By Vijay Phanshikar :

“Granting emotions
     their persona ...
     ... Art ! ”
- Self 


 Prose 

THIS is what the creator of arts, does. Countless definitions are available -- of the art and of the artist. Each definition is rich in every which the way. In sum and substance, however, granting one’s emotion a persona, a presence, is art. Is this an oversimplification ? May be ! Yet, come to think of the process -- of granting emotions their persona, their physical presence, their signature. It is very complex, to say the least. For, offering emotions their persona, in other words, means binding the emotions in a space or form or action -- or in words. No one can deny the complexity of the whole thing.

 

Ask a young person experiencing first love if he -- or she -- is able to write a love-letter in the first go. Or, we may ask how many sheets got crumpled into trash balls before the first words could be penned down ! Of course, as one may say, art is different. Yet, the process is as complex. For, the internal battle begins with the emotions. One wrestles with feelings, tries to imagine a form, then grapples with the issues of medium. Then the possibility emerges that something may appear out of nowhere. For the painter, there is the blank sheet that is waiting to be used to inscribe the artist’s emotion. For the sculptor, there is rough hewn rock that waits to be shaped into a sensible form -- of a deity or even of a demon. For the artist as a user of words as the tool, what confronts is the blank paper. And when the artist is a dancer, he or she needs to master the emotion first and channel it into neat and flowing actions that create not just a rhythm but also a rhyme. The same is the story with a singer.

 

The first note is all important. That decides the level of the art to appear for the connoisseurs to lap up. Let us also extend this ideation with the surgeon -- faced with a patient on the table, unconscious, ready to be operated upon (in most cases in a life-and-death situation). The scalpel in the surgeon’s hand is the tool -- and what is in play is his emotion not as a user of science but as a user of his own emotion to be mastered (so that the scalpel makes the first correct incision). “Of course, medicine leaves the realm of science very quickly. What remains is a connect the artist has with his or her art,” a famed ENT surgeon once said. To some, this may appear as a diversion, all right. But in the nutshell, this is what is happening in the artist’s head and heart before his or her hands work. The first step, thus, in the process of creation of art is in formulating the nature of emotion to be used and craved or crafted or scripted for the connoisseurs’ consumption. In no way is the process simple.

 

Practised ease is what we see when an artist is at work. But before the first rush of emotion assumes shape in the head, a whole tumult goes on. To many, it is tormenting. Many, many artists have said, they spend sleepless nights before great arts get expressed. The connoisseur may never get to realise what has gone on in the artist’s head and heart before his or her hands ever started working. Yet, there are connoisseurs -- salutes to them -- who have attained that spiritual finesse to reach within the artist’s being -- and then understand at least bits of the process of art. Every artist -- of any art form -- in the core of his or her heart works for such interpreters of his expression.