On Srirangam and Kanchipuram

Suddenly, I yearned for some good classical music from the old country.

It happens, from time to time.  It is no different from when the mind aches for BB King. Or Sarah Vaughn.  Or SPB.

I pulled up this song in YouTube.  A masterful interpretation of a Dikshitar composition, at a wonderfully slower than normal pace.

It is a composition that is dedicated to the presiding deity at Srirangam--one of the most sacred places for the faithful.

For the faithful.

I am not.

But, as I noted even a decade ago, all across the world, literature and the arts grew within religious frameworks. A confirmed atheist, Camille Paglia points out, and I am in complete agreement with her, that the works that resulted from this framework have been phenomenal, both in quantity and quality.  Rangapura Vihara is a case in point.

Most of us atheists easily wander into the faith world of the arts, and find great comfort in it.  We see no contradiction there.  It is just we don't engage with the arts nor pursue them as a ticket to some glorious afterlife in heaven with god or the gods.  We just don't worry about the afterlife.  It is all about the here and the now.

But, of course, we too have to deal with the certainty that our lives will end at some time.  As this philosopher, who is an atheist puts it, "because we can die at any time that threat is a constant one. We live under the shadow of death."

I am acutely aware of my mortality.  But, that does not mean I plan for an afterlife either.

First, we must engage in forward-looking projects and engagements, because that’s inevitable for almost all human beings. A life without ongoing engagements is, for most people, an impoverished one.
Second, we must try to live as best we can within the moments of those engagements. Instead of solely looking forward, we should enjoy the present of what we do in the knowledge that at any moment the future could disappear. It’s a kind of stereoscopic vision that seeks to orient toward the future while immersing in the present.

At any moment the future could disappear.  Every single day becomes that much more enjoyable in this framework, and we try to live a life in gratitude for the awesomeness that we are here alive.

We enjoy the music, even when it is not secular.

Drawing a few lessons about life and education

Way back in school in the old country, my friends Vijay and Srikumar were very good with pencil drawing.  Animals, nature, and even people, you name it and they easily could.  I, on the other hand, couldn't even draw a line!

How on earth do some people--even without any formal training--draw and sing and dance and write poems and more?

I have forever wondered about this, and have even blogged in plenty about creativity.  I get pissed off when education systematically marginalizes all these, and then write something like this, which I did a year ago:

Creativity is something that has always intrigued me; I have always felt that formal education the way we offer it simply kills any creativity. Only the fortunate ones survive with their creative skills in tact.
All these add to my frustration with the mantras of STEM and coding. If I could, I would tell educators to "fuck off."  But, alas, in the academic and professional worlds, we cannot ;)

Which is why when I read about one of the MacArthur "genius" Award winners, I was easily bowled over.

Lynda Barry, whose class at Wisconsin helps college students tap innate creativity, is one of the honorees.    Barry was tapped for the award for "Inspiring creative engagement through original graphic works and a teaching practice centered on the role of image making in communication."

I followed the link and listened to a 30-minute interview with her from six years ago.  Yep, there is no doubt about her genius.

Barry says there:

I find so interesting is there's that longing to make things stays with us our whole lives, and there is a lot of sadness about it, and a lot of, a lot of terror about drawing. I mean, that's the - that's the part, when I'm working with the people at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, I'm around geneticists and mathematicians and physicists, all these people who are also - and they do their big formulas on the board, you know, delta epsilon minus two and whatever they're doing. But if they have to draw like even a stick figure, they freak out. So that's interesting to me.

Count me as one those sad people!

Maybe some day we will think beyond how to prepare young children as coders and programmers and worker bees, and encourage them to explore their inner creativity.  Further, it is not as if creativity and imagination are "wastes" in the scientific and analytical thinking; remember this quote from a week ago?

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

On my part, later this evening I will go watch and support some creative people.  That's something "creative" that I could do.

The charms to soothe a savage breast

Something happened a couple of nights ago, and I ended up watching almost two hours of opera arias and classical music, thanks to YouTube.  As I was wrapping up the show that I curated for myself, I remembered a piece that I came to know when my daughter was taking voice lessons two decades ago.

I searched for it.  We live in a miraculous world.  A few keystrokes and, bingo!  How did we ever live before Google and YouTube?

I watched Luciano Pavarotti sing it.  A relatively young Pavarotti.



But, the lyrics (in translation) and recalling my daughter practicing it, I wanted to listen to a female voice.  YouTube delivered.



I texted that to my daughter. Yes, in the night!

The following evening, I decided to get back to the old country's classical music.  I went after one of my favorites--L Subramaniam.  Not only because I have memories of listening to his performances, but also because his improvisations were always magical even to the half-baked that I am.  That magical experience is the bhkathi for me--not the other one that the rasikas blabber about.

I started with this.  It was even sweeter than I had remembered.

YouTube suggested this performance at Georgetown University.  I fast-forwarded through the talks and watched/listened only to the music.



Against such plenitude of music and the arts, the current White House has become a cultural wasteland!  Unlike the Obama years, there is no music from this White House.  It is a dead zone:

Since his inauguration in January 2017, there have been no official concerts at the White House (the Reagans had one every few weeks). No poetry readings (the Obamas regularly celebrated young poets). The Carters began a televised series, “In Performance at the White House,” which last aired in 2016, where artists as varied as Mikhail Baryshnikov and Patricia McBride performed in the East Room. The Clintons continued the series with Aretha Franklin and B. B. King, Alison Krauss and Linda Ronstadt.

Of course, the ultimate show business President was unmatched in this:

But perhaps no Republican could match the presidency of Ronald Reagan, whose guest list was a relentless celebration of the diversity of American culture. He and Nancy Reagan hosted Lionel Hampton. Then the Statler Brothers. Then Ella Fitzgerald. Then Benny Goodman. Then a night with Beverly Sills, Rudolf Serkin and Ida Levin. That was all in the fall of 1981. The Reagans did much to highlight uniquely American forms, especially jazz. One night in 1982, the White House hosted Dizzy Gillespie, Chick Corea and Stan Getz. When Reagan visited Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow in 1988, he brought along the Dave Brubeck Quartet.

And we now have this White House, where the arts have been murdered.  What a shame!

When we are without art, we are a diminished people — myopic, unlearned and cruel.

Awful!

The man who knew too little

Quite a few years ago, a well-known geographer, Neil Smith, came to campus, and I went to the talk/soirée.

There was a bar, where this teetotaler went to get a soda.  Or, pop, if you prefer.

The bartender was a student, who was of legal age and with the license to serve alcohol.  Of course I had to chit-chat with her.  It amuses me that I am not surprised that I have not forgotten that exchange.

She talked about her interest in Chinese opera.  It was one of the many moments in life when I was made to understand that I knew nothing.  I hadn't ever watched anything from Chinese opera.  Ever. And this young white woman was talking about it with some serious insight.  Even as I type this, I admit that I have not watched, nor listened to, Chinese opera.  Not even for a minute.

I am culture-challenged.

I have admitted to that all along.  I say that sincerely.  I have always said that.  But, people are quick to correct me.  Like the humanities professor back in California.  In our conversation about cinema, when I admitted to not knowing much, she immediately replied that I am a man of culture.  I am?

Over the years, I have come to understand this much then: Even my fleeting familiarity with a few aspects of literature, music, drama, and cinema, apparently make me culturally competent.  But, what about the ocean out there about which I know nothing, right?

Nobody knows it all.

After having truly understood that, the older I get, the more easily I admit to not knowing.  Especially when it comes to aspects of culture.  I am more and more at ease with responses like, "nope, I have not read that; what movie are you talking about?  who is he, or who was he, or is that a she?"

What remains is the primary experience of culture:

The problem was that in falling for New York’s endless cultural possibilities, I had — and still have — much less time for reading than I assumed would be my lot. In exchange for depth I got breadth. I relish, even when only half understanding, the paintings of Artemisia Gentileschi, the photography of Diane Arbus, the architecture of Henry Hobson Richardson, the operas of Giuseppe Verdi, the films of Kenji Mizoguchi, the theater of Peter Brook. On the other hand, I haven’t come close to reading the major works of William James or Toni Morrison or hundreds of other major writers whose oeuvres I once fondly imagined would be at my fingertips. I’m reminded of a story about the librarian/fabulist Jorge Luis Borges, who was once asked in an interview to venture an opinion about Gustav Mahler. As ever, the most stupendously erudite man of his time was ready with a trenchant reply: “Who’s Mahler?” How inspiring!

I experience culture for this: "its beauty, its reach, its strangeness, its ability to transform an ordinary life like mine."  Even though I have never watched Chinese opera, and even when I have no immediate plans whatsoever to watch one.