HAVE YOU?
Have you, dear reader, ever remained idle? Have you drawn on paper or canvas? Have you written a piece of verse or prose? Have you written a screenplay or a drama? Have you made a new recipe for a tongue tickling dish? Have you dreamt up lavish, pristine worlds in your day dreams? Have you counted the number of teeth the monsters have, who are racing to eat you up in your daily nightmares? Have you fallen in love and seen a drab world suddenly fill with a thousand colours? Most of all, have you enjoyed those moments of being lonely? Have you or have you not have done any of these things mentioned above...?
If not, you are a robot. If yes, then you were inadvertently in the process of what experts would call: to create.
Recently a prehistoric painting found in a cave in the south of Sulawasi Island, Indonesia has now been deemed the oldest representational art by Man (Homo Sapiens) to date. This painting is at least 50,000 years old! It depicts three men and a pig. Two men may be holding rods. The third, seems to be in an upturned position. The pig could be at its end or maybe it was being captured from the wild. Or maybe the men were simply playing with the animal. We will not know for certain what that painting actually wants to whisper into our ears these many years later, but scientists say this cave art is the beginning of a gargantuan tsunami of creativity that swept away humanity’s feet. Yes, there have been geometric shapes etched onto stones, hand paintings discovered on cave walls etc. But not something like this.
While reading an article about this remarkable discovery, I actually laughed thinking about the upturned figure of the man near the pig. Doesn’t it prove to an extent that our ancestors had a funny bone then as well? Not to forget the 3800-year-old Mesopotamian clay tablet on display in the British Museum, where the writer is complaining about the bad quality of copper delivered by the trader.
The writer also accuses the trader for treating his servant who made the transaction, rudely. That complaint isn’t funny, but doesn’t that act actually mirror our present-day customer care complaints? In that sense there is humour attached to art. Because art is an emotional explosion whatever the medium be. The brain begins to think in terms not dictated by what has actually happened but what if that event happened in this manner? The ancient Hindu mythological character Vritrasura is said to have horded up all the waters of this world, thus becoming the god of drought. And Indra came down with fury and a lightning bolt and freed all that water defeating Vritrasura. What if a geological event took place where a mighty hill crumbled and its boulders came smashing onto a river that was the lifeline of a civilization? And what if many humans, over several months made it a task to remove those boulders and reinstate the river to its natural course? Just a rumination of this humble writer. But, do you see what is happening here? The faculties of the creative part of the brain, is triggering the grey cells and mapping routes through which seemingly disparate events get connected to each other using the gift that everyone has – creativity.
Bertrand Russell expounds on the need to stay idle for some time. True exemption from all work. Not sleep, mind you. Just relaxing. But here again, the creatives will find different ways to remain idle. I personally would just step outside and watch the sun-bathed leaves of the trees around. I like to look at the veins of the leaves, and then ponder about the veins that run through my body and then think about the veinlike heavenly Laniakea supercluster. Such a rhizomatic train of thought simply parading down the streets of my mind. But these seemingly random acts of sight and thought is possible due to being idle. Idle from business.
Of course, there is no true form of absolute idleness, as the brain is always active. But we can remain aloof from work or technology and simply stare into space, into colours, into a stream, into the design of the cover of a book, into the folded dresses in the cupboard etc. Or maybe contemplate on what makes the Carnatic song ‘Jo Jo Rama’ makes one drowsy in seconds (my baby boy finds solace in that song whenever his tantrums are cornered with this Carnatic rendering). Or why does a lullaby work its magic on a baby? Art, here lullabies, then must have an ingrained DNA wired with the essence of sleep. Every piece of art has some secret DNA injected into it to make us, the listeners, the seers feel mesmerized.
This mesmerizing factor can happen only when there is idleness and a mind to enjoy loneliness and a mind to create art. You can be an early riser, a late sleeper, a nocturnal being, a robot, a zombie etc. and, the question isn’t about ‘if you can create’ but rather about ‘why can’t you create?’. Do something. At least sit still somewhere possible, and just imagine what your great-great-great grandparent was doing this very day all those years back when they were probably your age. Can you see the change in time, in fashion, in thoughts, in religious beliefs, in literature, in food, in education… isn’t that mind-boggling!! That very thought itself demands being creative to just conjure up that question. Thus, creativity is the essence of life. Life itself was created I would like to presume. How? Several scientific factors came to play at some time in the past, critical for all of life to thrive as we see it today.
To create is to lean back onto time and witness your ancestors pave their way for us to be here where we are. To create is to listen to those bygone days. To create is to have lived on this planet, despite every inch of fate pulling us down. As the famous poet Carl Sandburg put it: Shakespeare, Da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln never saw a movie, heard a radio or looked at television. They had ‘loneliness’ and knew what to do with it. They were not afraid of being lonely, because they knew that was when the creative mood in them would work.
