While I was on an exchange abroad, I took Islamic Archaeology as one of my electives. The elective turned out to be a graduate-level course with the class consisting of only one other exchange student and four graduate students of Near-Eastern Archaeology. I took the course as an Anthropology elective while my undergrad counterpart took the course as an elective for her Fine Arts degree. We connected over being slightly out of our depths.
It is from her that I was first introduced to art therapy and learned about the ways the arts can help people in a holistic way. As someone who isn’t a musician myself, I occasionally wonder about the various dimensions to music. Where does it come from? What is the intention or purpose a musician might have, if any, for creating music? For some, music creation is therapeutic and healing. They can make it solely for themselves or they can share it with other people. I recently saw an interview with Ed Sheeran who stated that once he releases songs, he believes they belong to the people rather than him because they ascribe their own meanings and memories to each song. In this way, music can simultaneously reflect people as well as serve people.
Stolar is a soulful, electropop artist whose music reflects him, serves him, and serves other people. His music is an artful reflection of his struggles with mental health. His music both serves as a sort of therapy for him to personally find comfort, as well as bring awareness and destigmatize mental illness.
Stolar Exposes All with Raw Emotions
“Obsessed. Creating. Writing. Everyday. It’s how I work through emotions.” explains Stolar. “I create so I can connect. But songs are empty without people. And I want to share this music in its purest form. Music should be listened to as it’s written, it shouldn’t sit on a shelf or on a computer. That’s why I’m launching this project. Raw Emotions.”
Stolar writes songs almost every day and has transformed his obsession with writing into the project, Raw Emotions. With this project, Stolar isolates certain emotional themes each month, focuses his writing on that theme, then releases it. The latest monthly theme was “desire,” for which he penned and released “Kurt Cobain T-Shirt.”
“‘Kurt Cobain T-Shirt’ is about desire,” he explains. Connecting it to this month’s theme, Stolar says, “It’s about wanting someone so much that you can’t help but tell them. It’s that moment when you realize that what you are feeling is not some bullshit emotion. It’s real and you have to do something about it.”
Stolar’s music is an unashamed reflection of him that serves both him and his audience. The emotional connections weave throughout making a connection between him, his music, and his audience inevitable. Keep up with the next months’ themes on Stolar’s Facebook and Twitter.
