The truth of our mess

- here's a poem Wan Ping posted. It made me think. It's true that our emotions are usually just bundles of mess - sparks and gushes. How do you tell others about these sparks and gushes? You convert it into words maybe, or music, or dance. You try and organise this fuzzy intense ball into braids and weaves, smooth lines that people can comprehend. But we will never fully satisfy the rages of emotion. How do you satisfactorily convey the way your heart is breaking? 

Perhaps you punch something and let it shatter, show them what the mess inside looks like. Maybe the only way to do it is to scream, or to cry; incoherent, messy pleas, because words can't do justice to your grief.

Fingers ceaselessly run over keys,
mindlessly so.
When rhythm is enduring,
stable and stabile,
Who is to say,
what is music and what is noise,
what is sound and what is sane.

If emotions separate
the good and the bad,
the mindless from the charged,
the sound from the mess,
and the finest from the mass.
What is emotions if not expressed,
if but in a state of mess,
bewildered so much so the player
can't play.
For all thoughts expressed
are but masks
passing through veils of men and prudence,
consciousness and language,
that confuses but tells no truth
about the confusion.

For the intangible to be tangible,
from the personal to the external,
music is lost,
and in its place
are notes—
arranged, organized
in accordance with judgement
that says nothing about emotions.

All we see are
Fingers, ceaselessly running over keys.

(Chua Wan Ping)