Ât so. I still chuckle over it. I think the pun was immensely clever. Display of madness. Or that translation may still not be enough to convey the utter mayhem of ât so. Brilliant.
To me, though, boudoir shots have always been intriguing. I liked in Disney’s Lilo & Stitch how Lilo would take pictures of grotesquely fat, semi-nude people on the Hawaiian beach like they were interesting and then displayed the polaroids on her bedroom wall as decor. Art. Boudoir shots remind me of Lilo all the time. Or vice versa.
Beauty as a concept often changes. Botticelli’s Venus has love rolls, for example. Today’s beauty standards – the Britney Spears abs, the Zendaya figures, the Angelina Jolie looks – do not allow for imperfections. No love handles! It is impossible to attain these. I believe this impossible standard of beauty is displayed best by the Kardashian sisters. The thick, long, dark, lustrous straight hair of Asian women, the perfect angular facial features of Caucasian women, the lightly tanned olive skin of the Mediterranean folks, the full lips, breasts and ass of African women, the perfectly toned abs of a modern gym-going woman... beauty standards of different races (and even time?) all rolled into one perfect plastic mould. No one should ever emulate them. That way lies madness. Let Image be the domain of the Kardashians; this is the butter that coats their bread. Not for us regular mortals working 9-to-5s. They say the future is beige and that may be so but I guess the Kardashians couldn’t wait that long. Good for them. They have the money. I judge rich people who remain ugly.
And that’s on beauty. But Art is not just a depiction of beauty. It means so many things. It is what survives after we are gone. It is what encapsulates us in our Present. It is what we hope for will come to pass. I don’t know how else to say it as that Art is as Art does. It is how it makes you feel. Happiness, sadness, anger, loss, lust, whatever. It moves your soul. And thankfully, there's new art all the time.
I cried the first time I watched Doctor Who’s Vincent And The Doctor. This episode pays a beautiful homage to Van Gogh’s Starry Night. It showed you a way of looking at this canvas and how Van Gogh, as depressed as he was in real life, could see majestic beauty in ways no one else could see, the way the night sky swirled around in shades of blue and gold, the colours of the wind and the way the air dances around in the inky blackness of the dark.
It is good that God created artists. Their art has lived on even after they have died and gone. They have ensured that people understand they are not alone. No matter how lonely and sad you may be, or how ecstatic and hopeful you might find yourself, any feeling that makes you human, some old artist of bygone days have also felt, and they’ve left behind their experiences in their art – their melodies, their lyrics and poems, their voices, their books, their videos, their canvases, their sculptures... I believe art confirms our humaneness. I think the most important message of art is this: you are not alone.
It is perfectly wondrous how there never seems to be a shortage of new art. Speaking locally, I’d never have thought it possible to have rhyming scheme in Mizo poetry and lyrics. But recently, the new crop of Mizo rappers have incorporated rhymes in their songs, weaving puns into their lines seemingly effortlessly. I’ve always marvelled at this. I think this is brilliant. I also have always thought Mizo language was best suited to Gospel, Country and Rock. And mostly only those. But apparently, if done right, it fits in well even with pop, indie, rap and, actually indeed, most genres! Even nonsensical-sounding, prose-like lyrics could be charming if executed properly. If you don’t compare them to the Oldies, which you really shouldn’t anyway, and allow them to stand on their own, they’re wonderfully fabulous.
If you don't agree to a piece of art, it really could seem like a veritable display of insanity: ât so! But in my most humble opinion, even if you don't like it or don't agree with it, as long as you react to it, it still counts. And funny thing, someone else might find themselves in that. Someone you don't like, most probably though.
Truthfully, art is what makes us human.
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