Not Ready To Make Nice

I’m old enough to remember when the Dixie Chicks got cancelled. 

2003 had George W. Bush as POTUS. There was a joke going on that when he visited India, he referred to the “mountains of Delhi” and that snarkily amused DU kids no end. I don’t even know if it was a real quote. It is possible, I guess. I have no real reference. On the other hand, Dubyaman was around and it could be from there, some sort of comic exaggeration. I don’t really remember. I just remember the snickering. And the art. Dubyaman was gold.

I do remember that when Dixie Chicks said they didn’t support the Iraq war and that they were ashamed that Bush was from Texas, as were they, they got cancelled. They got death threats. They got their music paraphernalia mutilated and burnt and destroyed.  That was to symbolically kill their art. 

But I guess art doesn’t die like that.

Artists die. A lot of them even kill themselves. They tend to be very delicate. One of the most poignant ones get highlighted and put into songs that live on long after the artists die. Like Vincent van Gogh, forever immortalized in the song Vincent (Starry Night) by Don Mc Lean, with the haunting line: 

     You took your life as lovers often do

     But I could have told you, Vincent

     This world was never meant 

     For one as beautiful as you.

Oof. Right in the feels. Just in case Van Gogh’s art somehow doesn’t survive, I’m guessing this song will. It just needs someone to remember it. Or even think about Marilyn Monroe with Elton John’s beautiful tribute in Candle In The Wind:

     And it seems to me you lived your life

     Like a candle in the wind

     Never knowing who to cling to

     When the rain set in

     And I would've liked to know you

     But I was just a kid

     Your candle burned out long before

     Your legend ever did

Which, as we know, worked again for Diana, Princess of Wales, with a few minor changes:

     And it seems to me you lived your life

     Like a candle in the wind:

     Never fading with the sunset 

     When the rain set in.

     And your footsteps will always fall here, 

     Among England's greenest hills;

     Your candle's burned out long before

     Your legend ever will.

How do people do this? Artists have the ability to take on other people’s pain and make it their own. The fucked up bit is that they tend to pass that on. I guess that’s good. In a way. They find the ways to help you express yourself in ways you cannot. And they can find the ways to make other people understand that feeling. That’s incredible power.

Across art forms, artists have always provided platforms for people to share their different lives and experiences. I am always endlessly amazed.

Thank God for art. Right?!

It is so strange to be able to understand situations you would never find yourself in. But you find your humanity in fiction sometimes! How weird is that? Or you could travel through the world, lost in a book. You can even understand languages from snippets across different art – the written word, as song lyrics, as titles to painting and sculptures, movie quotes. Endless ways of expression. 

Sometimes the artists share their soul and their lives with you. Taylor Swift is famous for that. Her entire empire depends on her story-telling, especially the ones that cover her own life. Dolly Parton and Shania Twain did something of the opposite earlier. Jolene is supposed to be just a figment of her imagination. From This Moment On was supposedly written during a football game and she was bored. 

And then there was the Dixie Chicks. Not Ready To Make Nice was angry right from the first note. There was pain there in that first twang of strings. Natalie’s voice gets stronger and angrier all the time, even with the little cheek in verse 3. By the time she got to the Bridge, her pain was gushing out, bleeding and raw, like angry red slashes. Even the violin was angry. I don’t know how to explain it but I’ve never heard angrier violin as that short violin solo. The vocals turned more melodic and softer again by the end, but it was still stubborn and unrepentant. 

Damn, that was a good song.

Is it bad that I am glad they got cancelled for some time? All things considered, I mean. They got vindicated with a vengeance again, after all. And going strong. And we got wonderful music. For people not ready to make nice. Yet.

Of Art Shows and Ât So

Some time back, people in Mizoram seemed to think art was synonymous with nudity. Nude art is definitely art but it is definitely not all there is to art. I remember being amused and yet mildly irritated at the time. One of the best jokes that came out of it, as I remember, is the frustrated rant of a friend over an art show that had a number of nude art on display: this is not an art show, this is ât so! 

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.

Memorised Prayers

Mizo kids would know this prayer:

"Aw Lalpa chaw leh thil tinreng, Min pek avangin ka lawm e; I rawng bawl turin min pui la, Isua Krista hming avangin, Amen." It’s a short prayer for kids before mealtime. I think they call it Grace. In Roorkee, I learned an English one: "Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts which we are about to receive through Thy bounty through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen." (If I remember right).

I say the Mizo one. Mostly because it’s always on the tip of my tongue. When your mother has drummed it into your head from the moment you started speaking your first few words (not even sentence), it really sticks to your brain. Also since you had to say the prayer before you could eat, one of your first rewards based behaviour modification systems, you can’t stop it now; if people put rice in front of you for you to eat, out comes the prayer. It’s become reflex at this point.

It’s actually a really sweet prayer. I wonder who came up with it. "O Lord thank you for food and everything that you’ve given us; help us to serve you, in Jesus Christ’s name we pray, Amen."

All these really long prayers that you pray and really ham up sometimes and you go on for like ten minutes and by that time you’ve started telling tales to God... I really prefer the mealtime prayer. Or The Lord’s Prayer. I like that one too. I think Jesus came up with that. Or the Bedtime Prayer. We have that one too. I don’t know who came up with that. That one is also nice.

I know the Mizo one: "Zanin ah min veng la, Lalpa kan thil hlauh ata, Vantirhkohten min veng rawh se, Khua var leh hma chuan, Amen." Quite sweet and to the point. "Lord protect us through the night from what we fear, May angels keep us save until dawn breaks, Amen." I know one English one, too. I don’t know where I learned it. "And now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, That if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take, Amen." Little dark, little morbid, little bit like me.

I really like these short prayers. One time, we were talking about prayers and a friend said that when people ask him to remember them in his prayers, he doesn’t wait for the major prayer times to do so; he just says a prayer for them wherever he is, whatever he is doing, so he doesn’t forget it later on. I liked that. I’ve been doing that too. So if you ask me to put you in my prayers, I’d probably say a tiny prayer for you then and there. Probably.

I remember too my sister one time having an epiphany about the mealtime one. We thank God for food and everything. Everything. So we thank God for all the shit that we go through as well. I guess it’s more to be read with the next line – to help us serve God. A prayer of thanks paired with a prayer seeking help for when it’s difficult. It’s only four lines. It’s really brilliant.

Artists have a special place in human society. They have for long helped us lesser mortals express ourselves through their art – their words, music, paintings... I think I’ll say a prayer of thanks now for the people who came up with these short prayers. They’ve helped me meditate; even when I am angry or scared and my thoughts aren’t coherent enough to come up with proper thought-out conversations with God, they’ve stuck. They still do.

And I think that’s nice.