“And What Is Your Desire?“

Some thoughts during another daydream of mine.

“And what is your desire?”
“That I might see what you did see.”

Perhaps this is what every artist offers us.

Not an explanation,
but another way of seeing.

Not so that we see what they saw,
but so that we begin to see more deeply ourselves.

Two people can stand before the same painting, the same tree, the same child, the same sunset, and inhabit entirely different worlds — not because the world has changed, but because their perception has.

Perhaps perception is not simply seeing.

Perhaps perception is where consciousness meets the world.

And perhaps this is why art matters.

It gently alters perception.

And when perception changes, so too does the world we inhabit.

And then I hear someone say:

“But reality is reality.”

A stone dropped will fall to the floor.

A fact exists.

And yet the world we inhabit is woven from billions of individual perceptions.

What we notice.
What we fear.
What we love.
What we are ready to receive.

All of these shape the reality we experience.

Art does not remove fact.

It widens perception.

It gives us the opportunity
to hear the story inside the image,
to see the story inside the sound,
to notice what was always there,

waiting for our perception to awaken.

And when we recognise a new part of ourselves,
our perception widens.

And the world we inhabit opens too.

Artwork by Lim Tee Sin “The Doors of the Heart”