When I was twelve years old I spent some time at a shelter for abused children. There was one counselor there who I was actually quite fond of. She had us do this exercise that I will never forget.
She gave us all modeling clay and told us to close our eyes. She told us to sculpt whatever we wanted, but with our eyes closed. In the end, my sculpture felt 100% like a horse's face. You could feel the ears, the flat profile of the skull, the hollows of the nostrils. It was unmistakably a horse, but when I opened my eyes, it was unrecognizable.
We went around in turns, feeling each other's sculptures, and a lot of them you could tell with your eyes closed what it was with absolute certainty, but you couldn't see it.
After this she told us "Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean you can't feel it. No one can know or understand what you feel unless you can find a way to express it to them. Find your own way to express your feelings." And that's what I've been doing ever since then. I've been putting my feelings in to my music, my lyrics and I've been trying to find my own way to discuss the pain that no one can see, that has to be felt.

Cidnie,

Sounds like you had one brilliant teacher!!! You are so right about the power and importance of feelings and the potential for expressing them in music and in lyrics - poetry in a way. I think there are so many messages that just don't work in prose, but man, in a song they become incredibly powerful!

In any case, what counts is that this mode of expression works for you.

Much love,
Larry

So cool! Thank you for this!

I lied, poety is my second favorite art form, music is my first!

I agree with Larry, your instructor sounded like she really knew what she was dealing with about feelings.

This post helped me! i have attend many advanced philosophy classes and what you descride is exactly what a professor told us to write a paper on.

I think the question was something like "What can your hands teach your eyse about an object that you haven never seen or herd of before?" I thnk that was it. After 4 pgs. I came to the conclusion after going through every scientific method that I knew of that the answer is NOTHING.

your teacher sounded very intellegent!

Hope to hear some of yur music some day.

Logan