download in PDF, and my article entitled 'This is Not Art' is on page 24. It is also reproduced here for your reading enjoyment.
I will be posting my next article, published in the July 2015 edition, soon after the magazine becomes available online. In the meantime, I am working hard to meet the crushing deadlines for the release of Bollywood Storm, Book Two: Mumbai in all e-book formats near the end of July.
I hope you are all enjoying a great summer. Today, I am thankful for the rainfall, as there are some major forest fires throughout British Columbia. Keep safe.
I am contributing some articles, along with copies of my original artwork, to a new South Asian-multicultural, quarterly magazine called Canada Tabloid that is produced here in British Columbia, Canada. The first edition, published April 2015, is now available for I will be posting my next article, published in the July 2015 edition, soon after the magazine becomes available online. In the meantime, I am working hard to meet the crushing deadlines for the release of Bollywood Storm, Book Two: Mumbai in all e-book formats near the end of July.
I hope you are all enjoying a great summer. Today, I am thankful for the rainfall, as there are some major forest fires throughout British Columbia. Keep safe.
Art Is Not Design. Design is created for use in conveying a communication. A thing, anything, that transcends beyond ‘a use’ is art. Consider this magazine article. It has a set of parameters in which I must provide a subject, quickly create some kind of dramatic controversy, and then develop a path that provides a logical conclusion or thought, leading to some kind of satisfactory conclusion. Even talking about art within such a limited form is challenging, and there is only so much one can cover.
That, however, doesn’t mean that art and literature is not without form, or has no use. All writers and artists must fulfill certain formalism, but to be able to create a work that transcends such limits is what makes one an artist (if you don’t mind the pretension here.) The creator can follow the form of any genre such as suspense, thrillers, science fiction, comedy, tragedy, dance, romance, and so on while never thinking outside the box. Or, instead of providing escapism though the fulfillment of formalisms and predigested expectations, take us further than that into the essence, the mystery, the mazza, and thick of things. Push past the formal limits and take a genre to extremes, and thus transcend.
That, however, doesn’t mean that art and literature is not without form, or has no use. All writers and artists must fulfill certain formalism, but to be able to create a work that transcends such limits is what makes one an artist (if you don’t mind the pretension here.) The creator can follow the form of any genre such as suspense, thrillers, science fiction, comedy, tragedy, dance, romance, and so on while never thinking outside the box. Or, instead of providing escapism though the fulfillment of formalisms and predigested expectations, take us further than that into the essence, the mystery, the mazza, and thick of things. Push past the formal limits and take a genre to extremes, and thus transcend.
Though art is not helpful, it may show the human condition, be controversial and demand that we experience something beyond our limitations. Somehow, it must shake our complacency and challenge us to go beyond our current sense of reality. There are many stories told all over the world about religion and religious experience. When you think about it, they often sound ridiculous, yet it is the foolishness of the world that confounds the wise. For example, the story in the Upanishads of Krishna eating dirt, as a little boy is want to do. Then his mother opened up his mouth:
But when Yashoda peered into his mouth, she was wonder struck. She saw the entire universe: the mountains the oceans, the planets, air, fire, moon and the stars in his small mouth. Yashoda was stunned and began to wonder whether she were dreaming or actually seeing something extraordinary. She fell on the ground, unconscious.
Doesn’t that seem far fetched and ridiculous? As is the story of Jesus, reputedly equivalent to God, becoming merely a vulnerable human, to be tortured and put to death by his own, misguided creatures.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.
. . . Rumi
Much of modern literature talks about the human condition. Novelists such as William Faulkner write about ordinary everyday traumas of living in the South in the mid twentieth century. Racism, poverty, sexism, abuse were the everyday reality of those lives, but murder, social injustice, violence and even suicide become beautiful in Faulkner’s treatments. Toni Morrison, an African American writer, who seems to take on Faulkner as her adversary, finds another more organic form of transcendence in her novel, “Jazz.” She transcends her storytelling voice as the narrator by becoming a character, and merely another voice among the many within her creation, whose opinion carries no more weight than any other:
I missed it altogether. I was sure one would kill the other. I waited for it so I could describe it. I was so sure it would happen. That the past was an abused record with no choice but to repeat itself at the crack and no power on earth could lift the arm that held the needle. I was so sure and they danced and walked all over me. Busy, they were, busy being original, complicated, changeable – human i guess you'd say, while i was the predictable one, confused in my solitude into arrogance, thinking my space, my view was the only one that was, or that mattered.
It seems as though the writer let the story get away from her. She apparently lost control of the characters, and they seemed to take control. But how much leeway do they really have? All three of Morrison's book from her trilogy, Beloved, Jazz and Paradise revolve around one or more murders, demonstrating that murder, the harsh and brutal, sudden ending of life can also be a ground for transcendence.
On the other hand, transcendence and being unconscious can be very similar. Let me tell you a story about my own novel, if you’ll excuse the indulgence. Bollywood Storm revolves around the mysterious death of an extremely licentious Bollywood Director. At one point, the mystical American detective who is trying to solve the case has a dream involving all of his sundry, known illegitimate children:
. . . .their faces are all mixed up. They’ve become merged, unfamiliar, indistinguishable. Their bodies are a blob of human limbs, ‘TheTwelve-Who-Are-One.’ They move slowly toward me. Someone emerges from the group to become a distinct entity. A lone dancer in a lengha.
She dances over.
She points at me with her index finger.
It’s a gun.
She pulls the trigger.
BLAM!
I sat up straight in the bed.
Her face.
Who was she . . . ?
“That’s a quite lovely passage. Subtle too,” my husband said when he read it.
I looked at him, bit my lip. “I wonder which one shot her?”
My husband’s jaw dropped. “You don't know?” he exclaimed incredulously.
Thinking back, perhaps I should have known. It should have been kind of obvious to me. Perhaps, at the time, I had become so entwined with my lead character that I was ignorant of everything she didn’t know. My husband sometimes claims I’m an idiot savant.
N.K. Johel
I looked at him, bit my lip. “I wonder which one shot her?”
My husband’s jaw dropped. “You don't know?” he exclaimed incredulously.
Thinking back, perhaps I should have known. It should have been kind of obvious to me. Perhaps, at the time, I had become so entwined with my lead character that I was ignorant of everything she didn’t know. My husband sometimes claims I’m an idiot savant.
N.K. Johel