Wounds

When you have a wound that's healing, and you touch it, you get a pleasant, satisfying feeling. It is difficult to describe, but touching a scab and playing with it and the feelings that it engenders are enjoyable in a way. 

We play with our emotional wounds in a similar way. When we read a novel or watch a movie that tingles our scabs, it is actually the same kind of satisfying pain that we are experiencing. Writers, artists, musicians  - they are also touching their own scabs in some way when producing their work. And readers who read them are doing the same. The common thread is the shared pain - the shared scabs that we are all touching. And it is enjoyable and satisfying in a perverse kind of way.  

I wonder how much of music, art, literature and their popularity is just people touching their own scabs. I would say a vast majority of it.

Which also brings the question - if you don't have as many emotional wounds from the past, perhaps you are missing out on the satisfaction of touching your scabs. And perhaps you are missing out on the depths of experiences that life has to offer? I think not. 

The "touching the scabs" is just one kind of enjoyment and perhaps a perverse one as I mentioned. There is another kind of enjoyment and satisfaction that is free of our emotional wounds. And that comes from creativity and making progress. Perhaps that is the only true kind of joy. And it is sustainable - there is no risk of opening up a wound by touching the scabs way too much. 

And applied to the arts - that is where objective art comes into picture. Art that is "good" irrespective of the subjective experiences (i.e. emotional scabs) of the ones experiencing it. Subjectively it would be difficult to distinguish it, but with a proper theory of aesthetics (i.e. what makes something beautiful objectively) we will some day be able to separate our emotional scabs from the actual objective beauty in a thing or experience.