Today I downloaded Ray Charles' last recording - 'Sorry seems to be the hardest word' with Elton John, a song which was to form a part of the album 'Genius loves company'. Lying on a sofa in the dark room with my eyes closed, I listen to the reverberating voice of the legendary singer. I am not able to appreciate it. I am not able to say 'Oh wow! it's amazing', because I am taken in too much to analyse or comment. It fills my soul and goes deep down to touch me. This touch is so rare these days. Everything comes with layers of superfluousness. But here, I ain't talking about humans. I am talking only about arts - literature, music, acting etc.
There are some people who are crafty, who believe that there is a technique for everything. They try to impress you with hit tricks and formulas. There are film-makers who know just the right mix of item song, sex scenes, comic punches, action, romance, songs to make a blockbuster. There are poets who try really hard to make the audience laugh in a kavi sammelan even if it means reciting idiotic jokes as a prelude to the poems. Same goes for song-writers who are on the lookout for a catchy phrase which would get onto the tongues of masses. Or the cinematographers for the over-edited Tamil blockbusters who use those unusual camera angles, over-saturation, the flashy camera movement, dolly shot and other techniques each and everywhere. I loathe them and would extend my discussion here on to the kind of people who I admire. The people who are artists in every sense of the word.
There are some people who are crafty, who believe that there is a technique for everything. They try to impress you with hit tricks and formulas. There are film-makers who know just the right mix of item song, sex scenes, comic punches, action, romance, songs to make a blockbuster. There are poets who try really hard to make the audience laugh in a kavi sammelan even if it means reciting idiotic jokes as a prelude to the poems. Same goes for song-writers who are on the lookout for a catchy phrase which would get onto the tongues of masses. Or the cinematographers for the over-edited Tamil blockbusters who use those unusual camera angles, over-saturation, the flashy camera movement, dolly shot and other techniques each and everywhere. I loathe them and would extend my discussion here on to the kind of people who I admire. The people who are artists in every sense of the word.
There are people who are geniuses - poets who wouldn't get any syllable in the meter of their poem wrong, writers who know just the right word for every expression, singers who wouldn't let any note go wrongly an iota up or down, film-makers who are so organic to make films with all the semblance to life - whose works are flawless. Be it Edgar Allan Poe or Ustad Mehdi Hassan, they have an extreme or, let me say, exhaustive knowledge of their craft. They are too careful to let one word or note seem even inappropriate, leave alone wrong. Surely I have a lot of respect for them.
But there are some other people who are careless. They don't take pride in conforming to rules. No, these are not the people who take pride in breaking rules and strive to create experimental cinema or modern art. Rather, neither they conform to the rules nor they take pride in flouting them. They are the people whose art stems from deep inside. However romantic that might sound, but yes, I know it because I have felt it. And even without any trying, the final piece is of great quality. However, remarking on such pieces of art in terms of quality is itself a bit inconvenient. It's the rising of hair on my arms, the chills down my spine, the awe in my eyes, the grip on my mind and the hangover which remains for long after the experience.
Two days ago, I read Mohan Rakesh's novel 'Na aane wala kal' (the tomorrow which never comes), about the weariness of a school teacher disgusted with the mundane life at school with hypocrite colleagues and whose wife has abandoned him with whom he was anyways not happy. The novel questions the normalcy of the so-called normal life highlighting the burden of existence for those who wouldn't acknowledge it, and the resistance in form of survival issues and internal skepticism for those who realize the misery of this life and want to break from it. The novel has no show of elegance. Written in simple vocabulary and simplistic style without any metaphors, similes, symbolism or other elements, it seems like it was written in running hand. And I guess this is what makes it so poignant. It's just right in your face. Going to the extent of describing the minutest thoughts inside the head without the need for screening any of them, this honest diary entry automatically gets laced with imagery, where you see images of not just the prevalent scene and situation but also of whatever is going on inside the narrator's head. Readers of naturalist fiction like to read a story as if it were true, but in this case, no such effort is required. On the contrary, it's too difficult to discard it as a fictional tale. It's a natural piece written effortlessly. This is what I call authentic. This is what I feel has stemmed from the soul.
Similarly, there are actors like Heath Ledger in 'Dark Knight rises' and Daniel Day Lewis in 'My left foot' who went to extremes in impersonating their character and had their personal life disturbed months after the shoot of the film. The tendency to impress by doing one's best is an inherent tendency in actors, which sometimes becomes almost a desperation. But when someone lets go of all such worries, ambitions for applaud or awards, or the demand posed by the internal self to perform great, when someone doesn't use any method or technique and just performs from his soul, when the actor becomes the character, when the singer becomes the song, when the shayar's emotions at the time of writing the ghazal get personified in the singer, it is then that a true, authentic performance comes up, which thrills, moves, and as I said, touches somewhere deep down.
Doing this is not easy. To be so careless and to just write for what, in my view, is the first cause as well as effect of writing, acting or singing i.e. expression. It's all the more difficult in writing when there is no immediacy, take any amount of re-takes, and you've all the time to keep musing and analyzing your lines. I haven't achieved that genius, where no one could pinpoint flaws in my writing. Leave alone others, I am myself hardly ever satisfied. So, even speaking from a practical perspective, there is a need for me to fit into the second model, that of the careless authentic poets. But even if there is a whole plot in my head, firstly I keep avoiding or procrastinating from putting it on paper. Then, after a long time, when I start, I scribble the first line. I keep gloating over it for some time. It doesn't sound good enough to be the starting line. So, I slash it, and start with a new line. Again, slashing it and rewriting keeps happening for some time. Finally, I get it and move on. But after writing a paragraph or two, I read it over and dismiss all of it as a futile attempt. It was much simpler in childhood. But now, it's quite difficult. It does happen in poetry that the whole poem comes to me right within five minutes from its origin in my mind from unknown source. But it's a rare phenomenon. And moreover, I disregard many of these poems. I wish I had more respect for them, but they just don't read so good to me. So I neither recite them, nor make a fair draft of the scribbles in running hand. While there are some other poems which keep on going unfinished for months or even years in the hope of finding the right word. Frankly, I don't even clearly know what does 'right' mean in poetry, especially when I am an upholder of free verse. But it just doesn't sound right. With prose which is longer, the problem is all the more bigger.
Well, today I have written this piece. And although I have half a mind to save it as a draft for ever like so many other drafts, yet I think I'll post it today.
Two days ago, I read Mohan Rakesh's novel 'Na aane wala kal' (the tomorrow which never comes), about the weariness of a school teacher disgusted with the mundane life at school with hypocrite colleagues and whose wife has abandoned him with whom he was anyways not happy. The novel questions the normalcy of the so-called normal life highlighting the burden of existence for those who wouldn't acknowledge it, and the resistance in form of survival issues and internal skepticism for those who realize the misery of this life and want to break from it. The novel has no show of elegance. Written in simple vocabulary and simplistic style without any metaphors, similes, symbolism or other elements, it seems like it was written in running hand. And I guess this is what makes it so poignant. It's just right in your face. Going to the extent of describing the minutest thoughts inside the head without the need for screening any of them, this honest diary entry automatically gets laced with imagery, where you see images of not just the prevalent scene and situation but also of whatever is going on inside the narrator's head. Readers of naturalist fiction like to read a story as if it were true, but in this case, no such effort is required. On the contrary, it's too difficult to discard it as a fictional tale. It's a natural piece written effortlessly. This is what I call authentic. This is what I feel has stemmed from the soul.
Similarly, there are actors like Heath Ledger in 'Dark Knight rises' and Daniel Day Lewis in 'My left foot' who went to extremes in impersonating their character and had their personal life disturbed months after the shoot of the film. The tendency to impress by doing one's best is an inherent tendency in actors, which sometimes becomes almost a desperation. But when someone lets go of all such worries, ambitions for applaud or awards, or the demand posed by the internal self to perform great, when someone doesn't use any method or technique and just performs from his soul, when the actor becomes the character, when the singer becomes the song, when the shayar's emotions at the time of writing the ghazal get personified in the singer, it is then that a true, authentic performance comes up, which thrills, moves, and as I said, touches somewhere deep down.
Doing this is not easy. To be so careless and to just write for what, in my view, is the first cause as well as effect of writing, acting or singing i.e. expression. It's all the more difficult in writing when there is no immediacy, take any amount of re-takes, and you've all the time to keep musing and analyzing your lines. I haven't achieved that genius, where no one could pinpoint flaws in my writing. Leave alone others, I am myself hardly ever satisfied. So, even speaking from a practical perspective, there is a need for me to fit into the second model, that of the careless authentic poets. But even if there is a whole plot in my head, firstly I keep avoiding or procrastinating from putting it on paper. Then, after a long time, when I start, I scribble the first line. I keep gloating over it for some time. It doesn't sound good enough to be the starting line. So, I slash it, and start with a new line. Again, slashing it and rewriting keeps happening for some time. Finally, I get it and move on. But after writing a paragraph or two, I read it over and dismiss all of it as a futile attempt. It was much simpler in childhood. But now, it's quite difficult. It does happen in poetry that the whole poem comes to me right within five minutes from its origin in my mind from unknown source. But it's a rare phenomenon. And moreover, I disregard many of these poems. I wish I had more respect for them, but they just don't read so good to me. So I neither recite them, nor make a fair draft of the scribbles in running hand. While there are some other poems which keep on going unfinished for months or even years in the hope of finding the right word. Frankly, I don't even clearly know what does 'right' mean in poetry, especially when I am an upholder of free verse. But it just doesn't sound right. With prose which is longer, the problem is all the more bigger.
Well, today I have written this piece. And although I have half a mind to save it as a draft for ever like so many other drafts, yet I think I'll post it today.
It is mostly vain.....may be unintentional but absolutely vain.....
ReplyDeleteread it aloud and you will repent that you wrote it
Well yeah, doesn't sound too good to me too, wasn't sure if I should post it. may be it's totally vain, but I don't regret it, because the very purpose, as I said, was to write... to fight my skepticism, gloating and self-criticism, and at least try to write...
ReplyDelete