Matias Dalsgaard's Blog, page 26

Need for Art

I need art. When the day has been busy, I find my moments of solitude through reading, listening to music, or watching a movie. If I don’t, my life shrinks. I might never fully understand why I have a need for art, but I appear not to be alone in this

As long as mankind has existed, we have practiced various kinds of art. Likewise, we have spent the same time trying to answer questions such as, “what is art?” or “what do we need art for?” The ‘philosophy of art’ is as old as philosophy in itself. Aristotle’s Poetics from around 335 BC is one of the oldest and most famous pieces of ‘philosophy of art,’ that we know of. But even so, the first attempts at answering the question of art probably dates much further back than Aristotle.

Aristotle is one of the countless philosophers that pondered the concept of “What is art?” After some millennia of questioning, we have yet to find an answer.

Being a writer and a scholar of literature and philosophy, I have also been dealing with the theory of art and literature. I have tried, and am still trying, to understand what art really is. Why do we have such a superfluous phenomena as literature, painting, music, theatre and film? Not to mention rampant present day artistic practices such as ‘art of food’ – and other popular artistic expression derived from our experience economy.

Why all this art? Why all this unproductive amusement?

The answers that over time have been given to such questions have always been framed by their historical context. In religious cultures the answer has typically been that art can make us connect with the divine. With modernist or atheistic contexts, it has rather oppositely been said that art expresses the nothingness that is beyond human life and rationality. No matter how different the answers have been, they all seem to have been pointing to something “beyond the understandable” – simply because it keeps puzzling us that we have a need for this unnecessary and unproductive thing called art.

Compared to other periods of my life, I don’t “consume” much art these years. I am more than busy being the CEO of my company, and I work long hours. So I’m not able to read as much as I used to, and I also don’t get to discover a lot of new music and film. Nonetheless, sometimes late at night or during the weekend, I still pull the plug and read a book or watch a movie. I just have to – otherwise life can petrify me and I will lose my creativity.

After working without a mental break, art offers a change of pace. Pulling the plug on your mind can help your body recharge. No matter what form of art you choose, the regular consumption of it helps your creativity flow.

At work I solve things. The language I use is a problem-solver language. I like this kind of language. Business language drives us forward. Yet, my experience is that if I stay in this language and mode of thinking for too long – without encountering a more artistic, a more refined, reflective and imaginative kind of language – then my business language becomes poorer and poorer. I lose my sense of humour, I lose my playfulness and my critical faculty, and in the end I lose my productivity.

As I said, I keep wondering: “Why do I need these moments of art?” Well, it seems like I will never have the answer. I will just have to live with the simple fact: “I just do.” Maybe there really is a kind of profound wisdom to be found in this simple answer. When nobody during the history of mankind has been able to answer the question of art once and for all, then it probably has something to do with the fact that the true answer doesn’t lie in an answer – but in the doing.

Art is not theory. It is practice. It is reading, listening and experiencing. Theory is only trying to catch up with reality, and the reality of art is in the doing. So, the art of art is not so much in understanding the purpose of art – but in giving yourself the experiences with art needed in order to keep your world, your critical faculty, and your imagination alive.

Images from: here, here, and here

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Ideas are Magic: Taking a leap of faith with creativity

There are times when I will interrupt a problem-solving session at my company. We might be in the midst of a heated discussion, trying to really ”nail it” – be the discussion regarding our future strategy, new features for our app, monetization of our concepts, the next online marketing move or whatever current topic. Sometimes I have a clear feeling that ”this problem CAN be solved” and ”we CAN NOT solve it today.” Thus, I suggest we park the discussion for now and move on with other tasks.

There is nothing extraordinary in this. Every manager or employee – in his right mind – will do this sometimes. But I keep wondering why the path to the right solution, or the right idea, is so non-linear – so filled with magic and surprise. You can know that the right solution or the answer to your problem exists. This, in itself, is magic. You know it before you actually know what the answer is – you just sense that it is somewhere out there. Then, on top of this magic, comes the second kind of magic. The magic when you suddenly realize what the answer is.

Being both the CEO of the successful tech startup “GoMore,” as well as a PhD holder in Philosophy, Matias Dalsgaard has become known as the Philosopher for the Modern Man.

Søren Kierkegaard consistently stressed how the human mind works in “leaps” – both in our daily human lives, and when it comes to faith in the divine. We owe the notion leap of faith to Kierkegaard. Faith does not come as a result of linear, analytical thought. It HAPPENS – like great ideas or solutions. Creativity works this way. Execution on the other hand has a much more linear character, i.e., when the creative work has taken place and ideas have sunk in.

Now, here comes a third magic – true creativity only happens after a lot of hard work. The creative solutions and ideas cannot be forced, they need to mature by themselves. But they mature while you work hard, i.e., when you really try to understand or solve something.

This is why the most visionary and successful people are this odd breed of people who are on the one hand extremely hard working – and on the other hand know that great ideas must be waited for and given time, rather than forced through.

Images from: Here and here

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Playing it Real

Young people play music. I have a little brother who is much younger than I am. He is 17, lives with our parents in the northernmost province of Denmark, goes to high school, and plays in a band. When I was 17 and in highschool I also played in a band. If you have a creative drive and a sense of authentic expression this starts showing itself around this age. Music is a channel for the drive.

It is interesting for me to see how my brother develops a distinct personal taste. He knows what he likes and what music should sound like, and he has a bright mind. I hold my hopes high for him. But I also cannot help noticing: When you are young, living in a far-out province with very little entrepreneurial spirit and coming from a family of non-entrepreneurs – then there is nowhere to channel your creative energy other than into the unreal space of music and art. The idea that your creativity could be put to use for entrepreneurial enterprise in the ‘real world’ of work and production is still not present. For you the true, authentic expression that your creativity is seeking can only be found outside the real world, not in this world. (The melancholy of the young artist basically arises from this disconnect between inner creative energy and real world enterprise.)

Beautiful music often comes out of this, and we definitely need music just like we need art in general. But sometimes I would have liked – for my brother, for myself at this age and for so many other young people – that the world had presented itself in a less black and white manner. It is not either creativity or reality. It can, and should be both. The creative drive is exactly what drives your efforts and accomplishments in the world of commerce and production.

Image Source: Softpedia

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When the World Goes Cognitive

It seems to me that in the modern world we only have negative notions for non-understanding. Science has run its race and won: We have become scientific in our approach to most things in life. We want to understand everything.

Being scientific is fine when we talk about things which are – and should be – the object of science. Human existence is, however, not just an object of science. The real human phenonema such as love, hope, courage, happiness, sorrow do not depend on understanding, they run ahead of understanding. Such phenonema might even show themselves despite understanding, despite the rational.

I consider this claim about human phenonema to be non-controversial. What is hard is, however, to identify and take proper precautions where scientific thought threatens to invade human life in all its subtle ways. An example is the modern CV-culture and its academic offspring: Narrative therapy. This culture focuses on what self-understanding you can establish and put words to.

But what if you aren’t meant to understand your own life? What if – fundamentally – you just don’t get it and never will? After all, it was no rationale choice of yours being born in the first place. Being too hung up on understanding degrades life – and reduces creativity. Magic, mystery and adventure does not come from understanding, it comes from imagination combined with courage and hard work.

Previously we did have positive notions for non-understanding. The notion “leap of faith”– which is Christian by origin – indicates such a notion. No one would talk about a “leap of understanding”. When you have understood, you don’t need to leap. But in most instances in life you will have to leap, before understanding.

 

Image Source: Faith & Home

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