Caught in a Glimpse

Last night, after a long day of riding on the motorbike passenger princess style through Bali and lounging in a gorgeous pool overlooking the forest, my boyfriend and I watched My Octopus Teacher. If you haven’t heard of it, it is about a man from South Africa who goes free diving in the ocean there every day for a year. During that time, he befriends an octopus, and learns about the intimate connection between the creatures in the kelp forests, and about his belonging within it all. Every day, he carried his camera with him, and the shots he captured are GORGEOUS. I gasped with awe too many times to count.

After the film, we were cuddled up, my face nestled against his neck as he gently kissed me. And I just started crying (insert rolled eyes here—the sappiness, I know).

I was so inside of feeling in that moment that I was overcome with emotion. With love, with connection, with an unshakable humanness. And also with the transience of it all. Moments like those don’t last too long, not in this world. It is important to soak fully in them when you get the chance—hence the tears.

But why had my emotion been so strong then?

Earlier in the day, I had been reading Tolstoy’s What is Art?, in which infectiousness is described as a criterion of art. He writes, “Art is that human activity which consists in one man’s consciously conveying to others, by certain external signs, the feelings he has experienced, and in others being infected by those feelings and also experiencing them.”

I had been infected by the film, infected by both the beauty of the visuals and of the story-telling, and the deep sense of the Good that overcame the filmmaker, Craig Foster, in his experience with the octopus, and with intimately immersing himself in the wild.

I cherish these glimpses of full feeling, and hope that my art too can be infectious.

Time will tell.

If you have a story of getting “infected” by a piece of art, or would like to philosophize as to why this happens, I’d love to hear it.

Until next time, thanks for tuning in to The Artist’s Journal.

xoxoxo Anna