To start with,

*Art is extremely relative.*

The way I would define it is the materialization of one’s own perspective, meaning that you are literally molding, framing, vocalizing what’s within your head. It’s how you understand things, and art is a method of communication that allows for the expression of that wavelength of thought.

The second most interesting part is the **reception**.

How does one person’s wavelength of thought appeal to others?

**Resonance** could be one; **dissonance** could also be considered.

If I were to qualify those reasons, I would simply say, “birds of a feather flock together” for the first part, as what you know is what you tend to stay around.

And alternatively, art adds this interesting dynamic of literal and metaphorical provocation. It causes one to experience wavelengths outside what they know, causing them to be exposed to this experience which naturally won’t be able to articulate or explain anything other than how weird that experience was. At least that’s how it’s always been for me—and I hope it’s not too presumptuous to assume that some percentage of people have a similar experience.

Growing up in a Christian household, I was mostly exposed to gospel music, 70-80s classics, new jack swing (never really cared for it), and sometimes rock—more pop/soft rock anyway; Linkin Park, Matchbox 20, Daughtry, and a few others I can’t remember. So, the reason I’m giving this context is again to qualify dissonance as a reason for connecting with art, and as you can tell, I’m using music as the medium to explain this.

I recall listening to “[Chop Suey](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clUkF4z6Q14)” (you should probably listen to it around now) by the band System of a Down, which is a [nu-metal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nu_metal) band—I will not go into explaining sub-genres—when I was younger. And being so taken by the intro, it was such a beautiful combination of a guitar riff starting things off and an electric guitar slowly joining in to create this fluid bridge between the three guitar voicings: one acoustic playing chords, one distorted electric playing a slow riff, and another distorted guitar providing this water effect over everything. And then the drums. The drums come in with this very tribal sound, which I thought was pretty cool. And that combination makes such an entrancing intro. But then, if you know the song, that doesn’t go on for much longer. You’d assume the rest of the song would follow that tempo, but it doesn’t. It immediately breaks away, and the guitars become heavier, and the lead singer comes in with a style I’ve never heard in my life, and I was so confused and upset, more importantly. Why? Because I believed the song was ruined by the verse because the intro was so perfect.

But it stayed on my mind because I couldn’t comprehend why they would do such a thing. Even the lyrics made no sense at the time. I kept on wondering,

“Why in the world would you do this?!”,

But because of that confusion, I still kept on going back to figure out why someone would make such a song. And each time it baffled me. I tried focusing on one instrument at a time to sort of map timing, and yes, I know this is not how people regularly listen to music, but I needed to understand it. The drums, the guitars, the precision, the bass, and finally the vocals. Long story short, I still couldn’t understand it.

*But I kept listening to it.*

Then one day, I got to the bridge, and the sounds finally clicked in my head. And I was like, “Oh my goodness. This is brilliant.” I went from complaining about the song every time I hear it to trying to recommend people the very song and explaining to them why it’s so creatively cool, like a curator.

To conclude, art allows for the appreciation and connection of people in such a diverse way that’s not possible through any other medium than hate because negativity is also a strong connecting fabric. Nonetheless, how art does it, is that it creates these beautiful symbols because we as people begin to appreciate it and assign our very own meanings. And somewhere along the lines, there is an intersection of all things, and that creates this binding fabric that brings people from all walks of life to unify under organized sound.