What does it mean to believe?

In about six hours I'll go to the first class of my last semester as an undergrad. I should be asleep, but after my brain was recently rewired to associate 2:30 (bar close --don't worry I've been legal since yesterday) as the time to unwind, I felt compelled to write, so I figured, why not on the blog?

Over the last year I've begun to realize how intertwined photography (like any art/medium, I suppose) is with the human psyche, so I hope that writing about what's on my mind will lead me to discover something that I can also portray in a photograph. Words and feelings can't translate believably into photographs unless you - the feeling side of you - fully believe in them...right? Our thinking side often sends pulses of doubt to mess us up, but beneath it all we inexplicably believe. At least that's what I think...er believe...think, believe, think, believe... How can we be sure which it is?

If a photograph makes you feel something, not a superficial reactionary feeling, but a true emotion that stems from experience (either perceived mentally or physically), then the artist has succeeded. But what if the artist never felt that way, and instead someone just told them that's how they felt when they were exposed to the art, so the artist just went in that direction because that person told him/her to.

For me, fine art photography is about making the intangible tangible. Using images to express an idea. But I want to know if it is possible to embody/replicate a feeling through our viewfinder, or on a pad of paper. Humans are limited, but I have felt moved by art, music, writing. I know I have or I wouldn't be writing this. So there must be a way, but I feel like I'm circling the outer edges of my project and am unable to penetrate them, at least for the time being.

Mary's post about the movie Inception made me curious, so I went to see it, and, like her, I highly recommend it. I don't think this will give anything away, but just in case it does, read this part after you watch it.

---In one scene a character is so convinced that her world is not real that she does not fear death. But what lead her to this decision came from an idea someone else planted in her using a dream, even though she believed that it was her own idea. ---

The events that follow make you question the line between reality and fantasy, where you spend (or would like to spend) the majority of the time that is given to you, and what you would do if life had no limits.

This post is intangible, incapable of being fully understood. The words have been released from me and onto this screen in front of you, but the thoughts are suspended in a community of space and are no longer just mine to confront alone.

So what do we really believe in? Why do we believe those things? And why do we stop believing some of those things, or is there such a thing as completely erasing a belief from ourselves once it has been there, even for a brief moment?