First Experiences of Art

“He’s The Greatest Actor in the World.”

One afternoon when I was a little boy I was playing on the floor in front of the television that my mother had left on while she went away to vacuum in another room. I was playing with my toy trucks, and as Dylan Thomas would say, I was “as happy as the day is long.” But from time to time I found myself glancing up at the T V screen and then after  a while found myself laying my trucks aside completely and getting closer to the screen and watching an old movie very intently. It was black and white (of course it had to be; they didn’t have color TV yet, and even if they did, my parents couldn’t have afforded one). And I realize now that semi-strange language the actors were speaking was British English

One person on that screen mesmerized me. I could not take my eyes off him. I found tremendous satisfaction watching and listening to him, and wanted to watch and listen all day. What was happening to me was beyond me to describe. I was young; I didn’t have the vocabulary to explain it. But I am far from young now, and still do not have the vocabulary, not because my vocabulary is deficient, but because when you see or read or hear something that is so out of the ordinary that it is almost beyond belief, you are unprepared for it and no words in all the lexicons, even the most expressive, are sufficient. That is art.

I was speechless. All I knew was that what I was feeling was jubilation, was joy. In my little child’s way I knew that on that screen before my eyes truly extraordinary things were happening and it was because of that man. My mother walked by and I pointed and touched the screen and said, “Who is that man?” And she answered. “That is Laurence Olivier. He’s the greatest actor in the world.” How did I know that? How could I tell that the man was great in his profession of acting, I was so young. But even when you are so little, true art breaks through to you, and as you can see your first experience with art you remember all your life and cannot forget, but remember the experience many times in a life and talk about it with friends.

“David Made a Simile.”

One day in the third grade my favorite teacher, Miss Gross, standing in the front of the room, started reading something I had written. She had had us describe something that had happened to us, and because I loved to run and was the fastest running boy in the neighborhood I wrote about running while playing football. I heard her read (very dramatically) my words: “They tackled me and I fell to the ground like a blob of jelly coming out of a jar.” “That is what is called an image, the basis of poetry, an art. David made a simile.”

“So, I’ve made a simile,” I thought. “Isn’t that something?” Then walking home after school, I got to thinking that I could make similes all the rest of my life.

So, why did I write this blog? Because, you see, my experiences in front of that TV screen and in that classroom made this tribute to art seem necessary and inevitable. My need to go on creating art and making similes like the real writer I would one day become started with those early experiences.

© 2026 David J. Rogers

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