complaint

I feel cheated when subjected to literary works or cinema. The good art, good cinema is characterised by a focussed thought, a focussed reasoning that while being genius and revolutionary, is at the same time blinding and constraining. I see people bound up by the beauty of these constructed worlds, never to admit the world around as their own. Well, that’s not my reason o f complain though, I don’t read too much, only as much as my curiosity and hunger wishes, nor do I allow myself to fall away in quotidian stupor by keeping my curiosity and hunger for wisdom sharp on the granite of my senses. I try and absorb and diffuse the wisdom garnered from the art through me around me, trying to comprehend the world through it, trying to see the beauty that lay hidden beneath. I only have 2 eyes; maybe the author’s/artist’s eyes would lend me some new vision...

My reason of complain is that that art, resplendent with the genius in it, binds me to its reasoning, to its ideals (at least for a while). Like the sweet joy in possibilities when infatuated, one would rather remain in the cocoon of romantic ideals and thoughts after having experienced the seed art. You can’t help but map these ideals onto the contours of life beyond art and philosophy, the mundane. Then you start seeking likeness of your ideal in people around you. The real self of most is hidden to themselves, what chance we have to know and then compare the self with that of our imagined ideal. And even then, the futility continues with inconsistency between thought and action. So do we gauge one by thought, or by one’s action? The answer isn’t as simple, maybe I will ruminate on it in some other post.

The contention here being the art leaves you isolated from our surrounding since the revelation it renders to us is ours only. Though on one level, this phenomenon is most comforting, it is so personal that there’s possibility of an intimate relations being built through this shared revelation. And one tries to find that in vain and ends up disillusioned.

Also, another facet of it... what is the deal with the women in real and women in literature? The kind of literature that I tend to read has rendered me, seemingly, more of a pro-feminist than most women I come across. Well, to begin with, I don’t understand women. And more I know, the more, apparently it seems, I don’t know. So I can’t even debate righteously. After all, what kind of hypocrite am I to tell women about feminism? Maybe I haven’t read Indian literature and therein lies the dichotomy, or maybe women are never meant to be understood.

***

I am reading a brilliant piece of literature authored by Doris Lessing; a novel called ‘the Golden notebook’. It is a thorough revelation. On several levels. I plan to read it at least once more. But, the notion of women that these books gives me, and that reasons me into concurring with these women, is very divergent to what I see in women around me.