I was listening to the music of Morton Feldman and I heard this beautiful piece:

http://youtu.be/x-9QcADiekY

And I saw Rothko's works:

And I started caring about art right then and there.

I guess it's a lot like poetry to me, or like a flower.

Visual Art

The first visual artwork that I can recall making me "feel something" wasn't all that Highbrow, it was the artwork of Derek Riggs as portrayed on the covers of Iron Maiden albums. I thought "Eddie" was fascinating to look at. Both terrifying and empowering, especially for a young kid:

If we are talking music:

I was ten years old, driving to the amusement park "Cedar Point" in Ohio with my friend Tim and his family. Tim's brother, being all of 13, was in charge of the music. He put in the mixed tape he had made, the first song on it was "Revolution" by the Beatles. The moment that fuzzy guitar lick started I was captured, the old me was gone, I would never be the same again. I immediately asked, "What is that sound"? Tim's older brother looked at me like I was insane and in a tone that suggested I had asked the dumbest question ever said, "Distortion".

Distortion, often the aggressor, sometimes the wooer and almost always the life of the party. It takes on many forms and can effect any instrument or voice.

This moment was two things: 1. My first time consciously loving a Beatles song and 2. The first time I realized that a specific sound could affect me so deeply.

As for sculpture:

I grew up playing music, writing poetry, drawing and painting but I never even dabbled with sculpture. This could be because my brother created a sculpture that will forever reign supreme in our family. Every christmas my mother brings his scupture out to adorn our holiday hearth. He made it when he was just a boy. It's appropriately titled, "Snowman With Nipples"

The first experience with art that I remember was when I was 9 years old and in Amsterdam with my family.

We went to a lot of museums and a lot of churches. That's about all I remember from the trip. The only painting I remember is a still life with a massive dead turkey in the middle. Full on turkey. Dead. My brother and I were looking at it and simultaneously thinking, "what the..."

So we turn on our little headsets that they had to hear what they had to say about the painting. It went like this:

"As you may notice, the most striking thing about this still life is the large, dead turkey in the center. It was painted by [artist] in [date]."

That's it. We listened to this about 100 times and found it more and more hilarious each time. Even our parents were laughing at the utter absurdity of it. I don't know who painted it or anything but I can still hear the nice museum voiceover saying the word "striking" in the weird museum accent.

--

I studied a lot of art after that. I took art history and film and photography. I was pretty consistently bored except by a few amazing films my high school teacher showed us. Then in photography class we were shown these photos by Larry Clark from his "Tulsa" photo book.

The book starts like this:

I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in January 1943. When I was 16 I started shooting valo. Valo was a nasel inhaler you could buy at the drugstore for a dollar with a tremendous amount of amphetamine in it.

Here are some of my favorites:

There are a lot more and a lot of NSFW ones and contains a lot of really fucked up shit. Google image "Larry Clark Tulsa" or click here when you aren't at work. Each tells a little piece of a story about a group of crazy drug fueled kids and the naked drug fueled, gun loving life they were living.

He went on to do the movie Kids and a lot of other sick shock value shit after this that I don't like. But these I love.

I think I like these because in these you can tell he is part of this group. He isn't trying to shock anyone. He's your little artsy friend who always has the camera. Most are candid or semi-posed. The accidental shots are the best ones. You get this really inside look with these. The camera is barely there.

I, too, was taken to many museums by my parents from the time a was quite young. I always liked going, and similar to you, I also had a moment where I felt something when I had never had that experience before. For me, it wasn't a particular piece, but a particular exhibition. I can't remember where exactly, as it was a long time ago, but some museum we visited when I was a kid had an special exhibit of Goya etchings. They're terrifying and exhilarating, and it transformed the way I viewed art in an instant.

It's at the National Gallery, I've seen it too; it was one of the absolute highlights of my trip. Van Gogh's the greatest -- saw Starry Night at the MoMA in Manhattan when I was younger and that sealed the deal for me as far as (visual) art went. Since then I've seen almost every Van Gogh of note and a hell of a lot of other shit and nothing's yet made me feel more.

Music is a whole other story. I was one of those kids who from birth alternated nights falling asleep to Mozart at Midnight, Here Comes the Sun and old bluegrass tapes.

EDIT: good question, sad I couldn't answer definitively. I've often wished I knew exactly what my lightbulb music moment was like thenewgreen mentions above. I just know from my first memories I've had a love of the Beatles.