To Be or Not To Be

A little kingdom I possess,
Where thoughts and feelings dwell;
And very hard the task I find
Of governing it well.
~ Louisa May Alcott

...that more or less describes my situation!

~A Wise Man Said~

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
~ Aristotle
Friday, February 28, 2020
 
What Art thou?

I am fascinated with some paintings but don’t register much when I look at others. I consider myself quite a novice at appreciating this form of art. I couldn’t say why I like a particular painting or why I was indifferent to something else. Which makes me wonder what is it that makes one appreciate any kind of art form be it novels, poems, music, paintings… what is it? 
My usual analytical way of looking at things boils it down to two criteria: emotion and thought. It seems to me that the capacity of any piece of art form to engage me emotionally and intellectually and the extent to which it does both correlates to the effect it has on me. There is a complication here though that explains my inability to explain the effect when it comes to paintings. The ‘thought’ aspect has something to do with education in or cultivation of the particular art form…so that if I have grown up on a diet of literature then my ability to appreciate that particular form in an intellectual sense is heightened, or in other words, it’s an acquired appreciation. Emotions on the other hand can also be schooled but they may be impressed in one way or the other even when unschooled. I guess what I mean is that if you are educated in a particular art form the way it would emotionally impress upon you would also differ compared to if you weren’t educated in it so in that sense cultivation of the art form in the thought sense does elevate your appreciation of it in an emotional sense too…maybe elevate is not the right word because your emotions could very well be dulled the more you are exposed to a critical appreciation of a particular art form but your emotions would certainly be affected quite differently for the better or worse depending on your ability to intellectually engage with the object.

If I use this framework to analyse my own experience of different art forms: I would say that literature, prose and also poems to a lesser degree, engage me the most both intellectually and emotionally. This is the form that I would be able to voice very decided opinions about and also put my finger on why I do or do not appreciate it. Though obviously this doesn’t mean that I would be impressed by the same works that those who are equally schooled in this art form would be impressed by because of the additional complication that they might be schooled in completely different ways! I guess this explains what they mean by there’s no accounting for tastes.

The two other art forms I would consider here are music and paintings. I would think music has the capacity to impress me emotionally even though I am not formally schooled in it. To me why I love a piece of music has less to do with genre, artist, voice, lyrics, and so on and more to do with the emotional effect of the piece on me. I wouldn’t be able to put my finger on the reason why it impresses me but I could say in very definite terms that I appreciate or do not appreciate a piece of music because of the strong emotional effect it has on me. It’s unlikely, in fact rather impossible, that I would listen to something that doesn’t have that kind of effect on me, and sometimes when I am trapped into listening to some such pieces, such as being in a car with people who listen to what I would think is crappy music, it’s almost like I am not listening to music at all but just jarring or random noise.

This brings me to the last category, paintings. I think painting is a form that does not engage me emotionally in the same strong way that literature or music does. It doesn’t touch my deepest chords or soul so to speak. And it also does not impress on me intellectually like literature does. I have of course not cultivated this art form in any way. Strangely though, I am still struck by many pieces of art (not all, but then I am not struck by all pieces of music or literature either). I am not sure what part of me it engages; I don’t have any education in this art form so I have to assume it is the emotions? Again, like music, I can’t really pinpoint what it is that impresses me or does not impress me in the art. I would also say that the impact it has on my emotions, unlike music, is far mellower. I do not have any violent reactions to pieces of art that I appreciate or that I don’t appreciate, unlike music, which can make my soul go soaring. I might actually like art pieces that perhaps someone with a better education in art might think is bad art but that might be because this piece produces an emotional reaction in me however mellow without the technical details of the art itself, the colour, the lighting or whatever else counts for good/bad technique getting in the way of my appreciation. If I compare this to my appreciation of literature, I could never appreciate a novel if it was full of grammatical errors or described a scene in an amateurish way or had a cardboard character…it wouldn’t matter if the plot was great or story was interesting because I don’t read only for the plot or story; all the details that make it a work of literary art would matter to me. This is perhaps how it is for someone who is really schooled in painting as art form? The beauty to them goes deeper than the surface unlike for me in the same case…

This connects to something else I have been thinking about recently. I sometimes read contemporary poems when they pop in my way and I find that I am absolutely not touched by many or most of them, emotionally or intellectually. I ask myself why that might be and one of the reasons presenting to me now that I analyse it is that I am perhaps schooled to appreciate a completely different style of poetry. But if that’s the case, it goes back to the same question of how do I appreciate any piece of art? How do I know a good poem from one that I actually have no intellectual “taste” for (which means no emotional taste either because my intellectual tastes also modify my emotions)… I guess this then takes us to the broader or bigger question of whether any art form can be “objectively” appreciated at all or appreciated outside of the stylistic or cultivated taste of the one or ones who appreciate it. I would think not!

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 8:05 pm 0 comments
Friday, February 21, 2020
 
I am a bit ambivalent about a tendency I notice on certain Facebook groups and perhaps isn’t limited to online groups. Let me just call it ‘groupism’ for lack of a better word. I find myself unable to relate to this behaviour or attitude where someone in the group will present an issue, give some particulars of the situation with another main character, the character will be portrayed as negative even though the situation could be interpreted in at least two ways, and this poster will seek advice or sympathy or both. When this happens the entire group will jump in with overflowing sympathy, anger at the villainous character, calls for putting them in their place or generally taking them down a peg or two, discussion of other situations where an almost exactly similar character acted in similar unacceptable ways, and so on. Never if ever do I see a response that even dares to suggest that there might be a different way to read the situation or that the situation actually suggests that the poster’s actions also seem blameworthy, especially if the facts do point that way. It is almost a unanimous decision to hang the villain in the very public court of opinion without trial or evidence but only the so-called victim’s statement. And mind you, I am not talking about any ethical issues that fall into definite black and white areas, more in the general grey perception category of say for instance office politics or work evaluation.

This groupism tendency seems to be founded on an us vs. them sentiment. Say if the group is all-female and the so-called villainous character is a male then the very fact that the character is male would make them culpable. Or if the group is all writers and the so-called villainous character is an editor then the very fact that the character is an editor would make them culpable. The solidarity of the group is derived from this common identity of being female or being writers and anyone who is seen as an antithesis or of an opposite camp must be a villain in any situation where one of the group’s own members feels or perceives themselves to be wronged. There is no question of questioning one’s own group member or even entertaining the idea that one’s own group member might be in the wrong. Even taking such a perspective for sake of analysis or fairness would be to out yourself as not a solid member of the group. You might as well belong to the wrong camp, you have faked your identity, you do not deserve the group card. These are not the spoken rules of course but if you look at the responses of the group members it is quite clear that this is the underlying sentiment. There are no responses that ask a question about the situation itself, ask more details about the other party’s approach, try to get more clarity on the situation to make a better judgement… the almost auto response is the uncritical outpouring of sympathy for the supposed victim and attacks against the obvious villain.

I find myself quite the odd person in this sense. I don’t subscribe to a ‘group’ in the way people seem to subscribe to groups. I might share something in common with the group so I might be a female or I might be a writer but I am not against people who represent other groups such as males or editors just by virtue of this common identity I share with a group. To me the most fundamental thing that I share with anyone is humanity so if there is a contention between two people I wouldn’t see what group they belong to, whether they have some common identity with me such as female or Indian or writer… because the most fundamental one is shared by all and that is humanity. From this perspective I will use my critical judgement to evaluate the situation and its features keeping any other identities they share with me aside; those identities have or should have no bearing on my judgement. It is quite possible that a woman did not do her part of the job and hence got told off or the editor was quite unreasonable but that would not be because I am a man so the woman must be in the wrong or I am part of the writers’ group so editors must be the unreasonable ones. These identities might shape who we are but it doesn’t mean anyone who has the same identity must necessarily act as we would or anyone who has a different identity than us cannot act in as ethical a manner as we would. I think we need to judge every individual in the same scales as we would like to be judged irrespective of their affiliation to anything else...belonging to a group must not hinder us from being truthful and critical of the group itself… if all it does is promote conformance and groupthink… I am quite happy being my own individual rather than part of such a group.


posted by Sylvia D'souza at 10:34 pm 0 comments
Thursday, February 13, 2020
 
I’m very conscious that I have not been posting as much in recent times...no excuses (work, work…!) but be patient, dear reader, ebbs and flows are a part of life :)

I chanced upon this really beautiful letter from John Steinbeck to his son with thoughts and advice about love. There is something about this letter that almost makes you feel the emotion that he describes as love in a sublime sort of way. I don’t know what it is. The last line of the letter “Nothing good gets away” appears frequently without its context in lists of popular quotations or elsewhere but when you read it as part of this letter you grasp its meaning even more deeply.

I guess it means if it’s meant to be it will be. If it’s not meant to be it wasn’t for you anyway. And if it wasn’t for you, it wasn’t good for you… nothing good passes you by… when I look back on my life there were many occasions when I felt that I had lost something precious or good… with the wisdom of hindsight I realise that what was good was what those experiences taught me… what was precious was what I discovered in myself… nothing good got away… it made me who I am…

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 4:42 am 1 comments
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