Dying is an Art

Just finished watching Sylvia, the movie. Made me think – do all great writers necessarily have to have such tragic lives? Is this tragedy that feeds creativity into their works? Is sadness the greatest catalyst for passionate ruthless outpourings? Is loneliness, infidelity, heart breaks, insomnia, nightmares the driving force behind great writings? Pained verses are touching, strong ranting prose effective? So to be able to produce such works, does a personal failure prove to be a necessity to be a writer?
Woolf? Plath? – the two icons of their times – my Goddesses, my idols, my inspirations – both women with tragic lives – both women with mental tortures – both women clamped personally – both women dead early – for they could not carry the burden of their genius in this unfair world?
What is reason and what is passion? Poetry is passion. The power to be able to manifest your entire self in a few “not-rhyming” verses is poetry – heart rendering lines from the self is poetry.

Tragedy and sorrow – the food for poetry? Joy too – but mostly the former.
I look back at my tiny collection of insignificant work – I look at the words, the feelings, the thoughts behind it – I pour over them slowly, I think about them – I recall the context, the subject, the time in which I wrote – and sadly, it shows too – sorrow had brought out the best in me – through words I could manifest my anger, my fear, my anxiety, my hatred. In joy, I could not ever do it so well. Joyous poetry has always been flimsy – so is my happiness shallow and is my sorrow deep? I wonder…I think about myself and in my fancy, compare myself to those two – I relate to them…strangely so. Surely many others too – but I do strongly.

Genius requires certain madness – an insanity that is not visible to the world. A slow machine whirring in the head – with all kind of thoughts – real and surreal – dreams and nightmares – subconscious and conscious thoughts – all intermingling and running furiously through my head – like a storm that is brewing – that shall only ebb once I die.
When does this storm get deafening? When does it block out other noises? When does the world become an enemy? When do you become alone – you and these voices in you head – sense that is nonsense to others – logic that is senility to the world, a philosophy that is not yet been recorded in great thick books of Russell and Decartes, a passion that Rousseau hasn’t yet talked about? Is that when you leave some thoughts behind – on paper and in parchments for the world to read and recognise later? Is that when you decide to not live in the make believe social world anymore? Is that when you die? Like a legacy, leave behind your words and perish? And influence and inspire, amateurs like me, readers and dreamers – who are a little different from the rest –slightly mad, slightly sane, slightly alive, slightly dead – who wish to think, and write – to be read, to tell others the beauty of a poem, of words, of art, of verses…of an experience that is called life itself? And then dying would not be an end in itself, but a beginning of another story – more words, more poems, more genius, more insanity, more drowning, more pills – and yet in Plath’s words:

Dying is an art,
like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

Ideal Idealism Idealist Idyllic?

What is ideal? Is there something as ideal? The first meaning in the dictionary is “perfect”. Now I went to see the meaning of “perfect” and it said ‘excellent’, ‘faultless’. Now before I thought of going to the meanings of that, I realised it is just one big circle. One word means the other, the other means another which in turn means the first one. So do we actually have a meaning at all? Real true meaning of anything?
Plus even if we understand the meaning of ideal – that I also think is a subjective word and differs from person to person – but for a minute, lets just suppose, if we, within ourselves understand the meaning of the word “ideal”, is anything in life really ideal? As humans, as hungry insatiable mortal beings, aren’t we always vying for something better than what there is – so nothing is really ideal, is it?

Idealism as a concept is totally screwed up. There is no utopia (unless ofcourse, in the clichéd sense, “you make your own utopia”). There is no perfection. Nothing is perfect. And then again, when I look up at the serene sky and watch that globular masterpiece of nature hang lazily, I think of perfection within imperfections.
No then can we say that perfection, in it complete self, doesn’t exist? And that we live all our lives struggling with imperfection – so is our continuous strive for perfection a never ending quest? So is perfection just a distant carrot on the stick,that the closer we get to it, the further it goes? Is perfection some wapped word that is man made and that is an impossibility?
Is any form of art perfect? Is any piece of art perfect? Nothing can be perfect if we cannot define “perfect”, right? So should be delete the word and all its brothers and sisters out of the dictionary? Should we delete ideal, idyllic, best, etc etc etc?

Is it a depressing thought? – to think that perfection may be nothing…a strive towards a theory that does not exist? But yet, in Alanis’ words, You live, you learn. I am very confused right now – I cannot decide whether the realisation that perfection is nothing should be upsetting my hopeful utopic ideas or should I celebrate the fact that as humans, even in imperfections and in the simple walk towards the horizon of perfection that shall never be completed, we are happy – we live, we learn – we make our imperfections our perfections … and in this thoughtful quest, I humbly manage to bewilder and dazzle the readers with my amazing capability to confuse? But then again, did I ever say I am perfect?