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[Jul. 9th, 2008|11:00 pm] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Gobinde Mukande (31 min) - Sada Sat Kaur | ] |
Art. It's a very ephemeral word. Time to stroke that goatee like you were deep in thought.
For the past two months, I have been "getting into the arts scene". Unfortunately for me, that does not mean cocktails, wild bohemian parties with attractive vulnerable young arts students. No. Instead it's a slow process of learning about the bureaucratic intricacies of arts funding, making tentitive contact with other artists, and generally finding out what is going on.
Why?
I believe that Gurmat Sangeet is an artform. Certainly it is not just an artform, but then arguably many artists can claim, with some substance, that their is "not just an artform". Transcendental art, art that takes your breath away and blanks your mind so your soul, for a brief moment, can bask in the shining beauty that is His work, is not just art. It is the very purpose of life itself, to experience the experience of living.
The world exists in polarities. For every black there is a white, every negative a positive. We are forced to daily wade through pain, indifference, ugliness and vileness in every form, projected into our minds by a million posters, rap songs, broadsheets, gossip magazines, news programmes, movies. As we struggle (and as some enjoy wallowing, in ignorance and blindness), we ask, where is the polarity? Where can we find peace and rest, not in the form of what "happiness" should be like, as sold to us by sun drenched adverts of an impossible ideal which we must purchase?
We find it in beauty. In art. In forms that not only heal the ugly wounds of the world, but which also seeks to beautify it. All of it. Every last gasp of suffering joyous miraculous atrocity that make this play of maya what it is.
In art, then, and in the art of the Guru, by the grace of Guru's poetry and music.
Back to funding workshops and networking events. Where I am having difficulty is in deciding what constitutes a true spreading of the message contained in Guru's words, and what constitutes selling out, selling down, prostitution.
Those who know me intimately will recognise that selling out has been a running theme in my life. Indeed, those who are honest, will realise it is an issue in every life. When we prostitute ourselves, we profit like the beggar who breaks his own leg to gain sympathy. Yet when that seems the only option open to us, or when it is much less dramatic, we say it is a "compromise". More insidious, we project the fault onto others, while we remain (in our own minds) spotless. As the saying goes, throw mud at someone, and some of it will stick to you. More, it means you have mud to hand. Where did it come from? Certainly not from the other person.
And yet, how can I contain something I know to be beautiful within the suffocating confines of a religious dogma? I know this has to go out. Guru Nanak played to all. His music reflected and communicated to the people he was with, he adopted their rhythms, their songs, and sang back to them their highest praises of God.
Keeping in mind this, must Gurmat Sangeet only ever appear in a "religious" context, a context defined by other people? Or can it be used in art, if art were repurposed to include the function of elevating our soul to the infinite? |
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Exuberant