Vicarious pleasures

I've just finished reading a book. A very long and thorouglhy enjoyable and very popular book - "The pillars of the earth" by Ken Follet- about the building of a cathedral in the twelfth century in England, and the people involved with creating it, their lives and loves, passions and hatreds.

And it struck me as I reached the end of it, and was so involved with the tale and where it was heading, that although a book is a physically small thing - a collection of words on paper in a particular order, in effect, that it's like diving into a new world, a dimension beyond normal life. The words on the paper bring the previously unknown world to life, so we can feel the pain, the ecstacy, the passions and emotions of the story and make it part of ourselves and feel fulfilled within ourselves, and better people for the reading of it, the digestion of it, that makes us more rounded within our characters for the knowledge of it.....

And that in turn made me think of movies - that they are a step into another new world, particularly if it's a science-fiction film, of course- a different dimension when we empathise with the characters and their various  predicaments and the mesage within the tale....

And then I thought that music has the same effect - the words of the song reminds us of our experiences in life, particularly love and its endless joys and sorrows....

And then I considered that music is poetry but with a harmony added, and that made me consider that poems are beautiful beyond belief sometimes with their lyrical understanding of the use of langage and the heartaches and passions that poetry evokes....

Which of course, led me on to visual pleasures after the written ones. And that made me think of my art. And that's what I'm trying to capture within my pictures - that happy feeling of being part of what is portrayed within the medium, that makes you feel happy and sad, gives you the empathy and ecstacy of being part of the subject matter. That you too feel the pain and loss, the love and joy, the passions and understandings of what is being portrayed within...................... that the medium of creativity evokes such joys within us................ music for the soul..................