Daily Times

Introspection in life, when coupled with a neurosis gained from a difficult, at times, confusing, childhood, renders its wielder with a melancholy and altogether antisocial disposition. When left uninterrupted for long, and immersed in with a kind of narcissistic glee (later likened to be the ruinous ‘fairy dust’ that ultimately sets one apart from the masses; the vital-mix which heralds all creative production), it makes one a habitual ‘party pooper’; the kind of indigent not bereft in material acquisition or physical persona of any empirical nature — but one who is forever wanting in spirit. A creature who may appear to have internalized the mores of immediate society to an often enviable degree, but who is secretly — and on unhappy occasion, even overtly — troubled from within; constantly at pains to yearn for a stability that is always hopelessly, even mythically, external.

And this vexation inevitably makes itself known; with its more popular instances exemplified in the lives of people who may suddenly seem to be stricken with the pop culture-type exhibitions reminiscent of a new-age mid-life crisis — or to make the issue more relatable, of a promising university graduate who, with a valiant and infuriating disregard for all socioeconomic advancement, chooses to self-sabotage and adopts a personal vocation totally at odds with the preliminary education that he or she may have attained so far. There are many other examples of this ensnaring and outwardly destructive proclivity, but it is these instances of spontaneously willed self-immolation which strike the purveyor first when considered from the instantaneous, contemplative vantage.

In all fairness, however, there is the opposite angle that needs to be considered as well — and I have already alluded to this issue in the opening.

The troubled artist, for want of a more suitable public affixation (or should I say, ‘self-affectation’?), secretly enjoys the customized adulation — even reverence — that this earlier imposed, and later consciously reimposed, mode of existence deigns to bring.

He, for the author, identifies with the sex and all its unapologetic (though certainly not conventionally bigoted) baggage, makes good to relish this constant influx/outflux of a productive otherness; deeming it more a professional resume addition, at least in guarded private-venting settings, than a cause for medicinal or some other therapeutic concern, which is the easy charge of all sincere well-wishers, the usual troupe of bile-in-the-mouth envy-ers, and self-seeking critics: tendencies of approachment/rapprochement which often, interestingly, abound in the same person.

But most of life is a paradox, it seems; where one fixed concept appears to seamlessly blend into another, leaving little room for some stable middle ground. So this observation is not as surprising as one would venture to think.

For the type of curious artist unraveled so far, this isolationist tendency comes with a practical motivation, since the perpetual strangeness from the ‘status-quo norm’ that it engenders has a socially-filtering effect; only leaving a minority of people to dare past arm’s length (in figurative speak, of course — this exotic soul, for want of further mystification and self-cajoling tantrum, rarely allows any, beyond a folk of ‘same blood shared’, to tread deeper into this most sacred of personal spaces) and venture into the mind-field: the mental construct from where springs all this unsettling and rewarding idiosyncrasy — a companionship of heaven and the devil combined. An unending dualism that is both action and sloth, simultaneous attraction and repulsion; all proceeding in successive order.

From the outside, this kind of ‘life-faring’ might seem a little hallowed to some, haloed by an adolescent variety of romanticism typically evoked in the budding creative during the nascence of his/her preteen or young adulthood years; but to a functional artist (to speak nothing of the full-blown patient), it is anything but!

It risks sending the afflict down an ever-steeper path towards a communal exile — where the artist’s own mind is its own instigator and resolver; its own addresser and addressee; with an ensnaringly convoluted language (much like this), an entire discourse, even, which lends comprehension to only the select few who are similarly stricken. The minuscule who are both rejected by society and embraced by it; and the latter because of want for reformative necessity.

Now a lot of people, who should (or rather would; had they chosen to move beyond their contemplative comfort zones, and I daresay, their simplistic biases) have known better, would like to belittle this particular narrative — a brief commentary, nay description, of an artist’s psychological unfolding — as nothing more than vain-glorying psychobabble. But when considered with greater empathy, and a mind open to reasoning beyond a populist cut-off point or a linear deliberative streak, it, as well as other honest accounts like it, can yield a number of interesting insights; the least of which have to do with exploring how the human mind, in all its strange and unpredictable progressions, works in the unfiltered, hyperactive state. A conscience that is raging towards the sweet ecstasy of oblivion, but is at the same time terrified of its enflaming prospects.

When this stream of consciousness, despite much work having been done in academic and research-oriented spheres to elicit its meaning, and for want of some cause to serve as the practical justification of this ordeal, is mapped for its structural commonalities with other such reports, it can — potentially — offer opportunities for much collaboration, and not psychiatric dissolution, between the conscious and the subconscious; between the majoritarian impulses shared as well as acted upon by most people and the hidden series of motivations that irk them (and a few, like the artist persona laid bare here, definitely more so than others) as they go about their day to day business.

This is important — because we, as a species, need to become more cognizant and accepting of our reflective faculties and how they minutely function. Given the rampant and ever-increasing incidences of mental health emergencies these days, a chronic recognition of this nature could not be more urgent.

We, out of enforced and cultivated practice, are too habituated to stifling our real, legitimate, motivations; with the result that we foster more crises than we alleviate. And it is high time that we took pains (or what the artist construes to be merriment — in line with his essential nature) to come to grips with what ails us.

We, the peoples of a poetic East, are more suited to this vocation; we just need to devise an emotive language of the mind to transcribe our reflections without any imposing linguistic noise or the nuts-and-bolts approach of a Universal Grammar from getting in between. And I think that this effort would largely be worth the resources spent in its realization — because what would beckon, in terms of therapeutic intervention/application, would be nothing less enriching than the attainment of sheer, deliberative, freedom: an island of painless thought against the muted backdrop of a daily, lived experience (replete with mental intrusion).

The writer is a poet, culture critic- and nonconformist