Monday, December 06, 2010

Being emotional today

The Coronation of the Virgin by Tommaso Del Mazza, Louvre, Paris

We are so used to having emotional responses that we are not consciously aware of them. We respond to beauty with emotion. We respond to nature with emotion. We respond to art with emotion. Because we don’t stop to name our feelings, we have not recognized them. In order to encounter immensity within ourselves, we need to stop thinking so much and recognize our emotions more.

“Our emotional life is really dominant over our intellectual life but we do not realize it.” Agnes Martin


To have an emotion engages everything, body mind and soul. The opposite is the case with thought. To have a deep thought it is necessary to separate the mind from the body and soul.

7 comments:

Caterina Giglio said...

yes

mansuetude said...

Aristotle said, The soul never thinks without an image.

i feel
thought and language and emotion/sensuality all are deeply interwoven and nothing can really extract one from the other, not even in deep theoretical math.

“Our emotional life is really dominant over our intellectual life but we do not realize it.” Agnes Martin

I think it is unique for everyone.

I have learned that others don't dwell where i do, nor perceive as i do.

we may place doors and locks on some streams of feeling to separate but that would result at extremes of some pathology, in my opinion.

But all of this is so hard to talk about, because nothing is :FIXED" about a human soul in time, ever.

jude said...

i think some would like to think that a thought is separate. i don't think it is possible. i think the emotion creates the thought.

Jeana Marie said...

I would argue recognising our emotions requires thinking - to name them - if that's what you mean requires the linguistic part of our brains. If you mean we just need to stop and feel without the naming - just recognise you are feeling something (even calling it good or bad is a thought) then yes, maybe.

So I agree with jude - I don't believe they can actually be separated...perhaps when they physically are...such as after a stroke it causes big issues.

But it is important to think about how you feel when looking at art, rather than only thinking about the elements of design used (or something like that).

I'm wondering about the difference in brain activity when we are making art as opposed to viewing it now too...

{hope the dissertation is going well! I loved the recent posts over at modernist aesthetic}

Jeana Marie said...

ps - and all of that I just wrote makes me feel sad that I am not making very much art lately and some longing...

:)

Leslie Avon Miller said...

I am a feeling type of person. I know when I see some art, I "fall to my knees" which is a gut emotional reaction. Later I think about it.

Velma Bolyard said...

can they separate?