It just reflects how I feel these days - I am no doubt wrong, and have a lot to learn. Please help me do so.I was told the other day by a couple of friends who know me extremely well, that I am an intellectual, wasting my talents and should be producing great art, writing a book, or whatever. I have to say I was deeply shocked by this comment, and totally baffled. What on earth can you mean?
Just look, they said, at the fact that I'm (somewhat) interested in art and history.
Well, true, but I'm only scraping the surface - dipping my toe into an ocean of ideas and creativity - other people's ideas and creativity.
However, I now think that in a way, up until recently I might have agreed with them up to a point - and here I could be totally misreading or misrepresenting their views, or simply misunderstanding (perhaps I ought to point out that this conversation took place very late in the evening over a couple of glasses of Scotch; the sake having been finished earlier) - in that I used to view people interested in art, especially, as somehow different from the rest of us. I couldn't understand what made them tick, although I desperately wanted to - I observed these 'special' people from the outside, with wonder and admiration, and appreciation, but saw them as an elite, and somehow aloof.
However, through a painful yet productive process of self-analysis recently, I have come to see 'art' (music, song, painting, dance, poetry, sculpture, writing, film, etc.) as nothing more than people talking about being alive - to dress it up a bit, art is the voice of humanity. As such, I don't really see a correlation with 'intellect':
"1. the power or faculty of the mind by which one knows or understands, as distinguished from that by which one feels and that by which one wills; the understanding; the faculty of thinking and acquiring knowledge.
3. a particular mind or intelligence, esp. of a high order.
4. a person possessing a great capacity for thought and knowledge. "
[www.dictionary.com]
(Having said that, I'll go along with it, given definition 1).
[As the greatest friend in my life said, my sensei, why don't you look it up in a dictionary? Why not, indeed.]
It seems to me that everyone, throughout history, in every corner of the globe, is interested in / moved by 'art': Flutes made out of human bone have been found dating to 50,000 years ago, as have cave paintings (or somewhere in that order - these paintings for me go way, way beyond words, in terms of expressing our common and rooted humanity).
As for history - in Spanish (as in other languages) the words for 'history' and 'story' are the same: storia - and who isn't interested in listening to stories? Since I have been in Japan I have learned that one can't understand a people, or a person, (or oneself) without knowing their stories. Knowing leads to understanding. Leads to - but it isn't the same as understanding. You can know someone extremely well, including yourself - but that doesn't necessarily mean you understand that person - in the sense of understanding why they do what they do, or feel what they feel - what makes them tick. On the other hand, you can understand someone you hardly know, empathetically,...
"1. the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.
2. the imaginative ascribing to an object, as a natural object or work of art, feelings or attitudes present in oneself: By means of empathy, a great painting becomes a mirror of the self."
[www.dictionary.com]
(I am here reminded of the words of a friend, who said that on standing before the 'Birth of Venus' by Botticelli (1485), he decided to give up smoking. He failed. But he is a great artist.)
... most likely because you have been through similar experiences, which part of you may pick up on subconsciously. (This may have something to do with falling in love).
I am reminded, for example, of standing outside a Buddhist temple a while ago, here in Japan, making conversation with the mother of a friend of mine, whom I have known, in a distant sense, for many years. We mentioned this and that, and then she asked how I liked being here in Japan, and I mentioned missing my boys. Her whole body language immediately changed - she instantly tapped in to what I wanted to say, although we were denied the time to expand and explore this, by circumstances. She didn't simply know what I wanted to say - she understood, and I am extremely grateful to her. (She is deaf, by the way).
We are such complex beings in many ways, although that includes us all - we are all incredibly complex, no matter the intelligence or intellect - but it seems to me it is useful to categorise our persona into heart, mind and soul - love/feeling, thought/brain and understanding/wisdom - although the reality is these all overlap and connect in myriads of interlocking ways.
(One might add lust and so on in the mix somewhere).
I came to recognise these three characters in myself on a journey to Santiago de Compostela a couple of years back - I drove with two kittens, in a landrover, from Tuscany, along the French Riviera, the Camargue, up through the Pyrenees, then all along the Atlantic coast of Spain to Galicia, ending up at Fisterra - the end of the known world in medieval times. The journey there and back took three weeks - almost entirely on my own. This gave me a good opportunity to become aware of these three guys within. It was only on the way back that I became aware of the third guy - the wise 'soul', which may be rooted in the solar plexus, according to Buddhists, I believe.
"a dense cluster of nerve cells and supporting tissue, located behind the stomach in the region of the celiac artery just below the diaphragm. It is also known as the celiac plexus. Rich in ganglia and interconnected neurons, the solar plexus is the largest autonomic nerve center in the abdominal cavity. Through branches it controls many vital functions such as adrenal secretion and intestinal contraction. Popularly, the term "solar plexus" may refer to the pit of the stomach. A blow to that area, if it penetrates to the true solar plexus, not only causes great pain but may also temporarily halt visceral functioning. "
[dictionary.com]
I know that we feel profound emotion in that area - 'it's like being punched in the stomach' - we feel 'gutted', and have 'gut feelings'. (It's also where we feel the healing benefits of a medicinal Scotch...)
What I have learned recently is that we have to try to connect these three up somehow - to listen to what they are trying to tell us; if you like, they are the conscious and subconscious aspects of our minds. We 'know' more than we think we know. The difficulty that I have faced throughout my life (or one of them) is understanding the language they are using (it ain't English): I believe it is 'art'.
So there has been a big turnaround in my life - from seeing art as some rather trivial, exotic, elitist, remote talent that a few people unaccountably have, akin to being able to instantly count the number of matchsticks in a box, and about as useful - I now see it as fundamental to human existence - in fact it is human existence. It is not decoration, or ornamentation, or entertainment - although of course it can include all of those functions - it is simply talking about being alive, in every way possible.
To me, this was a revelation. In order to get to this point I had to go through a process of self-awareness and self-understanding. (This involved making my sensei very uncomfortable - gomen nasai, sensei, arigato gozaimasu).Through this essentially selfish process I feel I understand other people a helluva lot better now than I did a month ago; people in general, humans, as well as certain important individuals in my life.
To cut a long story mercifully short, I realise that for whatever reasons since a very young age I have essentially run away from people who got close to me. Either that or pushed them away. Call it emotional dysfunctionality if you will.
The upshot of this seemingly endless soliloquy...
"1. an utterance or discourse by a person who is talking to himself or herself or is disregardful of or oblivious to any hearers present (often used as a device in drama to disclose a character's innermost thoughts): Hamlet's soliloquy begins with “To be or not to be.” "
... is that I finally worked out that talking to people, one way or another, especially about feelings, is being alive - we live through communicating with each other. I am reminded of the book Songlines, in which it is pointed out that Australian Aborigines sing the world into existence. Our friends and the people we meet every day give us the opportunity to be alive, to live, and vice versa. 
As an old, old friend (whom I miss more than I can possibly say) told me many years ago, one of the few who really knew, loved and understood me (ie. he understood us all), 100 times better than myself - and whom I pushed away:
Talk to people - listen to what they have to say.
Films on the above theme that I feel are worth (re-)watching:
Gandhi
The Graduate
Amadeus
Land and Freedom
Stealing Beauty
The Deer Hunter
Far from the Madding Crowd
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Casablanca
On the Waterfront 
The U.S. vs. John Lennon
Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?
Fanny and Alexander
Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?
Fanny and Alexander
Woodstock
Doctor Zhivago
Wuthering Heights
Jean De Florette/Manon Des Sources
'There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle, or the mirror that reflects it.'
Edith Wharton
Artists, it seems to me, are no different from you or me - they are specialists in expressing that thought or feeling we had on the train to work this morning. They get there, for us, for themselves - we don't need to know how or why. We just need to thank them for putting into some form what we want to say.
