The Point Of It All: Art, Music and the Soul

I wanted to become a writer for a simple, unpractical reason. I wanted others to see life from my point of view. This ambition, I quickly learned, does not feature on any standard productivity metric. In a world obsessed with optimisation, wanting to be a great storyteller can feel like announcing you’re training to become a professional cloud-watcher. It’s nice, but what’s the point?

I feel this tension every day. We all do. A recent survey found that 65% of UK workers experienced burnout last year, a figure that has surged since 2022. At the same time, the British Museum welcomed 6.5 million visitors, its highest number in a decade. One statistic speaks of a culture pushed to its breaking point; the other, of a culture desperately seeking something to hold onto.

This is the central contradiction of our time. We are told that time is money, that every hobby should be a "side hustle," and that even rest must be productive "self-care." Yet, we still spend hours creating playlists for friends on Spotify. We log the books we read on Goodreads and the films we watch on Letterboxd. We are drawn, again and again, to things that offer no clear return on investment. In a world demanding constant justification, being sincerely interested in something for its own sake is a quiet act of defiance.

So, what is the point? The practical answer involves work, security, and responsibility. But the human answer, the one I feel in my bones when I’m lost in a sentence or a song, is different. It is the novel that won’t pay my rent but might help me understand my own heart. It is the album that gives a name to a feeling I couldn’t previously grasp. It is the painting that pulls me into a moment of pure, unproductive attention. These things don’t make me more efficient. They make me more me.

This isn't about rejecting responsibility. It is about reclaiming a part of ourselves. When I read Maggie Nelson’s "Bluets," a book entirely about the colour blue, I wasn't learning a marketable skill. I was witnessing a mind grappling with love and loss. The book’s purpose is its own existence. In an economy that often reduces us to our output, valuing such a thing is a declaration that we are more than what we produce.

I see this declaration everywhere now. People are choosing to become musicians, artists, and DJs, prioritising creative expression over traditional career paths, even with the financial uncertainty it often brings. And online, platforms like Substack, Goodreads, and Letterboxd are thriving precisely because they reject the frantic logic of viral content. They are digital gardens for slow, thoughtful engagement. I love to read essays, blogs and quotes on Substack because it allows a direct connection with others who want to think carefully about ideas, not just scroll past them. These platforms prove there is a hunger for meaning, not just metrics.

Of course, we must be honest. When you are working multiple jobs, facing a long commute, and stretched thin by financial worry, being told to "feed your soul" at a gallery can feel like a slap in the face. The data confirms this: cultural engagement is strongly linked to economic security. The prevalence of burnout, with many workers afraid to even speak about it, shows a society where the energy for survival can completely eclipse the capacity for anything else.

The question, then, is not whether someone who is exhausted should be reading poetry. The question I find myself asking is: what kind of society have we built where engaging with the very things that make life worth living feels like a luxury?

For me, the point of writing, of reading, of listening, is to locate meaning within the chaos. It is how I process being human. The poet W.H. Auden wrote that "poetry makes nothing happen." He meant it doesn't change policy in a direct sense. But it changes us. It makes something happen within.

That is the fundamental argument for these seemingly impractical pursuits. They are not extras. They are the main event. They are how we connect to ourselves and to the long chain of humanity that came before us. The time I spend crafting a sentence, the care you put into a playlist, the attention we give to a film that moves us, these are all affirmations. They are ways of saying that our inner world matters. That connection matters. That beauty matters.

My goal is not to choose between beauty and survival, but to live in a world where that is not the choice. A world where time for art and music isn't stolen from rest, but is simply part of what it means to be alive. The millions in museums, the billions of hours streamed online, they are all evidence of a deep, human hunger. We are not here only to work and consume. We are here to pay attention, to feel deeply, and to find, in art and music, echoes of our own soul. That isn't a frivolous pursuit. For me, and perhaps for you too, it is the point of it all.

Written By Vanessa Twerefou