structure and whether or not it can become a franchise. But doing that fucks with society, just as an ugly room would drive someone mad.
Aesthetics and story within art are paramount to our survival because it’s our way of progressing. We need to identify real issues in the World and inspire ourselves to solve them. And if we blindly make films, believing that it’s only entertainment then, we blindly misinterpret our own struggles. So, we stagnate.
One day if we ever reach perfection then art will no longer exist as something important and therefore, it’ll be created just to stave off boredom. Thankfully, perfection will never exist because if it did, then we’d have nothing more to work towards. There would be nothing left to do. And more startling, it would cheapen art to the extent that we would no longer connect to it.
Currently, we’re moving in those trends and we’re doing it blindly. Eventually, all the technological singularity hype will reside and reality will kick back in. We’ll go through our crisis and reach closer to perfection but eventually one day, we’ll find something else to improve upon and the cycle will continue. We’ll conquer the Universe and then-some but, we’ll never be perfect and our endeavors will continue. That’s why we’ll always need art and, as long as we can better understand the reason for the phenomenon and remind ourselves of that reason, then we’ll always be progressing.
Today I had eight hours of sleep. That’s an hour more than what the doctor’s recommend for someone my age, which means that I shouldn’t have felt tired. But, I did.
My entire day was ruined. I was sluggish, unmotivated, and unprepared to deal with every problem that came my way. Hell, even my hand-eye coordination was off. I had fallen victim to waking up on the “Wrong side of the bed”. It ruined a day that I’ll never get to see again and though as upsetting as this was, it made me curious about the whole notion of waking up on the “Wrong side of the bed.” I mean, why is it that we feel tired sometimes even when we’ve gotten a full night’s rest?
I’ve read a lot about the human mind and why we sleep and although I can’t even begin to call myself a professional, I can tell you that other professionals have reached some wild but reasonable answers to this seemingly frivolous activity. And, what’s really cool is how they utilized science to explain why we do it, which has subsequently given us something to ponder on regarding the reasons for why art exists in the first place.
Let’s start with why we sleep…
There was a time when people thought sleep was an adaptive trait developed over time. The yearning to go to bed caused us to seek shelter from danger. Of course, this isn’t true because nature would have had us evolve in a way that would allow people to be awake at all times. After all, that would have been the best adaptation. But, this didn’t happen and it certainly doesn’t seem like we’re going to stop sleeping any time soon.
Over time as our knowledge of the mind and body progressed, we started thinking that sleep was our way of conserving energy throughout the day. In the past this would have seemed plausible but, in our age of abundance? Give me a break. With a decent job in the West you can pretty much eat and sit around as much as you’d like. If anything, we conserve too much energy, which is why we’re all so fat and out of shape! Indeed, sleep does help us conserve energy but, it does far more than that as we’ve grown to learn through the expansion of science.
Though even to this day we still have yet to know exactly why we sleep, physiological evidence suggests something much deeper than what was previously thought. Many are now beginning to think that we sleep because it’s our way of rejuvenating the mind and body. Scientists have discovered that we have many restorative functions in our bodies from muscle rejuvenation to the release of growth hormones. And a lot of these functions can only occur when we’re asleep.
For instance, the brain releases Adenosine after a neuron has been activated, causing the chemical to build up throughout the day. When we sleep our brain discards it so that we feel more restive in the morning. So in other words, if we never slept our brains would be chock full of Adenosine and who knows how we would behave…
Well as a matter of fact, we actually do know how we would behave. There are numerous case studies involving patients who could not fall asleep. Every one of them died within months but, not before losing sensory and motor functions. This further strengthens the idea of rejuvenation because if sleep was simply a matter of adaptation or conserving energy then, we wouldn’t die from lack of sleep. But low and behold we do because without sleep our bodies couldn’t carry out important functions that restore the body.
But, it gets even crazier when you combine this understanding with the Brain Plasticity Theory. Not only does our body rejuvenate when we sleep, we also produce stronger and more efficient neural connections. Our neurons are literally in constant motion when we sleep, processing our day-to-day experiences, which seems to appropriately connect to our reason for dreaming.
Think about the last dream you had. Hell, think about every dream you’ve ever had, from funny and goofy to tragic and sad. Every single dream, minus a few outliers, has been conflict driven. You’ve always been chased by something, gone through an embarrassing situation, lost a loved one, or went through something that required you to respond to a pressing matter. So, why is this?
Are we producing stories and instances in our dreams because we’re re-arranging our neural pathways? Is this our way of processing the emotional responses to everyday experiences so that we’re better prepared for the next day? Perhaps the phenomenon of dreaming is nothing more than our way of simulating experiences like they did on, “The Matrix”.
Now, obviously we’re never going to forget to put our pants on when we go to work and, it’s likely that we’re never going to get chased by a mountain lion but, we may find ourselves in an equally embarrassing or threatening situation that requires us to respond appropriately so that we can come out on top.
Perhaps that’s the reason why our dreams are so conflict-ridden. Maybe, we’re meant to dream because its nature’s ways of perfecting itself; like we’re nothing more than iphones plugged into an outlet only, instead of simply charging we’re making ourselves into better people.
Now here’s where things get a little weird and this is something that a lot scientists and filmmakers never think about. If you were to pick up any scriptwriting book they would teach you about the simple but eloquent “Story-Arch” structure. That’s single-handedly the most common way to structure a story and what’s interesting is that it’s ridden with conflict or what writers call “plot-points”, which drives the story to some sort of conclusion.
It’s essentially the structure of every story you’ve ever viewed on television, movies, and the Internet. Even films that are presented in alternative structures are still in some way, conflict driven. It’s strange that conflict defines media and art, which is very telling of what films mean to us.
If our dreams are driven by conflict because our neurons are making better connections and, if the standard for film is all about driving conflict to tell the story…Well then, maybe we create movies to better process and understand the problems we face, just as we do when we dream. Maybe there’s more to film than we think.
We always see film and art as this intangible abstraction that has little meaning or real value. That’s why we always go for the engineering jobs and of course that’s ok but, it’s important, especially for artists, to understand why we make it to begin with.
Film is nothing more than a byproduct of our struggle to better ourselves and the World around us just as dreams are a byproduct of bettering ourselves when we sleep. We re-create hypothetical situations just as we do in our dreams because we want to examine what those situations are like and how we can better deal with them.
That’s why we always have sex, drugs, and violence in shows and movies. It’s not because we idolize vice. If that was the case we’d be more violent but, what’s interesting is that we’re actually less violent than our ancestors.
Now of course we had violence in plays and stories that were written when neighbors were legally killing neighbors in Western Society but, what differentiates our violence to the kind of violence that was depicted by our ancestors is that back then, it seemed to have more meaning and intent. Today, our violence in media seems senseless. There’s less of a purpose in the actions of the characters so their crimes seem less meaningful. Granted, there are exceptions to this standard but the vast majority of films? They’re kind of stupid and at times, down-right horrific.
And what’s funny is that most people see this as proof that society is going down the shitter. Many are saying that we don’t have moral values or a sense of right and wrong and that senseless violence in films is helping our culture sustain these principles or rather lack of. Yeah, just because a few dozen kids shoot up schools over the course of a few years doesn’t mean we’re all out of control.
Let’s step back and use our heads here, for a moment. If our media is infested with senseless violence then based on everything science says, we’re actually progressing. The very reason why we have so much senseless violence is actually because we don’t have as many conflicts in our daily lives to process. If we were doing worse then, our stories at least would be better.
Our stories aren’t as enriching simply because our personal lives aren’t as enriching. Think about it. Most of you who are reading this are either doing something they kind of enjoy or absolutely hate. There isn’t any real conflict or movement in the ordinary life. We get up, go to work, come home, watch tv, and then go to bed. Sometimes we go out or go on a week-long vacation but for the most part, we work to live and we live to work without any real obstructions.
We’re not facing wars or family rivalries that get out of control. We don’t have to deal with food shortages or complete mind-fucks that alter our collective paradigms much like the Protestant Reformation.
We’re just stuck in this idle state where we’re neither living nor dead. We live comfortably but without any purpose or, so it seems. That’s why conflict in film has run amuck because to simply put it…There is very little more to process and understand…Or so it seems.
I think one day things will get rough. Maybe they won’t but, who knows? And if that happens, film and other mediums of art will suddenly have more purpose because it will seek to espouse a solution to the problems that everyone may collectively face.
Art exists for a reason. It may be fluid and arbitrary but, that doesn’t mean it has no reason for existing. It exists because we want to perfect ourselves. We’re hard-wired to do so. Sure, not everyone wants to pick up a laptop and type up a 120-page screenplay but, we all dream.
And if we always dreamt of a stranger in an unfamiliar place, experiencing non-conflicts that have no relevance to our lives then, we wouldn’t feel connected to the dream and therefore, we wouldn’t be able to make the right neural connections to maximize our response to situations that happen in our everyday lives.
And that’s why we need to be more responsible with our films because our films do what our dreams do; they help us understand our problems and aid us in better handling them. We can’t just produce mindless indulgence filled with conflicts devoid of meaning. The formula that high-paid producers use is archaic. They base it off of story-structure and whether or not it can become a franchise. But doing that fucks with society, just as an ugly room would drive someone mad.
Aesthetics and story within art are paramount to our survival because it’s our way of progressing. We need to identify real issues in the World and inspire ourselves to solve them. And if we blindly make films, believing that it’s only entertainment then, we blindly misinterpret our own struggles. So, we stagnate.
One day if we ever reach perfection then art will no longer exist as something important and therefore, it’ll be created just to stave off boredom. Thankfully, perfection will never exist because if it did, then we’d have nothing more to work towards. There would be nothing left to do. And more startling, it would cheapen art to the extent that we would no longer connect to it.
Currently, we’re moving in those trends and we’re doing it blindly. Eventually, all the technological singularity hype will reside and reality will kick back in. We’ll go through our crisis and reach closer to perfection but eventually one day, we’ll find something else to improve upon and the cycle will continue. We’ll conquer the Universe and then-some but, we’ll never be perfect and our endeavors will continue. That’s why we’ll always need art and, as long as we can better understand the reason for the phenomenon and remind ourselves of that reason, then we’ll always be progressing.
