Old Yellow Pages ✓

21. art

16th december, sunday, 2018

dear diary,

Splitting sentences
Into lines
Like this
Is not poetry.

Why do people write novels and sing songs for the sake of doing so? Why not to express an emotion? Why do they desperately rhyme words in a poem, whether they make sense or not, and not focus on telling a story through those words?

I have seen people dancing. Just music and body movements. Gymnastics. Rushing, twisting, pushing themselves, struggling to stay on beat, trying to stay relevant, showing-off, blank expressions, with no reason for dancing. Where's the spirituality? The desire to express? For me, everything is about telling stories. Sometimes I mute the music to see if the dance makes any sense. Usually, it doesn't.

I have listened to people singing. They just want to get the notes right. They never express anything through their music. The words sound empty, lacking feeling.

I like to think of myself as a storyteller, and inevitably, a story seeker. I want to be able to look back and say I lived a good life. I look for opportunities to make memories and collect stories.

I have always written when I've discovered a story inside me, waiting to be shared with the world. It appalls me when I see people who just want to write, be it good or bad, and make up stories along the way for that purpose. I don't think something that hasn't been properly thought over can fetch success to anyone.

Interacting with such art is like looking into blind eyes. The eyes are there, but the person behind them isn't looking at you. There's no soul, no emotion. No story. Nothing to express, nothing to connect with.

I think those who say, "I write for the people," can never be successful. They write to please people. Those who say, "I write for myself," are successful and original. People must not think, "Will people like that? Is it okay if I wrote that? I mean, people don't usually do that...." because when it comes to art, nothing is defined or fixed. Look at it this way: no one has ever done it before, so you must. 

If I want success, I have to do something original. I have to give something to the world that is unique only to me.

Sometimes I think about making song-interpretation videos, because poetry is beautiful and people should experience this. To me, music is sung poetry. The tune never matters to me, because I can't feel it. Just the words.

I will write the lyrics of songs along with meanings/interpretations and post them. But then sometimes I think, what's the point? For that, I will have to look up song meanings on the net. Basically, I will have to cut and paste from various places. What's my role here? Where's my talent?

I guess it could be an exercise for the development of my perspective, though.

I should do something for which the inspiration comes to me naturally. Something that only I have and can give to the world.

Maybe I can give my own interpretations?

I can talk about my own style of looking at music. Today I was listening to Yiruma's "river flows in you", and I thought, what if the song is about a phase in life? The song slows down in the middle, and then picks up. Maybe the slow part represents a thoughtful, pensive period? Maybe the high notes represent excitement? Perhaps the composer was thinking about something, got an idea and got excited?

Or maybe it has something to do with the song name. What if it's about an entire river of thoughts and feelings flowing inside of us?

This might not be the actual case, but interpretations are subjective. They can't be right or wrong.

And then, another thing that annoys me is that people show-off their skills by talking about them a lot. I guess it makes people feel important. But why, I wonder. If genuine talent is there, people will come to know about it on their own. The "how" part is not our concern. Just do your thing, man.

There's this girl who used to be in my class who has learnt classical singing for 5 years but can't sing to save her life. One day she was roaming in the class with a Raag Parichay book in her hand and telling everyone who bothered to ask about it, that she had her music exam soon. If she can't sing, why was she telling everyone about it? We should only announce that which we have the talent to prove.

That's my take on art.

❄