I like work that moves me. I like work that shifts something in me such that I have some involuntary action (like laughing, or crying, or just feeling). I like work that’s surprising and touching and resonant.
When I come across work like that, I don’t try to interrogate it too much. I don’t try to dissect why it moves me, I just let it move me. I think that interrogating why it moves me might stop it from doing so.
I can’t even predict what will move me, really. I can’t seek it out in a way that I might want to. I just have to keep discovering things and occasionally it’ll hit me. A few examples of work that moved me:
- The music of Ólafur Arnalds. I can sit alone listening to Ólafur’s music and just ride the wave of feelings that it causes within me. Sadness, elation, grief, contentment, wonder. All at the same time.
- The paintings of Etel Adnan. Something in Etel’s work speaks to something deep within me. Makes me lose myself in landscapes that are barely described by the knife, but feel all-consuming.
- Personal, spoken stories. The most recent by Ira Glass in act four of Ask a Grown-Up on This American Life. I don’t even know if I can relate to the story, but I felt the story as if it was mine.
None of this work was made for me, but it speaks to something ineffable at the center of us, I think. I suspect that I’m far from the only person moved by each of the works above—perhaps everyone would be.
Finding the work that moves you is such a wonderful, powerful thing. If I ever make work that moves others, I’ll consider it such a blessing and such an honor. One of the highest, maybe.