"Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one." -Stella Adler

I used to be good at blogging. My last three years of undergrad are beautifully and hilariously documented on my old blog--posts with photos and quotes and ramblings and new discoveries--and I'm so glad because I can nurture my fits of nostalgia by going back and reading about moments and ideas that had long ago totally escaped by memory.

But I've gotten really bad at blogging. I have really great intentions and really bad follow through. It's like flossing. And calling my grandma. And the half read copy of "Middlemarch" that's been sitting next to my bed for two years. So, this is me reattempting to blog. Because life is good, and in the future, I think I'll be glad that I documented it.

This weekend, I've been working on an assignment for my Marketing and Public Relations class, so I've been thinking a lot about how to connect artists and audiences, how to help people fall in love with a certain art form. I've been reminded that experiencing the arts should never be a passive act. It should be an active process of imagining and engaging, for both artists and audiences. Sir Joseph Campbell once said that "perhaps we do not so much seek a meaning for our lives, we seek a shared sense of having been alive." In this context, I like the idea of that, as this is what happens when we engage with the arts. We together share a sense of having been alive. And we are richer for it.

I am reminded of a story in Ronald Blythe's book, "Akenfield, Portrait of an English Village,” which records the life stories of the inhabitants of a tiny village in Suffolk County, England. The names of the village and villagers have been changed, but the harshness, isolation, and beauty of their lives shine through their memories and observations. “Fred Mitchell,” and 85-year-old ploughman, recalls his difficult childhood:

“I never did any playing in all my life. There was nothing in my childhood, only work. I never had pleasure. One day a year I went to Felixstowe along with the chapel women and children, and that was my pleasure. But I have forgotten one thing—the singing. There was such a lot of singing in the villages then, and this was my pleasure, too. Boys sang in the fields, and at night we all met at the Forge and sang. The chapels were full of singing. When the first war came, it was singing, singing all the time. So I lie; I have had pleasure. I have had singing.”

I've always loved this story because it embodies that idea of an individual feeling more fully alive because of his having shared in a meaningful, communal, and art-filled experience. I could write for pages and pages about the various times in my life that I've experienced moments like this, but I know that miles and miles of description could never do them justice. You know when it happens. The world stops for a few moments, everything is more clear, and you feel more...well, alive.

This video was shared in one of my classes a few weeks ago. I got chills the first time I watched it. And immediately watched it four more times when I got home that night.

I think it's incredible, inspirational, and yes, maybe a little idealistic. But hopeful, for sure. And I think it sums up what I'm talking about.