One of the most astonishing powers of art is that it connects people across time. And when I say ‘people’ I am talking about two people, one to another. The relationship between the receiver of a work and the issuer, if truly and deeply received, is an unbelievably intimate one. This is because that identification is one of the strongest bonds that can be made in human experience: that of a shared, deeply held value, or feeling.
This must be why the ‘truer’ or more ‘honest’ a work feels to us, the more we as receivers tend to connect to it. It’s like connecting to a love, or an extremely close friend. (In fact, isn’t a main criteria, or actually the main criteria on which we base our beliefs about our closest friendships based on the very same thing? Namely, the feeling or belief – or belief as a result of feeling – that this other person feels so closely about something to the way we do that as a result we ‘understand’ each other?)
And the relationship is so intimate because the subject matters that are generally dealt with in works of art, and our feelings related to them, are often the most personal that we as individuals, as a species, experience.
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A great track by track review of Story by Seen It Heard It’s Adam Molloy.
“If every other record about a break-up was as uplifting as this, the world would be a far better place. Story is a wonderful listen.”
READ FULL REVIEW HERE
A nice piece on ‘The Turns’ plus free download care of The Fire Note
“’The Turns’ is an important song on the record for me because it was one of the last songs written on both of the records of The Long Lost Story, and it essentially narrates the entire arc of the whole thing.”
READ FULL PIECE HERE
Have you ever thought about the word confidence?
I was just thinking that it must stem from the same root as the word confide, i.e. a confide-ence or a confiding (to another, or others, which might explain the connotation of outward or external projection that the word carries with it in current everyday use).
This, however, would also tie it intimately to the notions of trust, safety, and vulnerability (as in someone with confidence is unafraid to allow themselves to be vulnerable). Which is to say that a ‘confidence’ is really a held belief that what we put outside of ourselves, or ‘confide’ will not cause us harm; that we will be safe in doing so.
It seems to me that this gives a pretty different shade of meaning from the conventional use or understanding of the word in our culture right now, which carries with it something more along the lines of arrogance, or macho-ness (along with those qualities attendant pretensions), which might have very little to do with it after all.
