(An artist’s perspective)
Idea.
Those words that you cross out on your scribble pad. Too silly for the world, you believe. That small thought that resembles a water droplet clinging to the edges of an early spring tree leaf, adamant in its refusal to merge with the analogous water droplets forming a puddle below. Those teeth marks on the cap of your pen, chewed on in desperation for the one thing that eludes you.
It’s a room full of flying Quidditch snitches with you mounted on an outdated broomstick failing to capture even one snitch even after your best efforts. It’s the hours that lapse into days as you wait for the last grain of sand, in the hourglass, to settle before turning its world upside down.
The poetry of an Idea lies in its birth, life and death because once an Idea is born, it ravages you. It’s a torrential downpour that brings chaos into your life. It knocks you off balance and constricts your heart. It’s an absolute nightmare.
An Idea will sit pretty on top of your mantelpiece, teasing you taunting you, playing mind games. The Idea is not good enough yet, but you would be an imbecile to lose it. It’s prone to escaping and that makes you keep it on a leash. Your Idea refuses to stay bound; it gnaws at your control and harasses you into setting it free. You resist, you are overprotective, and you end up slowly killing it.
You regret, you whine, you flounder in an abyss of creative inertia that you concoct for yourself. Lamenting, wailing and nearly screaming at your own stupidity. You pummel the imaginary walls of your block till your fingers bleed. The pain calms you; the pain makes you feel human. The pain moulds you as an artist.
You suffer in silence now. The pain is now an essential drug for your art to manifest itself.” It’s about time to move on” you assure yourself. You open the gates of your mind and lo, behold – you greet an empty page.
You wander inside your head. Your thoughts are categorized into just two sections: Ideas or Trash. You pick up bits of conversations and string them together. You marinate abstract theories, vague opinions and ambiguous patterns that your subconscious picked up over time like a covert kleptomaniac.
You tell everyone you are yet to find your pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But, you know the icy truth- you haven’t even found your rainbow yet. Your brain thaws and freezes over repeatedly, draining you, absorbing your very soul from you and then thrusts you into a nook, and you are left to wander again. Oh, the irony of it.
And then, after this cyclic ignition and suffocation of the fire that burns inside you, the Idea returns.
It isn't like a light bulb being switched on as it is so often stereotyped. It isn't like an overrated version of the movie Inception. It isn't a small memory card that’s plugged inside you that suddenly decrypted itself to present itself to you.
In fact, it is exactly the opposite.
It’s soft. It’s sober. It’s mellow. It doesn't impregnate itself on a loud night. It isn't the type to announce its arrival by turning up the volume as it walks into the disco that your mind has running all the time. It is instead like the soft thud of the book closing itself as you drift off into sleep, like the warm tooth fairy that slips trinkets below your quilt and like the gentle, unnoticed hush of the boiling teapot signaling its climax amidst the loud, clanking vessels in the kitchen.
It lets itself so quietly into your life that you wouldn’t recognize it at first. Just like how you would easily miss your introverted roommate turning the door knob and settling into your sofa. It has poise, grace and charm. And, to your surprise, you find it right in front of your eyes. It has outgrown itself from the unruly brat that it was when you last saw it. It heals the shattered pieces of your creative soul. It pieces together complex feelings that you never thought you’d be able to recover from. The pain of loss and separation returns but it stokes the dying embers of your art. That is the beautiful incongruity of pain.
You share a beautiful relationship with your Idea now. Everything you see or touch is an aspiration to mould and ferment your idea into something that would materialize; something that could be understood by the whole world and not just you. The Idea becomes your master, and you become a mere interpreter.
Over time, new ideas bounce off the walls of your studio, distracting you and redefining the phrase ‘The Other Woman.’ Novelty possesses an unbeatable attraction but your wise, old Idea waits patiently bearing your infidelity. Once the smoke settles, you realize the urgency of metamorphosing your Idea. The lost time sets off the panic button and you clean your lens to refocus and this time, you set the aperture just right.
You breathe life into your Idea and it extrudes into a 3D phenomenon. You paint walls, doodle on your scribble pad and piece everything together, inch by inch. You glaze it to add luster, polish it to smoothen the unsure facts you’ve incorporated and your Idea becomes something real. Slowly, your Idea is becoming your Art.
And, art can never stay hidden for too long. It is as impossible as trying to bottle a ray of sunlight. It’s aura leaks through the case you've bolted it in and people’s curiosities are aroused. They question you of the contents and express their desire to see your creation. One day, you finally yield and you open up your Pandora Box.
In the meantime, the Idea has blossomed into a flawless piece of Art. It stuns people, bewilders them and cascades into the life of all and sundry. The Art is your medium through which you've planted the seeds of your Idea.
It takes deep root and grows in everyone’s mind. It becomes a weed that can now never be eradicated.
Your Idea and Art evolve, but you meet new people and they pollute your Idea with theirs and soon it becomes a coagulation of thoughts undifferentiated from one another. Your Idea slips into the background of your life. It haunts lonely nights and slowly fades away. From vibrant red to dull amber to hazy cream to somber grey; it loses its appeal. The Idea is aging.
It’s been many years now since you visited your Idea. It has reached its saturation and afraid of being replaced, latches itself onto you. It begs to be bound, pleads to be fixed permanently on your creative template. You refuse, it persists. The roles are reversed.
The Idea is slowly consumed by the raging fire of passion that burns inside you. Paradoxically, the Idea that kindled the fire in you succumbs to the very same. The Idea leaves a beautiful void that neither Art nor you can seal and it remains there; an emptiness that is dedicated to your deceased Idea.
This, is the poetry of an Idea.
Note: I have used the words ‘Art’ or ‘Artist’ quite a bit and it is imperative to note that ‘Art’ refers to all possible art forms like music, dance, writing, sketching, drawing, designing and anything that is worthy of being considered as art/creation and ‘Artist’ refers to its creator.
Idea.
Those words that you cross out on your scribble pad. Too silly for the world, you believe. That small thought that resembles a water droplet clinging to the edges of an early spring tree leaf, adamant in its refusal to merge with the analogous water droplets forming a puddle below. Those teeth marks on the cap of your pen, chewed on in desperation for the one thing that eludes you.
It’s a room full of flying Quidditch snitches with you mounted on an outdated broomstick failing to capture even one snitch even after your best efforts. It’s the hours that lapse into days as you wait for the last grain of sand, in the hourglass, to settle before turning its world upside down.
The poetry of an Idea lies in its birth, life and death because once an Idea is born, it ravages you. It’s a torrential downpour that brings chaos into your life. It knocks you off balance and constricts your heart. It’s an absolute nightmare.
An Idea will sit pretty on top of your mantelpiece, teasing you taunting you, playing mind games. The Idea is not good enough yet, but you would be an imbecile to lose it. It’s prone to escaping and that makes you keep it on a leash. Your Idea refuses to stay bound; it gnaws at your control and harasses you into setting it free. You resist, you are overprotective, and you end up slowly killing it.
You regret, you whine, you flounder in an abyss of creative inertia that you concoct for yourself. Lamenting, wailing and nearly screaming at your own stupidity. You pummel the imaginary walls of your block till your fingers bleed. The pain calms you; the pain makes you feel human. The pain moulds you as an artist.
You suffer in silence now. The pain is now an essential drug for your art to manifest itself.” It’s about time to move on” you assure yourself. You open the gates of your mind and lo, behold – you greet an empty page.
You wander inside your head. Your thoughts are categorized into just two sections: Ideas or Trash. You pick up bits of conversations and string them together. You marinate abstract theories, vague opinions and ambiguous patterns that your subconscious picked up over time like a covert kleptomaniac.
You tell everyone you are yet to find your pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But, you know the icy truth- you haven’t even found your rainbow yet. Your brain thaws and freezes over repeatedly, draining you, absorbing your very soul from you and then thrusts you into a nook, and you are left to wander again. Oh, the irony of it.
And then, after this cyclic ignition and suffocation of the fire that burns inside you, the Idea returns.
It isn't like a light bulb being switched on as it is so often stereotyped. It isn't like an overrated version of the movie Inception. It isn't a small memory card that’s plugged inside you that suddenly decrypted itself to present itself to you.
In fact, it is exactly the opposite.
It’s soft. It’s sober. It’s mellow. It doesn't impregnate itself on a loud night. It isn't the type to announce its arrival by turning up the volume as it walks into the disco that your mind has running all the time. It is instead like the soft thud of the book closing itself as you drift off into sleep, like the warm tooth fairy that slips trinkets below your quilt and like the gentle, unnoticed hush of the boiling teapot signaling its climax amidst the loud, clanking vessels in the kitchen.
It lets itself so quietly into your life that you wouldn’t recognize it at first. Just like how you would easily miss your introverted roommate turning the door knob and settling into your sofa. It has poise, grace and charm. And, to your surprise, you find it right in front of your eyes. It has outgrown itself from the unruly brat that it was when you last saw it. It heals the shattered pieces of your creative soul. It pieces together complex feelings that you never thought you’d be able to recover from. The pain of loss and separation returns but it stokes the dying embers of your art. That is the beautiful incongruity of pain.
You share a beautiful relationship with your Idea now. Everything you see or touch is an aspiration to mould and ferment your idea into something that would materialize; something that could be understood by the whole world and not just you. The Idea becomes your master, and you become a mere interpreter.
Over time, new ideas bounce off the walls of your studio, distracting you and redefining the phrase ‘The Other Woman.’ Novelty possesses an unbeatable attraction but your wise, old Idea waits patiently bearing your infidelity. Once the smoke settles, you realize the urgency of metamorphosing your Idea. The lost time sets off the panic button and you clean your lens to refocus and this time, you set the aperture just right.
You breathe life into your Idea and it extrudes into a 3D phenomenon. You paint walls, doodle on your scribble pad and piece everything together, inch by inch. You glaze it to add luster, polish it to smoothen the unsure facts you’ve incorporated and your Idea becomes something real. Slowly, your Idea is becoming your Art.
And, art can never stay hidden for too long. It is as impossible as trying to bottle a ray of sunlight. It’s aura leaks through the case you've bolted it in and people’s curiosities are aroused. They question you of the contents and express their desire to see your creation. One day, you finally yield and you open up your Pandora Box.
In the meantime, the Idea has blossomed into a flawless piece of Art. It stuns people, bewilders them and cascades into the life of all and sundry. The Art is your medium through which you've planted the seeds of your Idea.
It takes deep root and grows in everyone’s mind. It becomes a weed that can now never be eradicated.
Your Idea and Art evolve, but you meet new people and they pollute your Idea with theirs and soon it becomes a coagulation of thoughts undifferentiated from one another. Your Idea slips into the background of your life. It haunts lonely nights and slowly fades away. From vibrant red to dull amber to hazy cream to somber grey; it loses its appeal. The Idea is aging.
It’s been many years now since you visited your Idea. It has reached its saturation and afraid of being replaced, latches itself onto you. It begs to be bound, pleads to be fixed permanently on your creative template. You refuse, it persists. The roles are reversed.
The Idea is slowly consumed by the raging fire of passion that burns inside you. Paradoxically, the Idea that kindled the fire in you succumbs to the very same. The Idea leaves a beautiful void that neither Art nor you can seal and it remains there; an emptiness that is dedicated to your deceased Idea.
This, is the poetry of an Idea.
Note: I have used the words ‘Art’ or ‘Artist’ quite a bit and it is imperative to note that ‘Art’ refers to all possible art forms like music, dance, writing, sketching, drawing, designing and anything that is worthy of being considered as art/creation and ‘Artist’ refers to its creator.