Jake, chooses to be depicted busking, atop his guitar case, actively playing music. Jake’s father gifted him the guitar, along with a passion for music derived from a shared enjoyment of his father's vinyl collection. The guitar is central to their shared family history and story. Musical knowledge is passed down like a family heirloom, metaphorically passing the torch .
Jake is painted outside Massey Hall, Canada’s oldest concert hall. It is an artistic hub of music and performance in downtown Toronto. Built by, Hart Massey, to memorialize his son, Charles Albert Massey, it is a symbol of love from father to son expressed through a shared appreciation of the arts.
Jake is outside the black stage door that faces an unpretentious side-alley with metal fire escapes, piled garbage, and the backs of old buildings. The door’s scuff marks, evidence of life and action crossing its threshold, frame Jake’s figure. This is the functional part of the building.
There is an aspirational meaning in the painting, a hope for a future musical career. Instruments are the site of musical growth. One with musical aspirations may see an instrument as a key unlocking social transformation. It helps us understand our own feelings and we can view ourselves in the eyes of others. It gives us a true voice, strengthening in difficult times. It is a way to explore identity, showing others how we want to be viewed.
Musical objects are valued as music brings ordered stimulation, keep minds on track, channels our mood, and give emotions legitimacy. Musical Instruments are meant to be touched. Playing instruments exercises control, mastery, and creativity, to find meaning. They are tangible repositories of auditory worlds that help us prove sound exists and that we possess it.
Musical instruments have a social life, changing ownership through their lives. They are a central protagonist with a body, a site of meaning when touched, and a biography, with narrative power in an owner’s life. Each one is a unique entity, generating new meaning in different hands.
Musicians often personify instruments, sometimes giving them names or talking about them as if they have their own spirit. Jake sees his guitar as a vessel for the music he plays as well as the artistic value this brings to himself and others. It is more than a commodity.
Music is made to affect others. Jake’s goal, through this painting, is to express his love for music’s unifying power. Music is a fundamental, super-verbal, and global language of human emotion. It is a vehicle for storytelling, a fundamental way humans frame life’s challenges and create motivation.
Musical genres, like food, are statements of value, attitude, and taste. All art forms connect on a social level and can build bridges between people. Enjoying music from other perspectives points us towards tolerance, uniting diverse groups. Digital media provides infrastructure to quickly share ideas. The world’s music cultures are made of continuous import and export. Music will not rid the world of conflict, however, it can host open dialogue so people see the humanity in each other.