How many times in your life have you been called ‘intense’? With the clear implication that there is immediately something wrong with you?
Me – countless times!
My lizard brain response would probably be, ‘Oh yeah? And you are shallow!’
Of course, my higher mental functions won’t allow me such rebukes. But if it were at least the ‘You are this and I am that’ kind of conversation, instead of the allusive hint to the damaged goods of one’s being!
Feeling ‘intense’ after the argument, I proceeded to look up a true definition of the word in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, and this is what I found.
Intense:
- Existing to an extreme degree (e.g. intense pain or excitement)
- Having or showing a characteristic in extreme degree (intense colour, for example)
- Marked by or expressive of great zeal, energy, determination, or concentration (as intense effort)
- Exhibiting a strong feeling or earnestness of purpose (e. g. an intense student)
- Deeply felt
Let’s look at each definition one by one and start with intense as in colour.
Please pause and refresh your memory of Kandinsky’s Yellow, Red, and Blue painting. Aren’t you positively impacted by the explosion of colours and shapes on canvas? Aren’t you suddenly pulled out of boring, routine, and ordinary existence, asking ‘what’ and ‘why’ like a curious little child? And isn’t that a good thing?
As an example of ‘deeply felt’, I would like to offer a line by John Lennon written to his mom: ‘Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it just to reach you, Julia.’ We’ve all been there. A barrage of words that don’t really matter, because what matters is the basic human emotion that needs to be understood by the other person.
When it comes to both intense pain and excitement, nothing better comes to mind than the self-transcending experience of giving birth. Any woman who has been through this rite of passage understands the meaning behind these words. On one hand, the pain is so overwhelming that you completely lose yourself in the process, and yet the joy of holding a new being is so great, that you are willing to do this again and again.
Let’s touch upon intense effort. Steven King writes about 2000 words a day. That’s your 10 pages of text, ladies and gentlemen. He starts in the morning, and he doesn’t leave his desk until he’s finished. His determination results in a book about every three months. Not only that, he also manages to read about 70–80 books a year. I shall not proceed to count how many books this amounts to in his lifetime. Isn’t his intense work ethic admirable?
I left a strong feeling and earnestness of purpose for a grand finale. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, after a bus driver ordered her to give up her bus seat to a white passenger, and she refused. Mrs. Parks’s action led to her arrest. However, the strong response from the African-American community in Montgomery, led by Ralph Abernathy and Martin Luther King, Jr., brought about a year-long bus boycott. As a result of these protests in December 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court banned all segregation on public transportation.
Intense is not wrong. It is, however, the opposite of gentle, mild, and soft, but also of light, weak, and superficial. Both intense and mild are scales of saturation. Both are needed, not only in visual arts, but also for society as a whole.