Me and the Gods.

I sit down
before you
to pen you
down.

But the scribbles
slick away
farther
deeper
and in you
they drown.

Like a story
never told,
A fag never held,
A fire never sparked,
my words – O those word –
had never had anything up and stirred.

I look up to the skies
and Gods
taking shelter:
why do we have to walk together
when we have nothing common to nurture?
Me and the Gods.

They look me down, discarding my bleats:
Life has no redundant pleats.
They why do you digress,
without thinking twice,
of you progress?

Progress? They conceit.
What do they know of it?
Does one fight tossed out
make you decrepit?

My question to you, milord:
Is a story unwritten,
not worthy of recognition?
A cigarette unlit,
not desirable of strong hold?
They answer not.
Too busy to entertain
a stray commen’.

My ink is dried away
My pen is cast aside
Left here,
A pound or two of flesh,
Through which I sneer,
Upon the potent
Whose every utter
beheads me further.

Why not then
should I hate him,
since he seems to hate me in return.

I got to find the fire
to burn my desire,
but the Gods,
– damn! so jealous of men –
would let loose none of the spark
for at stake is, their very kiosk.

Ah!
Cowards,
accusing me of cowardice.
Ever – ever in my eternal life –
didn’t get a slice
of reprieve.
Yet
Never – never in my fleeting life –
I was found
Worthy of apprise.

Life proved to be a pun
Me,
made and unmade and made,
for their coy fun.

A word can never write itself down
A God can never be turned into a clown.
Life is grey,
a half way between white and brown.
Gods rebuke,
I am one, you are many,
You are cold, I shiny.

I fight back,
I am pleasant, you are clammy.
Only from my will,
Your existence sprang on-hill.
Dare you not challenge my mettle,
I only willed your prophet
And his settle.

Let me have no words,
Yet my voice will rise
For my will is vowel,
Yours’ only surds.

An Aesthetic Dark

I don’t know what had tempted me to dig into the world of photography. As yesterday I was reading ‘A history of god’ by Karen Armstrong, I realized the importance of ‘displaying-art’ in the evolution of god, thus religion, thus faith, and thus society. The idea was important. ex nihilo nihil fit…! (Nothing comes out of nothing.)

So, they had a waste mess of water and mud in the beginning from which the Gods started to evolve, in pairs, each superior to their ancestor.

And they made the temples for themselves.

The masses perfectly knew that the temples were made by men – though in presumptuous belief that their temples were the divine replicas of those in the heaven – but associating them with the divine forces helped in endurance of their creative manoeuvre.

From there came the concept of divine association. And art became an endeavor closest to those divine forces.

Art…! What is an art?

In an article in The Hindu, 2nd April 06, titled ‘A vision for our arts’, the author Shakti Maira buys into the Korean view of art, and talks about how that can be incorporated in India and Indian definition of art. She herself is a contemporary artist. She compares a Korean bronze figure “The pensive Buddha” with “Mona Lisa” and accuses the lack of popularity of Asian arts in the world, for its lesser recognition. She endorsed Korean law that requires commercial buildings to spend a percent of their budget on the arts. She quotes from the their Minister of Culture:

“…the real art cannot be found in museums and galleries, but in the way we experience our daily life … the real nature of an artistic experience may lie in a process where a human being, as an organism, responds and adapts to the environmental and recognizes his surrounding into culture…”

She goes a little further and digs out even more of Korean history, and their legendary emphasis on art, when she cites Kim Koo – Korean equivalent of Mahatma Gandhi:

“… I do not want my nation to become the richest… most powerful…the only thing I desire in infinite quantity is the power of highly developed culture…”

Koreans are definitely doing a good job in the fields of art, but can we really learn from someone how to do arts? Can you really learn to write fiction, unless you have an imagination? Can you really paint something, unless you are at home with colors? Can you really make potteries, unless you have those adept, gifted fingers? I agree, they run schools and crash courses and everything to lure people, but do they really make someone an artist? They do shape, hone naïve people, but only those who have an inherent penchant for art.

This is something very, very deep in us. We can’t learn it, we can only ameliorate it.

Better to let Korea go its way, we shape our own.

However, as far as technicalities of art are concerned, it can be taught. Like they teach photography! And if it fails, you can always rename it to ‘aesthetic modern art’. Funny? But, not ‘funny ha-ha-ha’.

Anything you can dare to shoot, only make it a little contemporary, little fleshy, little dark, and people would love it. If not, then improvise some spiels to go with the snap. Sort of drools with the content! And you are through.

So, with all this yesterday, today I thought of doing a little research upon ‘the history of Photography’. And see, what I got. The first link ‘google uncle’ came up with was of ‘pure beauty magazine’ – a delusory porn site, camouflaged behind the modern art, cache lined: “where the body says what words cannot”. Interesting! I thought so and went in.

It had a list pf photographer, models, their vital stats, interviews of leading fashion designers, latest fads, clothing vogues, and then as if to cleanse the space with incense of intellect, they had a section: “history of photography”.

It went something like this:

A man named de la Roche (1729-1774), in his work entitled ‘Giphantie’, wrote a tale wherein it was possible to capture images from nature and imprint them permanently on a canvass. This was probably the first confrontation – though in imagination only – of humans with the science of photography. The term came from Greek words light and writing, first coined by Sir John Herschel in 1839. Since then billions of photographs have been taken, most of them are of women since they emblem the beauty that drives men behind the camera with a passion to capture something sensuous, something eternal. And nothing is more eternal than a nude woman, in all her pureness, sensuality, provocation, love, passion, creation, and the nature of primal existence. Greece had nude statues dating from 570 BC.

If we can go to the museums to see it, even the most stimulating, offensive piece of it, why can’t we accept the nude photography in our otherwise mundane lives? Because it’s the very basic in us, the very nature of our existence, that we deny it? Because we are ashamed of it, of ourselves? The site argues.

Well, this column certainly left me in a confused state. And all that I had thought of art was challenged.

Isn’t it itself an art then? Different, challenging, demanding, avant-garde!

Perhaps, what makes you feel at home is an art for you. Be is writing, painting, sculpting, orating or even coding, programming, engineering, everything is an art, since everything demands you to be different, aesthetic. Everything demands for your heart, and where your heart is, there your destiny is, your art is.

That’s the personal form of art. And art as a sellable commodity is nothing but a mélange of a confused brain.

A heavy flesh, garnished with little brain, does sell. And that’s what today’s art is.