I am amazed by how loudly people think when they believe they're alone.
We are social animals. It is as a group, where individuals are renewable, that we have a continuous effect on the world. Our impact as a species is so overwhelming that it's tempting to forget how big a part our individual choices play at every stage.
That's not to say we don't value ourselves, yet we enjoy the delusion that we are powerless and insignificant against "bigger forces at play". But there is no such thing. The only bigger force than an individual choice is a multitude of individual choices made at once and going in the same direction. That's the principle of democracy. And that's the principle or art and its appreciation.
Crucially, these powerful choices are never made in public. Not really anyway - our spur-of-the-moment decisions are only ripples, consequences.
Choices are born beforehand, in the intimate melancholy of solitude, inspired by our surroundings and the gravity of being alone with things much bigger than ourselves. They happen when nobody's looking, and even we don't always know what's going on.
But the camera does. And from a silhouette to a crucifixion, it's zooming in.
