When Words Fail
There are seven universally recognized facial expressions - Surprise, Fear, Disgust, Anger, Happiness,
Sadness, and Contempt or Hate. We would not be wrong in assuming it is easy to
communicate and understand each other, regardless of our cultural variations,
age and gender differences or educational levels. We all know this is far from
the truth. There is far more misunderstanding than understanding, more
misrepresentation than representation. From wars to divorces, miscommunication
is often the root cause.
Approximately 6,500 languages are spoken in the world today.
Nearly 130 million books have been published just in the modern era . Dictionaries are compiled and revised, as we
try to improve our understanding and communication. And yet words fail us.
Vedic, Greek, Chinese, Islamic and modern scholars have
extensively theorized human behavior.
Face reading, phrenology, psychology, astrology and all their
variations, attempt to understand human nature. Teachers, personnel managers,
police investigators, judges, intelligence officers, psychologists, and even
gamblers, keep enhancing their skills to assess people. Desmond Morris, author
of the hugely popular books, “The Naked Ape”
and “Man Watching”, has written
39 books in 55 years since 1967, of which, all but one, are investigations into
human and animal behavior. Clearly, it remains an evolving quest.
T.S Eliot’s “The Wasteland”
by its fragmented structure rejects the role of a single logical narrative –
the Thunder says “ Da Da Da” setting literary critics into frantic explanations.
Yet, reading The Wasteland, we all “get it” even if we cannot explain what it
is that we “get”. This surrender to ambiguity is the cornerstone of creative
expression.
What we respond to is the nuance, the bareek beeni, the
meaning hidden between the words, in the texture of a painting, the curve of a
portion of a sculpture, the turn of the head in a dance, the teewar and komal sur of a raag.
The qirat recitation
of the Quran, or the chanting of the
Psalms of David move us differently from reading the texts.
A film script becomes unforgettable not because of its
narrative, but its interpretation by a sensitive director, and the subtle
expressions of the actor, the weaving of the music score, the detailing of the
art direction.
Most mysterious is creative expression that discards the
need for words. The emotional
compositions of Beethoven, the mesmerizing tabla nawazi of Zakir Hussain, the
haunting music of Alpay Göltekin, the dazzling turns and suspended leaps of the ballet dancer, Rudolf Nureyev, the
moonwalk of Michael Jackson, stir our deepest emotions as words rarely can.
Painting, using a single image, can convey the entire life
of its subject. In Edgar Degas’ painting, “The Absinthe Drinker”, with a
restrained palette and a seemingly casual composition, he manages to tell the
story of a crumpled, discarded Parisian in the otherwise lively Latin Quarters
frequented by artists and writers. In “The Guitarist”, our eyes are drawn to
the father of the guitarist, leaving us to interpret his lost expression. Picasso chose to depict the bombing of
Guernica with a “Weeping Woman”, her
suffering enhanced with a jangled cubist
composition. Edward Hopper’s “ Diner” depicts the solitude of urban 50s in USA, Balchand’s “The Death of Inayat Khan”, not only a depicts a dying man but also
reflects the scientific curiosity of Emperor Jehangir, who commissioned the
miniature . In “Napoleon Crossing the
Alps” Jacques-Louis David solved the dilemma of the short stature of Napoleon
Bonaparte, by sitting him on a rearing horse. Napoleon’s whirlwind conquests are
narrated by the wind filling his cloak and the horse’s mane, urging him towards
victory.
Words, pigment, marble or musical notes are not the art, but
rather they are a delicate net that enables the art to find form, and to make
the invisible visible.
Durriya Kazi
September 5, 2020
Comments
Post a Comment