If One Cares to Look
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BY CEREN TURAN (CS/IV)
It must have been magical when the first man discovered that he could draw on cave walls, using the materials he found around him. He probably didn't see writing as a tool that gave him a means to make his own version of the world from his unique perspective, but when he finished drawing, he most probably stood back and looked at his work for a while.
Cave drawings, though not similar in appearance to the letters and words used today, are considered the first writing in regard to the purpose of the man who created them. He used them to convey a message and, most importantly, to express himself. Moving forward in time, cave drawings gave way to words, which increased not only in number but also in meaning over the centuries. In a world that was still in its developmental stage, constant change was inevitable; and so was the need to define new things. Therefore new words continued to be created every day, in different countries, even different continents. One would assume that languages -- the representatives of nature -- evolved in such a way that they included a word for every single object on the earth, every single living organism that dwells upon this planet of ours and every single feeling that a human being has the urge to express. However, considering the size of the earth, it shouldn't come as a shock that it is impossible to have a word corresponding to everything.
So there began a new era, in which categorization started to serve as the main tool, and in which similarity won the battle it had with difference. It was the defeat of individuality and uniqueness by conformity. This change in human understanding was also reflected in words. Thus people started communicating with a limited number of words, which were given definitions no longer than two lines; words that in fact require pages of detailed explanation and description to provide a full understanding.
Though dictionaries may give definitions for plenty of words, two words in particular will be the focus of the rest of this article. The word "art" is defined in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as "the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects," and the "artist" as "one who professes and practices an imaginative art." In the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, the former is "the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance," and the latter is "a person who creates works of arts, especially paintings or drawings." Applying the technique of extracting the similarities, it may be concluded from these two sets of definitions that an artist is a person who creates a work of art. Does it suffice to define a word that is used to describe millions of people in the world regardless of the drives that cause them to create based only upon the result, the work of art?
The artist, in my opinion, is a person who suffers from the pressure inflicted on him from his soul outward to his skin. The only cure for the disease from which he is suffering is to create, because it is the only way that the poison in his veins can come out and blossom when it meets the eyes of others. He never sees himself as a person who creates, and certainly not as someone who is paid to come up with a work of art that will satisfy aesthetic concerns and please its viewers while helping its creator make a living. The artist creates because there is no other way to exist.
Only based on this kind of a description can people understand why Nazım Hikmet never stopped writing though he was called a traitor and died in exile, with his only wish to see his country one more time; or why Van Gogh never stopped painting, and is only one among many artists who became famous after their deaths but didn't even earn enough from their works to make a living during their lifetimes; or how Ludwig van Beethoven continued composing after he become completely deaf.
When one gets lost in the simple and inadequate definitions of words, it is only then that high school students who sell their paintings to go a Monet exhibition held in another city get criticism rather than financial support from government officials: "They should visit the martyrs' cemetery in their hometown instead of going to an exhibition."
If one chooses to be satisfied with similarities because he is afraid of being an individual rather than just another sheep in the flock, he is doomed to take the illusion of the world as real. Or instead, he may believe that it is differences that make things unique and give them their significance. The entire world is in the words, if one only cares to look.