Something of Myself
Thursday, October 19, 2006
The Missing Link
Someone told me I was always sad and wondered why my interests, my writing, my attraction towards life was based on pain and negative experiences. I smiled and replied to myself - because the greatest things are bought at the cost of great pain and because our deepest feelings are those that tell of saddest thought. Yeah, Keats.
But on hindsight, it's probably just me who sees the beauty of expression and the poignancy of the thoughts in every writer who touches me. I somehow do not view their work as 'work' but a reflection of their life. Consider Tennyson, Toni Morrison, Homer, Dickens, Shakespeare, Eliot, Kureishi, Joyce...whoever you fancy. Look up their work. It makes wonderful reading. Cause it touches us inside. Touches us inside cause we identify. We feel something when we read lines such as 'I wanted her to touch me on my inside and call my name - Beloved.' We feel something when a friend mourns and says that he doesn't complain about the fact that He is dead but that 'We cannot hear each other speak.' When the little street sweeper Jo dies in Bleak House. When Eliot speaks of April being the cruellest month, when Joyce unleashes his stream of consciousness, when Hamlet struggles to decide his path, when Shylock is angered at the sheer racial discrimination that makes a 'mongrel' out of him, when Kureishi's Buddha is caught between two cultures, not knowing which one to choose, when Ellison's invisible narrator sighs because people look through him and not at him because he is black, when Kim realises that he is nothing but a cog in the Empire, when Ulysses rises to every challenge in front of him to overcome and unite with Penelope. These are stuff that great literature is made of. But then, these are stuff that we, you and me, all of us are made of.
I know that there is another side of the coin - the happiness, the laughter, love and all that and we need it to survive as much. But then for me, it is the darker side of things, the dark materials of the beast that makes me believe in the wonderfulness of life - that even though a slight smile can cure a depression, the big idea lies in putting yourself in the other person's shoes and wondering how it feels to be. To be a member of the Fight Club. :)
Someone told me I was always sad and wondered why my interests, my writing, my attraction towards life was based on pain and negative experiences. I smiled and replied to myself - because the greatest things are bought at the cost of great pain and because our deepest feelings are those that tell of saddest thought. Yeah, Keats.
But on hindsight, it's probably just me who sees the beauty of expression and the poignancy of the thoughts in every writer who touches me. I somehow do not view their work as 'work' but a reflection of their life. Consider Tennyson, Toni Morrison, Homer, Dickens, Shakespeare, Eliot, Kureishi, Joyce...whoever you fancy. Look up their work. It makes wonderful reading. Cause it touches us inside. Touches us inside cause we identify. We feel something when we read lines such as 'I wanted her to touch me on my inside and call my name - Beloved.' We feel something when a friend mourns and says that he doesn't complain about the fact that He is dead but that 'We cannot hear each other speak.' When the little street sweeper Jo dies in Bleak House. When Eliot speaks of April being the cruellest month, when Joyce unleashes his stream of consciousness, when Hamlet struggles to decide his path, when Shylock is angered at the sheer racial discrimination that makes a 'mongrel' out of him, when Kureishi's Buddha is caught between two cultures, not knowing which one to choose, when Ellison's invisible narrator sighs because people look through him and not at him because he is black, when Kim realises that he is nothing but a cog in the Empire, when Ulysses rises to every challenge in front of him to overcome and unite with Penelope. These are stuff that great literature is made of. But then, these are stuff that we, you and me, all of us are made of.
I know that there is another side of the coin - the happiness, the laughter, love and all that and we need it to survive as much. But then for me, it is the darker side of things, the dark materials of the beast that makes me believe in the wonderfulness of life - that even though a slight smile can cure a depression, the big idea lies in putting yourself in the other person's shoes and wondering how it feels to be. To be a member of the Fight Club. :)
4 Comments:
hmmm
Hmmmmmmmm
Undoubtedly another beautiful piece, but this time i have a complain, why dnt u really write something bright and happy. I agree that we all love reading abt the agony and struggle these authors portrayed but deep within all of us wished that the suffering wld end and finally the characters will achieve that gold pot at the end of the rainbow. Its an earnest request from a fan of urs, pls write something really nice and sunny.
I understand Asha. I will try but from what I know of me, I am not very good at being sunny-side up! :) But I'll give it a shot anyways!
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