Music Case

Essay: Discuss How A Particular Work Of Music, Literature, or Art Has inspired Your Life."William And Mary"

I always have some dreams when I fall asleep. Sometimes, I wake up in my dreams and think that I am awake; only then I wake up again, this time for real, and realize that I have been dreaming that I was awake. Those dreams make me wonder if I am really awake-perhaps the world I see might not be real, or perhaps it is.

Rene Magritte's painting La trahison des images, known as Ceci n'est pas une pipe, constantly awares me by keep telling me that what I believe I see might not be true. The central idea present in the painting is a descendant of the ideas of Parmenides and Plato; that what we perceive is only sensory illusions of the real being. This idea might seem outdated and worthless, since although it is true that our world is full of illusions, we still live in such a world and that became the reality for us. However, if we interpret their ideas slightly differently, the message we get would be: Do not get distracted by what you see and try to look trough the illusions.

In modern society, every information we perceive is somehow distorted, biased, or completely false, either by the distributor of those information or by us accepting the information. In such a situation, we need to distinguish fact from opinion, hyperbole from reality, and truth from false. We need to be aware of the possibility that our eyes-sometimes ears too-could deceive us. We need to learn to read not what is being told but what is being neglected, intentionally hidden, and deleted-to rip off the fabulous veil of illusion and see the naked truth underneath. For all this, we need something that constantly alert us to be aware, and La trahison des images successfully delivers the message for that purpose.