Today's post was created by an old high school friend of mine, Chad Edwards. Chad, a musician, created a piece of music to accompany a poem by Emily Dickinson. Listen to the song and read the poem below. You can hear more of Chad's work on his blog, There's A Lot to Hear, which is now included on my blog list. Thanks, Chad, for this great multi-media post!
Emily Dickinson's I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain
I'll make a very subjective statement about subjectivity now: all is within the domain of subjectivity. Yes... everything period. Is that an oxymoron? Yeah, probably, but oh well, welcome to life! Right now you could easily and correctly be saying to yourself, you're full of it,
because breathing air is not subjective, my friend! All right, I won't deny you your subjective opinion so we'll just move on.
Why would I be talking about subjectivity when Kim's blog topic is poetry since it's National Poetry Month? Well, when it comes to the perception of poetry/art, subjectivity to me is the alpha and the omega, so to speak (well all perception in general but I'm struggling not to derail this sucker here). Without this subjectivity all art would have a correct/incorrect way or be either good or bad, right or wrong, black or white, and so on. Though I don't see much usefulness coming from that sort of situation.
While thinking about what to write about for the blog, I was looking into the poem I chose for the song: "I felt a funeral in my brain," by Emily Dickinson. I noticed the many interpretations of the meaning of the poem itself. Now there is nothing inherently wrong with trying to discover the meaning behind things...in fact, I'd venture a guess and say that this searching could very well be a big part of our existence! But many times I worry that people seem to think there is an exact way to interpret a poem or any art form. In my opinion, no interpretation is correct, or incorrect.
The real beauty behind art is that we are always both creating and participating within and with the art form itself. Something interesting I've found over time is the malleability of meaning behind art and how your personal interpretations can change even from moment to moment. At one point in your life you can get something profound from a piece of art, and later that same piece could cause an entirely different reaction, or none at all. While working on the song, I had to think about the poem, the many ways I could interpret it, and how the friend I wrote the song for would as well. I created sounds to go with each section, adding yet another layer of subjectivity to what was there in the text combined with both my feelings at the moment and my interpretion of hers. This subjectivity in art is what makes it a blast for me both to participate in and ponder upon. Everyone is held together by the structure of the form yet each person is having their own unique experience.
Well I guess in the end the point being just simply that beauty is in the eye of the beholder... and I guess I could have saved a whole lot of everyone's time by just posting that, huh? But hey, isn't that what blogs were created for?
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