“All art is quite useless”
Wilde’s claim of the uselessness of art is a claim I firmly disagree with. Art has a variety of uses depending on the person, and will always find a way to be useful in some way. Music is an art that I use to find relatability between myself and other people. Certain songs emit more relatability than others to me. A song that immediately came to mind when I thought of the use of music for relatability would have to be Ups and Downs by the artist KYLE. The song details KYLE having a conversation within himself about his own ups and downs and his management of them. The song’s use was to show me a shared human experience that at the time I didn’t know existed. That as a human you will experience ups and downs. Everyone has these moments and they have to be able to navigate through them to live their lives. There’s various ways to navigate through these, and KYLE uses this song to show a way to cope with them. He looks within himself and recognizes the bad that plagues his experience as a human being.“Truthfully, honestly, I am a mess I am depressed, I am obsessed With self-deprecating and blamin’ myself Socially lyin’, denyin’ the help” (SOURCE). Immediately following KYLE’s statements he says “but it ain’t so bad”. At a younger age this part of the song spoke the most to me. All of these things that he admits about himself easily affect his day to day life and his perception of events. But it isn’t that bad when KYLE weighs all the good in his life. As we all should when we think about our own ups and downs. The downs still exist but compared to the good in your life it somewhat cancels the amount of bad out. KYLE the fact that being on TV and the level of stardom he’s reached in his career. The next verse goes into more detail about as well as further to describe ups and downs for the listener. A concept brought up in this song that I would cling to during the period where I loved this song was the concept of your ups and downs being like a coin that flips. Eventually you’ll get the “bad” side and have to experience whatever that entails but vice versa you will get the good side of the coin and be able to reap its rewards. As well another concept being brought up about coping with the ups and down is to try not to dwell on it and be happy in the moment. That a way of getting rid of the bad feeling is to show a good outer appearance. My usage of this song would be finding not just relatability but ways to view a foreign concept to me. I just saw that life can either be good OR bad all the time. That your life either was good or it made you feel miserable all the time. It fueled the fact that I thought my life sucked to make me more defiant on the thought of your life only being only an up or down. If you dwell on the bad moments, you’ll never let the good in life in as well as being unable to appreciate the good moments. Art will never be useless as it holds an infinite number of uses person to person.