Certainly stand-up comedians and rock musicians can be seen to have such an effect. Even to the point of making older folks or those with calcified thinking angry.

And getting nervous, of course, is a precursor (I’ve always thought, anyway) to setting out to do “the next thing.”

There is one thing I would like to comment on — although 60% of our ‘brain’ is devoted to visual processing, this doesn’t account for the rest of the nervous system — vast neural networks from the spine on down through the gut and beyond. I find it fascinating that ‘traditional’ cultures who have not been permeated by visual media often have a different sensory bias – mostly I’m thinking music that impacts on a somatic level. Traditional drumming and dance in many cultures engages the entire physical body on a level that both inspires and evokes the divine force within; various forms of toning, throat singing, and other esoteric forms of vocal expression can also provoke altered states of consciousness in participants. This to me is an example of the artist truly embracing the human form itself as an instrument of divine expression. When one experiences the divine on an experiential level of feeling, it can be profoundly impactful in a way that a mediated visual experience can never quite reach.

I think it’s an interesting comment on our mediated culture that our assessment of art is so heavily biased towards visual expression. We are so afraid of feeling, of truly embracing our divine nature; we content ourselves, oftem quite passively, with brief glimpses and snatches of resonance mediated through the eyes of our few artists.

Even more telling, we tend to characterize such indigenous musical forms as primitive or unsophisticated, when in fact, what they encourage in these cultures is the acknowledgement and embracement of the truth that we are ALL creators.