On Separating the Art from its Artist

I have often wondered how important it is to separate the art from its artist. Hemingway was known to be abusive and a misogynist. Woolf and Plath were known to have suffered clinical depression. Sexton admitted to physically abusing her children due to her mental illness. Sartre was known to be a Nazi. John Lennon was known to be abusive. Bukowski was an alcoholic. Bob Marley was a drug addict. How necessary is it to separate the artist from who they were?

It is naive to think that an artist is independent from his art. To think that it is possible to create without bleeding, if you have an inclination towards poetry. But the idea that there are artists out there who have produced work that was solely under the influence of drugs and alcohol is a little troubling to me. As it is in professional sports where steroids aren't allowed, a part of me wishes that in creating art you weren't allowed to be under influence (of drugs, of alcohol, of caffeine, of nicotine). But it made me wonder how limited human thought actually is. The thought that many of the greatest works may have not been so great is more troubling to me than an author who writes while high. It bothers me more that a said piece of art hadn't existed at all than the fact that an artist used a drug as a clutch to produce it. So then it becomes much more important, to me, to separate the work from its artist.

To forget the conditions under which the art was produced, to forget the mindset with which it was produced, and to let it stand as an independent creature that had no origin is how I believe art should be looked at. Imagine a dark room with the light only coming from a spotlight aimed at a piece of art. That, in my opinion, is how art should be looked at.

What I want to discuss now is the social context of art. The first thing that comes to mind when I wish to talk about social context is Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. It is a fair question to ask, how can you fully appreciate that piece of art if you aren't aware of the social, political, economic, etc. background of that work? Well, when I say a work should stand alone, I do not mean you should chop off its limbs that are connecting it to what makes it necessary. I firmly believe that the greatest works of art are deemed so because they were simply a necessity. A poem about a revolution in a tyrannical government, a satire in an absurd system, an absurd painting in a society hell-bent on perfection, et al. are all, in my opinion, necessary for the conditions they are created in. The root of this necessity tends to lie in the artists mind. Therefore it is very naive, as I mentioned earlier, to think art can be created without an artist leaving a part of himself in it. (Think of the tortured artist cliche.) This obsession in the mind of the said artist is very often shaped by the world they live in. One only has to think of the esteemed Harry Potter novels that remind one that even Hogwarts wasn't free from basic social issues of Racism, Classicism, Animal Cruelty, etc. But it is important to note that these works are enriched when one decides to look at its social context, made better from what they previously were. These works aren't great because of their social context, they become greater when seen in the light they were produced in. These works are wonderful to begin with is the thing to remember.

Toni Morrison in an interview with Stephen Colbert, upon being asked if she thought she deserved the Nobel and Pulitzer prizes, answered that her art did. That to me is a very important distinction because here is an esteemed author separating herself from her work. The point I am trying to make is that regardless of the mental condition the person was in while creating that work of art, the piece itself matters. And the piece of art should only be judged by its content and not what the artist themselves did or were like. Because that art isn't the artist and the artist isn't the art. It is a part of the artist. And the artist is a part of the art.

With this being said, when you appreciating an artist leads to that artist financially benefiting from it (for example, the case of Chris Brown-although I wouldn't even consider that Art), separating the art from its artist becomes very futile. In your appreciating, you indirectly are condoning who they are as a person. Problematic behavior must be pointed out and addressed.

Silly Compromises

Hemingway, in his critique of Tender is the Night, once told Fitzgerald that he musn't make any silly compromises in his writing. That he must write and write truly no matter who or what it hurts. It is very comforting to me that all truly great writers struggled with words. That the brilliance that penned The Great Gatsby and For Whom the Bell Tolls was the same brilliance that was superfluous with words and needed reassurance.
I, personally, don't care for writing that doesn't seem human. I have no interest in authors who pretend everything's fine. Who write like they're merely drinking a cup of tea on a cold winter morning. They simply bore me. I don't care for poignant metaphors. Those who merely use big words make me want to roll my eyes so far back I can see the membrane of my brain. Point is, I like rawness. I respect honesty. As simple as that sounds, the only work worth doing is the honest work. Everything else keeps you restless.

the minor fall and the major lift

I keep having trouble with coming to terms with the fact that I am a human. That I am a person entitled to being a person. The ugly and the pretty, it's all me. Too willing to dissect and forego experiencing. Too tired of my mediocre thoughts and too hell-bent on bringing my soul to life.
Listen, I'm not writing a monologue. I'm being a person. Unscripted and unplanned. I want to spend Sunday nights reading Nietzche and I want to be sleep-deprived on Monday mornings.
My thoughts have always disgusted me for how mediocre they are and today is nothing special. We hate the things we understand too deeply, there is no hatred without understanding. I think that's where the cliche of 'thin line between love and hate' comes from.
I have experimented with satire, I have experimented with poetry, I have experimented with perspective writing, and I have experimented with articles. I hate writing. I hate the pressure that I put myself under in that moment because it is so beyond me to be a writer. But perhaps that's why someday I will be a writer because I am beginning to understand the burden you get to carry. It's an absolute honor to carry that burden. You get to claim that there is poetry in you worthy of being written.
I am so interested in reading about human beings. I want to know how you are accepting the art of being. There's something so beautiful about a person bowing his head and accepting the laws that govern the universe (note: universe is not the same as the world, think of sets and subsets where the universe is the set and the world is the subset. the subset must adhere to all the qualities of the universe but the universe is free to be more).
Reflecting on this for the next few hours: "Maybe there's a God above..." (x)

Black Boots, Black Day

You saw death approaching,
I apologized to the reaper.

You held a bloodied pen,
I used the ink for my politics.

You feared the black boots,
I bred them.

Your blood is on my hands.

Your pens, your papers, your notebooks,
Your backpacks, your books.

All soaked from your blood,
That blood is on my hands.

I live because you didn't,
That blood is on my hands.

You died because they didn't,
that blood is on my hands.

Red, not the blood of angry men,
But of your hope and my shame.

Rest In Peace. We, as a society, have failed you.

Coincidence

[This will be a small rant from a Mathematician's perspective, a fair warning.]

The word 'coincidence' is defined as "a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection" or as a "correspondence in nature or in time of occurrence."  

Too often I hear people use the word coincidence as something contrary to "God's will" or "the great plan." How can it be a coincidence when God exists? How can anything be so random? How can anything like that occur? 

Before I move on, let me define probability for you. It's a rather simplistic definition but necessary nonetheless. 1) Probability is the chance that something will happen - how likely it is that some event will happen. 2) The probability of an event is the measure of the chance that the event will occur as a result of an experiment. The probability of an event A is the number of ways event A can occur divided by the total number of possible outcomes. It is important to remember that probabilities do not tell you what will happen, only what is likely to happen. The distinction is very necessary. So when you say that the probability of Heads or Tails in a fair coin is .5 or 50%, you are essentially saying that if you keep flipping the coin and add all those probabilities, it adds up to or comes close to .5 or 50%. It is likely that there if a 50/50 chance of you getting Heads or Tails. It is unlikely, although not impossible, to flip a coin 20 times and get 20 Heads.

The chance of you getting hit by lightening is 1 in 700,000 in the U.S. What this means is that out of 700,000 times that lightening strikes in the U.S., the chance of you getting hit by it is once. That is the probability. You can call it coincidence or God's will or whatever you like, that's your prerogative. 

My problem is with the idea of devaluing the word 'coincidence.' Something is too much of a coincidence. Something occurring that simply can't happen without a greater will involved. The reason I have a problem with that is because it is taking the Math out of the equation and deeming it a farce. When you say the odds are too small for it to be a coincidence, you are denying the principles of Mathematics. You are saying that the Mathematical principles allow for this situation to exist are false simply because your mind is incapable of accepting the odds. The thing is, Mathematics isn't bound by the rules of this universe. You can adjust the variables and constants and go in dimensions our mind is incapable of imagining. Math allows you to consider alternate universes. So by saying, X is too big of a coincidence, you are insulting the principles of Mathematics. When Mathematicians calculate the probability of an event, that probability exists based on past events. It's deductive in nature. Dismissing that because your mind is incapable of understanding the odds is scientifically, and thus mathematically, inaccurate. The probability exists, not for your convenience, but because it is in nature. When you study Probability, you are told two things over and over again. 1) Correlation doesn't mean causation, and 2) You can never get a perfect probability of 1. The reason for the second statement is the possibility of not having recorded for any outliers. So Math accounts for any room there exists for an error. That's why you often see Mathematicians use terms like "almost surely" instead of "surely." It seems like a simple difference of one word but within that word lies an entire frame of reference. You are almost sure something happens but not sure because you are accounting for that freak chance where that thing deviates from the norm. And this is why saying something is too much of a coincidence is redundant and contrary. It can't be too big of a coincidence when it is a coincidence by nature. It can't be a coincidence and defy nature because nature already accounts for the possibility of that event happening.

P.S Correct me if you see any mathematical inaccuracies, I am but a student.

lilies

I haven't written in a while, lately that is how everything seems to begin. I haven't done _____ in a while. If someone asked me to describe what growing up feels like, I would probably say this. It is forgetting to do things you loved and learning to do things you need. It's not a bad thing but some nights are for submission, a silent bow to the past.
You know how when you were little and went back to school after summer vacations, a pencil would feel really weird in your hand? Your words were awkward scratches and sometimes you couldn't believe you had a more graceful rhythm? That's how I feel with words these days. Mine are too choppy, too erratic, too almost. There is a silent grace only practice can gift.
I wanted to talk about beautiful metaphors and analogies but all I can think of is this line by Agha Shahid Ali,

Look, how a God returns to his wrecked temple.

 How we return to our own wrecked temples, with madness and simplicity. Some days you are the tool and others you are the master. Regardless, you create.

On Loving Silently

Pakistanis, I believe, hold doctorates in loving silently.

There is the maid you had who would report you to your parents lest you strayed too far but who would also make you fries behind their back. The choukidaar you had who would always bring you candy. It didn't cost much, of course, but it was worth everything. There is that neighbor who you have known since you were little, the one who has given you rides to school many a times and let their home be a haven when you needed to escape yours.

Then you move on to grander expressions of love. You think of the PE teacher you had who made your life miserable but only because she believed in your potential. The first boy you had a crush on, when you had recently discovered what those wobbly knees meant. Letters and notes passed with the best friend, sly glances, asking for ink for your fountain pen knowing fully well he didn't carry an ink pot and you always had one. The innocent fluttering of butterflies that have just left their cocoons. 

And then there is love so profound it becomes your lungs. You know it's there but you rarely pause to think of it because if you started thinking about it, there wouldn't be much else left to think about. The friends you made when you were little, loyalty so fierce that it still knocks the wind out of you. You know, in your heart, that if you call up those friends now, fifteen years later, you could ask for their left hand and they would be willing to give. I have rarely seen the loyalty Pakistanis feel towards friendship elsewhere. (Believe me, I have looked.) And then you think of your immediate family. You brothers and sisters and cousins and uncles and aunts and your parents. It is an ocean. Immeasurable depth, wild waves, stormy nights, stormier mornings, serenity at 2 pm on a hot day. My God, and the life of it. So much to it that it drives you insane. 

No, no one does love like Pakistanis do. It is silent, in all it's glory. Take your poetic confessions and give me silence worth all our thoughts. Yes, that is love. 

some thoughts...

worlds are precious. this is what carl sagan says in cosmos. that the chance of you being born in ‘a’ world is very tiny as opposed to you being born in the cold, vast, black, nothingness that surrounds us. worlds are precious. your world is precious and so is mine. the oceans of knowledge call us to dip our toes in the lights we see from the beacon below. we are lost somewhere between immensity and eternity, fighting demons that would devour us if we let them. what is it, to be human? who gives you the right to say, we live in a typical world. what is typical? typical is the black nothingness. typical is not life, it’s not world, it’s not habitation. we are blessed to think that our home is typical. we are privileged to say, we can understand the physics that governs our life. that is to be human. to be privileged of the power of understanding. how dare you complain about petty things when you are the most privileged species we know of? how dare you insult the Cosmos?

***

lamentations of a mad man

there are words that inspire within us the purest emotions. you think, how is it possible for man to create something so soulful that it begs its listeners to be honest. you speak of justice, of oaths on bibles and on your dead mother’s grave. be honest. that’s all you want. silly how we seem to be going about it the wrong way. bibles and dead mothers mean nothing to the liars. you want honesty? show a man the most beautiful thing you’ve ever written and you get honesty. your words are lamentations inspired by Muses, and i bare my soul to you. i rip apart all that gets in the way of your eyes and my most honest place. that is what Art means. it makes you feel and it demands your honesty. that is what i am trying to do here. being honest, even if it kills me.

***

Wake up, wake your soul up before your cursed thoughts stop you from taking your next breath. Words my mama whispered to me before she wiped away my tears. She would kiss the hurt away. I would think, it’s unsanitary. She would say, she has super powers-she’s immune from my hurts. My pain was ephemeral, she knew it. But she had this way about her, she wouldn’t let me feel small. There are mornings when I wake up, wanting to kiss the butterflies and paint the balcony in hues of purple and orange. We want to succeed. Who wants to fail? But you keep me grounded. Her voice quivers when my name escapes her lips. There’s a lisp in her emotions. They’re imperfect. She feels too much for too many. I think, that’s the place that holds all the courage in the world. I want to tell the lion from Oz to talk to my mama. She makes people strong. 

***

the sounds my mind makes at this hour while begging to burn like the cigarette smoke reminds me of acid being splashed on the skin-the hiss of the burn, the chemical reactions that destroy your clay. my god, what beauty. what a terrible beauty life is. your carcass burns away with the nicotine. the fallen angels take you under their wings-they know what it is like to disappoint. peel your skin like a grape, your emotions are on display. what do you know of unrequited love? it burns brighter than Sirius. it’s painful. satan begs you to burn in hell, in hopes of eradicating the pain from this kind of love. this anguish, this suffering, that turns you into Icarus. you cannot help but be burned by the sun. 

a basis for understanding

it is estimated that we blink twenty-four thousand and forty times a day. we take twenty-three thousand breaths, filter fifteen hundred liters of blood, produce 2 liters of acid, and our heart beats a hundred thousand times a day.
these numbers are there to make you understand the universe within your body in words that are comprehensible to your mind.
that's what numbers do. they make you understand.
but see, numbers are also the most misunderstood idea in the world. we think that someone created these axioms because they had a little too much free time. you never hear people say that about languages. that languages were created because people had a little too much free time. why? because language is a necessity. you cannot understand if you don't have the same basis for understanding.
there's a concept in linear algebra called basis. what you do is you take a matrix (which is really a whole bunch of equations with a whole bunch of variables except to make your life easier, you only write the numbers and not the variables and you solve for x. isn't that what everything in math is about?) anyways, what basis does is that it represents every single vector in a given vector space. so essentially, what you are doing is taking a complex system of possibly infinite variables and condensing it into one linear combination. you are taking something complex and simplifying it into an idea that is easier for your mind to understand. now admittedly, this is a very small part of linear algebra, let alone math. but it explains everything that math is.
math is essentially a language that provides a basis for you to understand the universe. because there are too many arbitrary ideas and concepts and half-truths and observations, math gives you a sort of "hey, this is an axiom (universally acknowledged truth) and these are variables required for it and this is how this axiom was derived and if you have even a part of this axiom, i can prolly help you discover the rest of it." doesn't that sound incredible? that you can take two pieces from a 500 piece puzzle and use those two pieces to figure out the rest of the puzzle.
this is why i love math so much.

metaphysical angst

a friend told me that he heard someone tell him of this technique where you continuously write and write and write without pasuing or scratching things out or thinking and i thought that was the scariest thing in the worrld but also something that i would love to do so that's what i am doing. i am typing without thinking or spell checking and it's the most honest thing i have done in a while and i am scared shitless and i don't know what this will look like. i am listening to mtv coke studio and a tv show is loading and so i can hear beautiful music with dumb commercials on the website the show is loading. you know how sometimes you keep bottling your anger and putting it in the box marked to be dealt with later? that's what i have been doing with my anger lately and now its threatening to burst and so i have locked myself in my room to prevent hurting people. my friend says it's considerate of me but in reality it's self-preservation. and i dont know what to say. the clouds that i brag so much about have failed me today. i want to smoke. i want to smoke so fucking bad. but i dont even like smoking. it's just the perfect weather for smoking. it's cold and drizzling and it's london weather even though i have never been to london so i wouldn't even know what that is about. lately i feel like everything has been failing me but it's my flaw for having expectations at all and i shouldn't, i know i shouldn't. i cut myself with my fingernail. can you believe that? who cuts themselves with their own finger nails. i am not very good at this whole adult and being 20 thing. but i think no one really is. and this stream of consciousness is making my hands hurt because my thoughts are going a million miles an hour which sounds so fucking cliche but i don't care and i am having a hard time typing and jesus fucking christ my hands hurt a lot. i hate typing. but i would be even more slow while writing physically and it's a damn good thing most of my classes are math based because i would not be able to write fast anymore. and sometimes i wonder it would be really cool to study philosophy but then i realize how scared i am of philosophy so there's that. i dont know what to write. i like this music a lot. reminds me of the night i went around the block for a walk at 4 am. worst decision ever from a CSI point of view but a very poetic decision nonetheless. i make more decisions based on how poetic they are and less based on how rational they are. i am silly. hoping to be a poet instead of writing poetry. i wish my thoughts were poetry. i wish when i scratched the chalkboard with my fingernails, i could produce a sonnet with perfect iambic pentameter but of course i am no shakespeare. shakespeare is probably the most mocked and respected writer in the world which is such a huge definitive statement begging to be disproved. but i will hold by it regardless. because even if mocked, shakespeare is remembered and that's more than i can say for myself. okay that was five minutes. i am scared to read it but i will fix the spellings.