Darker side of creative work

To me a creative work was a creative work - darker the better till a few years back.

As our mind is not as simple as discussed in a linear book .While a dark literature tends to explore more inner self of a human mind, the most complex thing to understand of the entire study subjects.

I too explored the darker side of the mind which tends to affect me the person.

Accidental reading of a book called “Confessions of a pilgrim” –in conversation with Paulo Coelho had jolted me to some extent.  Mr. Coelho had too many real life experience of such darker side of life (Some of them are too ironic to be true…but I believe his extraordinary dramatic life events are natural to his ups and down).In the book he told the writer that once he completed one novel on his experience with darker self. But once he finished the book he destroyed the whole project as it appeared to him that its darker side might affect the mindset of billions of reader he is having as to many he is a spiritual guru also.

It was an amazing thing to me-how can a writer, destroy his own work after going through all the pain and suffering.

But he did just exactly that.

Off late there is an upcoming discussion about the darker side of dark art work say it 7 Khoon Maf, Black swan.

In Black Swan we can feel how an innocent, pretty girl gradually metamorphosed to a dark, murderous, ugly swine just for the sack of creativity .And those disturbing images were created so brilliantly that the viewers could also felt the agony of that sweet girl throughout the movie.

No doubt everything were perfect .But was it necessary to subject the viewer to go through all those masochistic creative exercise the writer/director/creator undertook?

The argument continues. To take Coelho’s path and destroy your creation for positivity O the Black Swan path and create a work that might affect others negatively.

About art history fictionalization 1: DADAISM

 

I love following time. Around 4 years back the bug of art history hit me so hard that I began to reside in the abyss of art world. It started with some mere curiosity and within a few days I got to know that each territory of art history was so vast that whatever idea I could gather about a part of an period was not enough, in every part of ART History there is a hint that the question in mind will be answered in another ART period.

I was in the middle of a creative crisis of my own. I felt being hunted by character I have created over the years for my fictions. I was writing a series of parallel stories with shades of darkness. It was not intentional though but due to nature of those story most of the characters were in deep physiological trouble. Much later after writing those stories I felt being hunted by those characters. Somehow I felt may be I will find solutions to their problems in Art History. It was not about solving my problems but of the characters.     

It was a creative challenge and I like challenges in my creative expression. I got the idea full of impudence –how about fictionalization of those ART HISTORY theme THROUGH MY CHARECTERS? I stared exploring the gullies of those ART period to find some thematic correlation, In cabaret Voltaire ,Van Gogh , Dali ,………

I took up those periods of European art history (Impressionism, Dadaism and Surrealism to be precise) as theme for my forthcoming story. I had to blend art history theme to my story.

I felt creating something that is dark is painful, time consuming (one story in one year) and the darkness of my character disturbed me to the extend that I was on the verse of nervous breakdown.

One of the themes I took for fictionalization was of Dadaism.

ABOUT DADAISM: Dadaism or DADA ART was the creative by product of social depression created out of 1^st world war, 1914-. Intellectuals, thinkers moving out of homeland started revolting against normal social structure and started creating art under protest. Initially their art were criticized as anti art (!) as many of their works were mere juxtaposition of painting, photograph making less and less sense.  But they become extremely popular as art lover could relate them to the depressive stage the society was under at that time.

The success of those arts started the idea of collage, montage, ready-mades in art. And soon the revolution was passed on to cinema, advertising world, literature and many of the work remained classic till toady.

The STORY ON DADAISM : The sense of social darkness that was around in west during World War I had some stark similarity to the darkness of my birthplace Assam, in the sad decade of 80’s. 

I took the clue from here and tried to create a montage (A form of DADA expression, where we put together two three things to create something new, as in collage) out of the situation .That is a montage of

• pain of my characters and my feeling as a writer 
• Assam in 80s
• And of course hallucination of my characters

About the painting used:

I remember interviewing one of the very reputed Painter Mr.Jiten Hazarika confessing with a sloka. “Eksweasya padarthai nanrupe prkapalm” ( ‘একশেচছছ পদার্থই নানাৰুপে প্রক্লপনম.. মানে একেটাবস্তুকে নানাজনে ভিনভিন ভাবে চাব পাৰ.)Meaning it is up to the viewer (reader) to interpret the meaning of a creative form. Most of the artist believes that way and hates explaining their work of art.

                                       

Still I thought it will be better to explain the painting depicting the story. As many people are curious and enquiring….

The painting is also a montage –created by Dr.Uddip Talukdar,on request. Montage is a form developed (montage:French for "putting together" a product of Dada  revolution where a creative structure is made putting together many items like photograph ,painting etc .Montage later on became a integral part of cinematic narrative also ).

Component of the montage  

The courtroom: may be a tribute to Kafka as in his story Joseph K accused of a crime he is not aware of.

Probable Interpretation; Those of us who were brought up in the Assam in the dark period of 80s have a sense of being guilty of some crime we are not aware of. Like Joseph K we don’t know our crime but something hunts us .

The commode: It is the most famous ready made created in DADA revolution. (Fountain by Marcel Duchamp)

  Probable Interpretation: ??? May be its time to flush out the filth and darkness that’s fills our head.

The stage/the boot /the hanging noose/the hat: Waiting for Godot?

Probable Interpretation: In those dark period of 80s Assam  We had nothing to do (school closed, an election without peoples participation, ethnic trouble and the fear of someone attacking you …So  we waited ?waiting for whom and  what we never knew.

PS: I still believe “eksweasya padarthai nanrupe prkapalm” and …

    … I am not art historian /art critique/artist. I only expressed what I conceived in words (or call it visual narrative) to full of my conviction. 

Lesson from History

Restaurant @ Rishikesh –Dehradun road

Now closed restaurant in Mumbai

I sincerely believe history has many things to teach us and if we follow the trend we observe history blatantly repeats itself. Crime committed by one generation haunts the history of mankind. Examples are their everywhere we only have to closely observe them. That’s where the lessons learnt from previous experience should help us so that we avoid such kind of anguish and holocaust in the coming future.

But the seed of evil is also as devil as a rotten bacteria they keeps us hunting forever.

Take the recent instance of racial slur by fashion moughal John Galliano praising Hitler

Or public acknowledgement Bal Thackeray that ‘I am a great admirer of Hitler’

Or naming a café after Hitler  in Navi Mumbai few years back.

What all these rejected fanatic idea of century bygone  doing in India ?

Events in last century proved all the evil face of Hitler still (like a rotten bacteria I was mentioning) his idea keep on popping up. Few might be by fanatics utopians and many of might be due to simple ignorance or glamour (publicity!) quotient.

Take the example of a small taste fully decorated restaurant (otherwise!) in the Rishikesh –Dehradun road where to my utter disbelieve I saw a Nazi flag hanging out just for show, or may be to attack the young crowd out their.

I am sure the owner, and the so called young crowd whom they are suppose to attract doesn’t have any clue what that flag signify.

It would have been okay otherwise (as in India until hype is created –chab kuch chalta haien yaar!)

But why don’t we think that we are encouraging tourist with the slogan of ‘Atithi debo bhaba’, and many of our tourist to rishikesh Dehradun road are Jew from Israel and many are Germans, I sincerely believe it don’t make any of us (Indian, Jew or German or human race as a whole)

I believe this fatal combo of –ignorance and extreme idealism is a threat to the coming time and only reason for it is we have started disregarding the lessons of history.

Creator of our childhood dreamland

Before we fell in love with words what attracted us were pictures ,cartoons and as we got familiar to words but were young enough to comprehend big big words we referred everything to world of comics (From knowledge ,entertainment , learning about history ,art culture ,folklore or everything ) .Comics were our :TV ,internet, grandma, novel .
I am using we not me because what I am referring to is true for whole of our generation.

Whenever we finish exam, or fall sick or if some one ask what do you want: Answer was invariably: Comics.
For us though we liked Hergé’s Tintin it was too expensive, Lee Falk's and Sy Barry's Phantom was also a bid out of our culture so most of our appetite for comics were looked after by Uncle Pi.
I am referring to Amar Chitra Katha and later on Tinkle.
For our knowledge about Purana, Mahabharta, History and folklore the credits must go to Uncle Pi’s immortal creation.
After two decade what amaze me about his creations is that at the dept of research home work he did for each of the photographs, I am sure he didn’t had the liberty of using computers and Photoshop at that time so every picture had to be drawn in blocks as in old printing technology .But When we look at Lachit Borphukan and dress of Swrgadeu or the background picture of Brmahaputra .Be it Joymotee or Sankradeb (It has familiarity to the drawing of Bisnhu Rabha ) all the characters were live and vivid.
And we often give reference to Sikhari Sambhu, Supandi, and Nassiruddin Hoza till today
Antanta Pi, (or popularly known as Uncle Pi) creator of our childhood dreamland breaths his last on 24th February, 2011,
But what he left behind is a legacy of his own.
We will miss you Uncle Pi.

Words misunderstood

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I have problems with words (or their meaning),

Because when we closely observe, we see that words uttered (or said) don’t really mean what we really meant. This problem trouble me so much that many time I go through aphasia / creative block / nihilistic resolution seeing how wired our mainstay of communication (i.e. word ) can turn out to be .

This problem has been the theme of two of my story .One was about creation, (সৃষ্টি) may be in art, writing or photography and the other was about nothingness (Something about nothing – অসম্ভব লিপ্যন্তৰ).It took two year each to complete those two story (and the literary journal took 3 year each to publish them).

Off late when I was going through Kundera’s works all over again I rediscovered that I am not the only one who have this problem (Ahem! Ahem! )

In ‘Unbearable lightness of being Kundera dedicated an entire chapter on this problem where he discussed how a word can be interoperated differently by different people as per individual experiences and taste .He named the chapter –Words Misunderstood and individual sub chapter as –A Short Dictionary of Misunderstood words .(remember it’s a Novel )

Then I was going through his ‘The art of the novel’ (but it’s a collection of assays) Here also he discussed the same problem in prose - how painful it is to express something and then when its got to be translated –how horrendous it is to see that the translated word doesn’t really mean what you actually expressed in your original writing. This chapter named Sixty three words –he published notes he used to make for such words .We can see one whole page just to express meaning of a simple word like comic, youth….vulgarity.

Let me give you some of my personal experience

Vulgar: A rich MNC worker punch drunk, biting a tandoored Chicken leg was giving lecture on-poor farmer committing suicide in hunger .I found the situation extremely vulgar. (To my friend vulgarity is only when it deals with obscenity or at least immorality. And that man has every right to speak his mind out as it’s a free country.)

Dark: Once I told ‘I have a dark thinking thought processes

1^st friend seriously enquired ‘Do you think of Sex all the time?

2^nd friend commented ‘you should see a psychiatrist, you are suffering from depression.

3^rd friend said ‘How can you think in the dark, it’s scary.

‘Boy boy!’ and I replied nothing...Words misunderstood hah. :-)

you can also read :denial

Tragic Heroes

We follow only the winners and while following them many times we fail to recognize some personalities as history try to brand them as tragic hero (or many say they were villain).While deciding through the accepted denominator of write and wrong we don’t accept contribution some people whose name should have been taken with some respect otherwise.

Take the case of cricket – In a country where we (used to) eat drink and sleep cricket we have seen this game metamorphosed through our eyes .what transformed the game into a world sports – may be exiting fielding , professional attitude ,proper field placement ,game plane ,bringing statistic and technology for development of the game. Everything was introduced (together) by a very clever dedicated duo of Bob Wolmer –and Hansie Cronje .

But we remember both of them for some other reason altogether .Personally I feel Hansie Cronje is the only person in this scandal hit game who have acknowledged the truth. So we call him a villain .Otherwise people of similar track records are now –member of parliament ,chief selector commentator and so on and on.

The list of tragic heroes are innumerable –remember in 90’s when India was emerging as a module of failed nation (economy, political unrest, mistrust) them came one prime minister and with few steps with vision that rescued the almost bankrupt nation from economic collapse.

But now when we talk about them talk only other things.

I am no historian, politician or intellectual (but a pseudo one) neither I am defending or approving those scam (who am I to defend anyway!) for those charge. But I am not at all ashamed to say that they are my hero for the positive contribution they have made.