“What may I do?” at length I cried,
Tired of the painful task.
The fairy quietly replied,
And said, “You must not ask.”
– Lewis Carroll
imagination
imagination.
her
beauty and
wild
was way
beyond her
imagination.
Rocket Man
His eyes were red, weary, just like the dead beat you can undeniably sense inside him. But alive.
I’ve seen a lot of people who keep their body and soul together. Merely survive. He was one of those fortunate ones who actually live. “I don’t know if I’m ready for this.” He said, while shifting his weight on the back of his chair, allowing his body to be in complete sync with his mind. “But DC will be so cool if I get it.”
There was something about this DC place that he gets and I don’t. It’s not that I haven’t tried. “Way too cold for me.” That was my reasoning. Now that I think of, it was more of an excuse. “But think of living in the capital of the most powerful country in the World.”
No sir.
I like my Sun better.
“Well I hope to be having an affair with my Sun in California while you go crazy with those Congressmen.” Hopefully. “True. That stuff is boring. But it’s DC.” He lost me again at DC. By then I was pretty sure that either I’m missing something, or he’s just obsessed with the idea of that place. I decided not to reach to a conclusion.
Something exhilarating happens inside his body that lifts him up when you talk about anything with him. Literally, anything. One thing for sure. He listens. Few do these days. And he isn’t afraid to make a decision. I’ve known a lot of people who struggle with the simplest of conclusions, just because of the uncertainty, and then they wonder why things don’t go like they’ve always wanted to, but not him. No wonder that helps him everywhere.
And for somebody who’s trying a bit of change after a long period of self-destruction, I’d say the progress was satisfactory. Still a room for a whole hell lot of improvement. But still, things were better.
After conquering more stars in our imaginary skies, I was incentivized to be a rocket man again and get my plane ready for its first flight. I got back to my zen which was purified by the riffs of 70’s. After an hour or so, there came a time when some satisfaction finally dawned upon me and I decided to be the procrastinator I was few hours ago again. While passing through him, I heard his voice comforting someone on the other side of his phone.
His eyes were still red. But with a little more determination and focus this time. I decided not to create more distractions, which I’m really good at. It felt like someone was already flying high in his imaginary sky.
Blink and a miss
The rear left light was blinking.
The red light took more than the usual to switch places with green. These things know how to test the patience out of the best. He had enough of it. The patience. But sometimes, even the best of bests have to bow down in front of the nature’s highness. Patience is a funny thing. You can never have enough of it. There will be times when you think you have conquered every bit of it, but then, there’s a knock on your door and you ask patiently, “Who’s there?”, and a similar soothing voice reaches your testy ears. “Life”.
The beats on the steering wheel were good enough to qualify him as an all-right drummer in some garage band. The fingers were quite responsive to the music playing in the car, given the fact that his mind wasn’t present there at all. His eyes fixed at the traffic lights were focused on some other images in front of him, hiding away the reality. Those sightings were exclusive to him, and the others around him were completely unaware of that fact. Until a loud honking got him back to his senses.
Suddenly all the visuals were gone and the reality was back. Forget the honking and there was no sign of those images existing. Except if you observe closely. There was all but one evidence. A tiny immaculate teardrop, slowly rolling down and making its way to his worn-out shirt he had put on in hurry.
Skipping the next 2 red lights after looking carelessly on either side didn’t feel dangerous to his guts as it would have usually. That day, it was the need. While his feet made the brake and gas pedal talk, his eyes were constantly switching from the street to his watch at a regular interval. Each second passing away quickly felt like a lost moment. He was losing himself. Though he his one hand was busy directing his path, the other was helping him to lessen the pain. Most of it was now red, like the rest of his left leg.
His mind kept him up to date with the remaining distance to the not-so-cherished but still a popular destination among the people. Humans sometimes exceed the limit of multitasking.
Exhaustive, yet amazing.
I will never know if he ever made it to the hospital or not. If he’s still alive is another question. There were roughly a few hundred people around him. No one noticed anything. Including me. Some thought he was crazy. Probably day-dreaming. This outside viewpoint was as accurate as you can get.
Maybe this all actually happened.
Maybe not.
How would I know? I was sipping my usual in the cafe when I saw him waiting impatiently at the traffic lights.
His rear left light was blinking.
It was still blinking.
The art of defining “art”
Visiting the “Museum of Modern Arts” while visiting New York this fall break was my last choice, and there was a reason. I’m not a museum-going person, and moreover, after going to New York, I didn’t want to waste my time by going to museums, and that too of modern arts. Though I am interested in arts, and I also paint, but still the idea of going there wasn’t exciting at all. But after reading the “outstanding reviews” of the place, I decided to give it a try. What I learnt from going there was totally unexpected. I always thought of art as something that can be used to express the human thoughts and emotions visually, but I realized I was wrong. What I saw in MOMA was entirely different. Even the minutest details were presented artistically, but that wasn’t art. The art was behind the creation of those objects, paintings, sculptures, and everything there. It was the way they were created and showed to the world. That day I learned, art is not a thing – it is a way.
How best to define the term “art” has been a subject of constant contention; many books and journal articles have been arguing over even the basics of what we mean by the term “art”. Furthermore, even the basic meaning of the term “art” has changed several times over the centuries, and is still evolving. The main recent sense of the word “art” is roughly as an abbreviation for creative art or fine art. Here I mean the skill is being used to express the artist’s creativity, or to engage the audience’s aesthetic sensibilities, or to draw the audience towards consideration of the “finer” things. Often, if the skill is being used in a functional object, people will consider it a “craft” instead of art, a suggestion which is highly disputed by many Contemporary Art thinkers (Wikipedia). Likewise, if the skill is being used in a commercial or industrial way it may be considered design instead of art, or these may be defended as art forms, and called applied arts. Some philosophers have argued that the difference between fine art and applied art has more to do with the actual function of the object than any clear definitional difference. Art usually implies no function other than to convey or communicate an idea. But in my opinion, the term “art” has a much more meaningful meaning behind it.
Elbert Hubbard, in a 1908 volume of Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Teachers, said that “Art is not a thing – it is a way”. It is not just an imagination or a way of expressing your emotions. People who just see the visual aspect of the art totally ignores the process behind the creation. They choose to see what is visible to their eyes, rather than how it is created. The proof of this is the categorization of the art forms in 21st century. When I started exploring different art forms, I found the most popular art forms to be:
Paintings
Prints
Drawings
Photography
Craft
Design
Performance Art
Mixed-media
Sculpture
Installation
New Media
All of these art forms deal with visual aspect of the term “art”. This categorization only shows what people think of when they hear the word “art”, all thanks to the media publications, according to which the contemporary art encompasses many different art forms, from traditional media such as paintings and drawings to more recently developed approaches that use digital and time-based media to create works that incorporate both sound and image. But as Elbert Hubbard said, art is not a thing – it is a way.
Let’s change the perspective and consider the definitions of art given by the philosophers, writers and artists. According to Oscar Wilde, “Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.” One of the greatest artist of all time, Michelangelo, himself agreed that above all, artists must not be present only in art galleries or museums – they must be present in all possible activities. The artist must be the sponsor of thought in whatever endeavor people take on, at every level. This is what “art” is all about. Even the simplest thing we do in our everyday lives has a process to it. This process consists of our way of doing things in a certain way and makes use of our imagination, emotions, and feelings. The way we perform to create anything is “art”. That is what I realized in the Museum of Modern Arts. The way they created and presented their masterpieces and then let people visualize and interpret it in their own way is the very true nature of “art”; the use of imagination and emotions in everything we do, even in thinking. “Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of man’s emotions by external signs; it is not the production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity”, concluded Leo Tolstoy in his essay “What is Art?”.
At this point, the reader may be thinking “So everyone is an artist in this world.” Yes, that is true. Every person in this world is a unique representation of himself; everyone has different feeling, emotions, and imaginations, and so is the way of doing things. Their way of living in this world defines the term “art”, and if everyone is an artist, and the way we do things is similar to painting on the canvass, then we surely have the power to paint our own life the way we want to.
“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”
-Thomas Merton
Life in a blog 