The demands of artistic expression

Author

Jacob Hayward
November 03, 2025

The demands of artistic expression

Given the methodologies of science, the law of gravity and the genome were bound to be discovered by somebody; the identity of the discoverer is incidental. But in the arts there are no second chances.

- Wendell Berry

Fall is beautiful. Yesterday, the family and I had the opportunity to go on a little hike. The trees in this place were almost exclusively yellow leaves, which made the forest feel as if it were layered in gold. The sun, though shaded in the gray clouds of an Ohio November day, lit the forest aglow. We sat as the boys climbed and the leaves fell gracefully around us.

The falling leaves of this season remind us of a law of nature: gravity. We experience it the same today as Newton did under the apple tree long ago. In fact, he or I or any other individual could have discovered the same exact equation he did describing the unchanging law of gravity (in theory anyways, idk if I’m that intelligent). Gravity, what keeps our feet planted on the earth and what causes the moon to rotate around us and us around the sun, is credited to Newton as its discoverer and yet not its creator.

Science is on the hunt for what is already true, turning on lights in hopes to illuminate what has previously been outside of human language or description. It is an adventurers pursuit and exciting no doubt, and yet discoverable by anyone.

But Michelangelo’s sistine chapel, Shakespeare’s poems, or even Wendell Berry’s essays are birthed, not discovered. There is an urgency to art, its nature is limited to its human creator. If the writer chooses not to put pen to paper, the painter oil to canvas, the songwriter not sit at the piano, than that art will not ever exist.

How could it?

Think of the poet. She has had a life full of experiences sequenced together in a way that she can call her own. Yes, we all have the same experiences, but not distinctly hers. She is stricken with grief as she arrives at her beloved family members’ funeral, also an experience many people have. As she sits unsleeping late into the night she puts into words what many have felt or said but never from her. In part, her art is bringing light to something many people have experienced, and yet this experience is distinctly hers. Though it moves the listener in part because of the common experience, it remains uncommonly and uniquely her poem. It was not discovered as a law of nature is.

I think of my children, each so different from one another. Neither could replace the other, and if they had not been born there simply never would be in history a Josiah or Micah or Aletheia who is quite like them. Sure, there are children who might share certain characteristics or laugh similarly or also like big trucks. But there is not one who is them. Had they not been born to this family at this time, simply there never would be.

So, too, is the life of art.

The leaves and apples will continue to fall, and the laws of nature will continue to be unearthed. If not by the adventurers of today then by the ones of tomorrow. But the songs, the stories, the pottery that would be crafted by you are dependent on you alone. If not born from your life then they never will be.

This is your call to live. To give everything you can back into the world. To not passively sit by and allow the things you could have done or created to decay in your soul. Your competition is not against the great artists of today, but against time which threatens to eat your chid alive. Let your art live and let the world be the judge. I think you will find an appreciation for your creation. After all, who else could have done it but you?

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