Two Blog Records !

I have made two personal records on this blog this month. First the good one. I made the first record by posting more than 10 posts in a month (and its only 19th may today). As they say, its a personal victory. For the second one, I think the readers (if any) are more responsible (I know they might blame it on me eventually). For the last 12 consecutive posts, I have not received (by now) a single comment (I even thought of commenting anonymously, but desire for making a record was more). Actually, I was wondering that what I write here is such a final word that no comment is needed. ...Hmmm... Are you saying it is otherwise !

बचपन और बुढ़ापा

एक साक्षात्कार में यह पूछे जाने पर की उनकी रचनाओ में बहुत से पात्र बच्चे और बूढ़े होते हें, निर्मल वर्मा ने यह जवाब दिया।

मुझे हमेशा यह लगा है की हमारी, अर्थात जिन्हे हम व्यस्क कहते हैं उनकी, एक सर्व्सत्ता वादी प्रवृत्ति बचपन पर एक अवधारणा के रुप में और बच्चों पर विशेष रुप में छाई रहती है। इस पर बहुत कम लोगो ने ध्यान दिया। हम बचपन को बड़े होने की एक सीढ़ी मात्र मानते हें। मैं ऐसा नहीं समझता ,बच्चे ऐसा नहीं समझते। बच्चे ये नहीं सोचते की मैं जो समय बिता रहा हूँ वह इसलिये है की मैं बड़ा हो जाऊँ। बचपन का समय बड़े होने का मात्र मध्यम नहीं है, बड़ा होना बच्चों की लालसा अवश्य है, किन्तु बचपन का समय अपने में 'अब्सोल्यूट' है। छः बरस का बच्चा जो जीवन जीं रह है उसमे उसके अनुभव सम्पूर्ण हैं, अन्तिम हैं। वे अपनी सच्चाई में उसी तरह परिपक्व हैं जितने यथाकथित व्यस्क व्यक्ति के होते हैं। इसलिये पहले तो हमे इस गलत फ़हमी से छुटकारा पाना होगा की बचपन किसी खास जगह जाने के लिए एक सीढ़ी मात्र है। यह वही समाज शास्त्रीय दृष्टि है जिसके चलते हम सोचते हैं की एक परंपरागत समाज , विकसित समाज तक आने के लिए एक सीढ़ी है। मानो उसका अपना कोई सच ना हो, मानो यह नियति हो की अमुक ऊँचाई तक पहुचने के लिए मनुष्य ने यह विकास यात्रा की। इसे में समाज विज्ञान के स्तर पर भी और मनोविज्ञान के स्तर पर भी भ्रान्तिपूर्ण अवधारणा मानता हूँ।

बचपन काल का बोध वैसा नहीं होता वैसा की वह व्यस्क व्यक्ति को होता है। बचपन में आने वाला कल बच्चे को किसी तरह की कोई सांत्वना नहीं देता। थॉमस मान की एक कहानी है जहाँ एक बच्ची रोती है क्योकि वह बड़े आदमियों के साथ नाच नहीं सकती, उसके माता पिता उसे समझाते हैं लेकिन उसके आँसू नहीं रुकते क्योकि उस बच्ची को लगता है की में इस व्यक्ति के साथ कभी भी नाच नहीं सकूंगी । समय उसके दुःख को सोख नहीं सकता। उसका दुःख अपने में सम्पूर्ण है। बचपन की हर अनुभूति किसी आनेवाले क्षण की सांत्वना को प्राप्त नहीं करती। इसीलिये बच्चा जब रोता है तो पूरे दुःख से रोता है, कोई भी उसे दिलासा नहीं दे सकता।

अगर यह बात है तो मेरे लिए , एक लेखक के लिए, इसे समझना कितनी बड़ी जरूरत है, विशेषकर इसलिये की मैं एक ऐसे देश से हूँ जहाँ मैंने काल बोध की इस अवधारणा को ना केवल सहा है बल्कि जो अब भी मुझमे मौजूद है, जिसे व्यसकता का बोध अभी भी नष्ट नहीं कर पाया बशर्ते की मुझमे इतनी क्षमता और धैर्य हो की मैं उसे अपनी कहानियो में पुनर्जाग्रत करने की चेष्ठा करु। हम अपनी कहानियो में , उनके क्षेष्ठ्तम क्षणों में , उसे पुनर्जाग्रत करने में सफल हो पाते हैं जिसे हम अतीत कहते हैं लेकिन जो अभी मरा नहीं है बल्कि हमारे भीतर जीवित है। मैंने यहाँ सिर्फ बचपन की बात कही है, बुढ़ापे पर भी वह भिन्न रुप में लागू हो सकती है। मुझे व्यसकता की सर्व सत्ता वादी अभिव्यक्ति, चाहे वह बुढ़ापे पर हो या बचपन पर, क्रूर और आततायी जान पड़ती है।

'भाषा और राष्ट्रीय अस्मिता' - निर्मल वर्मा

निर्मल वर्मा के लेख 'भाषा और राष्ट्रीय अस्मिता' से कुछ अंश नीचे लिख रह हूँ।

आत्म उत्खनन अथवा आत्म अन्वेषण का सबसे सक्षम आयुध भाषा है। भाषा मनुष्य की देह का अदृश्य अंग है जो उसे आत्म दृष्टि देता है। भाषा और आत्म बोध का यह संबंध मनुष्य को समस्त जीव जंतु से अलग एक अद्वितीय क्षेणी में ला खड़ा कर देता है। अपने अधूरेपन को पहचान कर ही मनुष्य सम्पूणॅता का स्वप्न देखता है। अतः उसे पाने की प्राथमिक प्रतिज्ञा भी इसी आत्म बोध में निहित रहती है। किसी भी संस्कृति की पहचान महज उसके यथार्थ तक सीमित नहीं रहती, वह अपने स्वप्नों द्वारा भी विशेषता उजागर करती है, इसलिये उसकी बनावट में भाषा का महत्वपूर्ण योगदान है।

एक संस्कृति के क्या स्वप्न हैं, यह बहुत हद तक उसकी स्मृतियां निर्धारित करती हैं। शब्द में यदि स्वप्न का संकेत है तो स्मृति की छाया भी। इसलिये कोई भी भाषा, जब तक वह है, कभी मृत भाषा नहीं होती। यदि हमारे अतीत का सब कुछ मर मिट जाये , तो भी भाषा बची रहती है, जिसके द्वारा एक समाज के सदस्य आपस में संवाद कर पाते हैं, तो वर्तमान में रहते हुए भी वे अवचेतन रुप में अपने अतीत से जुडे रहते हैं और अतीत अदृश्य रुप में उनके वर्तमान में प्रवाहित होता रहता है। इस अर्थ में भाषा का दोहरा चरित्र होता है, वह सम्प्रेषण का माध्यम होने के साथ साथ संस्कृति की वाहक भी होती है। किसी देश की संस्कृति एतिहासिक झंझावातों द्वारा क्षत विक्षत भले ही हो जाये, उसका सत्य और साताव्य उसकी भाषा में बचा रहता है।

[...]

हम जिसे संस्कृति का सत्य कहते हैं, वह और कुछ नहीं, शब्दो में अन्तर्निहित अर्थों की संयोजित व्यवस्था है और जिसे हम 'यथार्थ' कहते हैं वह इन्ही अर्थों की खिड़की से देखा गया बाह्य जगत है। जिस अनुपात में हम किसी एतिहासिक दबाव या दमन के कारण अपनी भाषा से उन्मूलित हो जाते हैं, ठीक उसी अनुपात में खिड़की से बाहर देखा गया परिदृश्य भी धूमिल और धुंधला पड़ता जाता है। भाषा भीतर के सत्य और बाहर के यथार्थ के बीच सेतु का काम करती है। दिलचस्प बात यह है कि सत्य और यथार्थ दोनो असल में एक दूसरे से अलग नहीं हैं, केवल वैचारिक सुविधा के लिए ही उन्हें दो पृथक अवधाराणायो के रुप में देखते हैं। हम रहते एक ही शब्द जगत में हैं। जिस तरह बाहरी दुनिया भाषा कि बंदी है वैसे ही हम भाषा के बंदी हैं - खिड़की और खिड़की से बाहर देखा परिदृश्य एक दूसरे से अलग नहीं हैं। विटगेन्स्टाइन की उपमा का सहारा लें तो कहेंगे कि भाषा कि दीवारो से टकराकर जब माथे पर गोमड़ पड़ते हैं, तभी हमे अपने बंदी होने का बोध होता है।

भाषा, मिथक और स्मृति का यह अन्तः संबंध ही एक समूह के सदस्यों को एक सामूहिक अस्मिता में एक-सूत्रित करता है। जिस तरह यूरोप कि संस्कृति की कल्पना ग्रीक और लातिनी भाषा तथा उससे सम्बंधित मिथक कथाओ से अलग नहीं की जा सकती, उसी तरह भारतीय संस्कृति ने अपना रूपाकार भी संस्कृत में रची उन पौराणिक कथाओ और महाकाव्यों से प्राप्त किया था, जिनकी आदम स्मृति आज भी भारतीय मानस पर अंकित हैं। एक संस्कृति का एतिहासिक अतीत तो होता है जिसे हम मानकर चलते हैं, किन्तु उसका एक आन्तरिक अतीत भी होता है जो उसकी भाषा की अवधारणाओं, मिथकों और प्रत्ययों में अंतर्ध्वनित होती है। "हर भाषा उन लोगो के इर्द गिर्द , जो उसे बोलते हैं, एक जादुई घेरा खींच देती है, जिससे केवल एक दूसरे घेरे में जाकर ही बचा जा सकता है" - हाईडेगर ।

[...]

Directors on Other Directors and their Films

Before I return the film books to the library, I should copy something more. Here are directors speaking about other directors and their films.

Pedro Almodóvar on David Lynch

When he films certain objects in close ups, he manages to give these shots genuine suggestive power. Not only are the images faultless from an aesthetic viewpoint, but they are also full of mystery. His approach is close to mine except that since I am more fascinated by actors, I like to film faces, while Lynch, who was trained in the plastic arts, is clearly more interested in objects.

Jean-Luc Godard on Alain Resnais' Hiroshima mon amour

When I was part of the New Wave, we spent time discussing other people's films. And I remember that when we saw Hiroshima mon amour by Alain Resnais, we were just stunned. We thought we had discovered everything about cinema, we thought we knew it all, and suddenly we were confronted with something that had been done without us, without our knowledge, and that deeply moved us. It was as though the Soviets in 1917, had discovered that another country had had a Communist revolution which worked as well as theirs - or even better ! Image how they would have felt ...

Emir Kusturica on Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game

I personally consider it to be the cinema's greatest masterpiece in terms of direction. For me, this film is the peak of elegance in narration, with framing done in focal lengths that are neither too long nor too short, always adapted to human vision, with great visual richness and great depth of field. Moreover, it was Renoir - and even perhaps also his father, the painter - who influenced my manner of always creating very deep and very rich frames.

Takeshi Kitano on Akira Kurosawa

If students were to ask me, "What's a great film?" I'd immediately send them to see Kagemusha, The Seven Samurai, or Rashomon. The amazing thing about Kurosawa's films, I find, is the precision of the image. In the framing and the placing of the characters, the composition is always perfect, even when the camera is moving. You could easily take each one of the 24 frames in every second and it would make a beautiful picture. I think that's the ideal definition of cinema: a succession of perfect images. And Kurosawa is the only director who has attained that.

Ingmar Bergman on Jean Renoir

A French critic compared Smiles of the Summer Night to The Rules of the Game, so I wanted to see the film. When an American producer, who wanted to make me a present, asked me to choose one. I requested a print of Renoir's film to put in my private cinematheque. I think its an extremely bad picture. It is badly acted. Renoir is very overrated director. He has only made one good picture: The Human Beast.

Michelangelo Antonioni on Francois Truffaut

I think his films are like a river, lovely to see, to bathe in, extraordinarily refreshing and pleasant. Then the water flows and is gone. Very little of the pleasant feeling remains because I soon feel dirty again and need another bath. [...] His images are as powerful as those of Resnais or Godard, but his stories are frivolous. I suppose that's what I object to. Rene Clair told light stories, too, but they touch me more. I don't know why Truffaut leaves me unmoved. It's not trying to say that he has no significance. I only mean that the way he tells a story doesn't come to anything. Perhaps he doesn't tell my kind of stories. Perhaps that's it.

Francois Truffaut on Michelangelo Antonioni

(When asked why he hates Antonioni)
First, for his lack of humor. He is so solemn, so terribly pompous. I don't like the image he projects of himself as the psychologist of the feminine soul. When De Gaulla was trying to restore the confidence of the French in Algeria, he said, "French men and women, I have understood you." Antonioni stands like that and says, "Women of the world, I have understood you." And he follows the fashion. That's why he was arrested the other day at the London airport with hashish in his shoe.

Fedrico Fellini on Ingmar Bergman

He showed it (Hour of the Wolf) to me when he came to Rome. Its fantasy is completely different from mine, more Nordic. I would call Hour of the Wolf Bergman's 8 1/2. Indeed, he confesses candidly that he has seen all my films and cites them in his own. Being a rich, an authentic artist, he can borrow from others without any guilt of plagiarism. I value Bergman a lot. He is a real man of spectacle and images, one of the best.

Vittorio de Sica on Pier Paolo Pasolini

He is good, particularly in his Roman films like Accatone, but I also admire his Oedipus Rex. Perhaps Pasolini is a bit too literary, too educated. Its been said that Shakespeare is better played by ignorant than by overly cultivated actors. Pasolini imposes his immense cultivation on his work; he could probably use more freedom, greater simplicity.

Ingmar Bergman on Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura

The picture is a mess. He has no idea where to put the camera. He had no money. The actors went away. I think he had enormous problem the whole time. But he wanted to tell something about the loneliness of human being. I can see this picture time after time, and I don't know what touches me the most - how he succeeds without knowing how to do it, or what he wants to say.

Link of the Day !

May be you know about it by now, but I recently discovered an extremely innovative comic strip called xcfd, and found it super funny. It makes jokes about mathematics, programming, and space/time, and of course human species - both flavors. I particularly find this strip very optimistic.

Excerpt from Bergman Interview

Here is an excerpt from an interview where Charles Thomas Samuels (who asks some really insightful questions) interviews Ingmar Bergman. Taken from the book Encountering Directors.

Samuels: Let me get at my point another way. When Elisabet looks at television and sees a Buddhist monk immolating himself in Vietnam, several critics wanted to take this as an uncharacteristic expression of your interest in politics. But I think it must be related to the later scene - in her bedroom - when she studies the Cartier-Bresson photograph of the Jews being led out of the Warsaw ghetto. Both scenes dramatize the awe inspired in the artist when he faces true suffering - which, however, cannot escape some involvement with art, since both the monk and the Jews reach our consciousness through the art of the photographer.

Bergman: Let me explain exactly what I tried to express in the first scene. The monk scares her because his conviction is so enormous he is willing to die for it. The photograph represents real suffering.

S: But it is, paradoxically, also art. And I find it suggestive that during the great scene in Shame when you show the people being herded in and out of buildings by the soldiers, you yourself recall the composition of Cartier-Bresson's great photograph. Didn't you feel the recollection ?

B: In a way, yes. But I never thought of it. The scene you mention represents humiliation, which is the subject of Shame. The films is not about enormous brutality, but only meanness. It is exactly like what happened to the Czechs. They defended their rights, and now, slowly, they are being submitted to tactics of brutalization that wears them down, Shame is not about bombs, its about gradual infiltration of fear.

S: So that the low budget and the consequent lack of large war scenes precisely reflect your theme.

B: Yes, but Shame is not precise enough. My original idea was to show only a single day before the war had broken out. But then I wrote things and it all went wrong - I don't know why. I haven't seen Shame recently, and I am little afraid to do so. When you make such picture you have to be very hard on yourself. Its a moral question.

S: Why ?

B: Certain things in life are impossible to represent - like a concentration camp.

S: Because the reality is too terrible ?

B: Exactly. It is almost the same with war as with murder or death. You must be a hundred percent morally conscious in treating these things.

S: You must not simply shock.

B: Exactly, to show someone dying is false.

I am becoming more and more disillusioned with depiction of so-called real-events like death and war in the films, not because on screen voilence is bad, but because, as Bergman says, such shocks are essentially false. On a related note, especially related to the still photography, a documentary, Looking for an Icon, is getting some good reviews. It takes four important political still photographs from history and try to deconstruct them.

Link of the Day !

Such posts are rare (link via). Sincere expressions like "I like to keep them [your photos] with me as symbols of beauty" are even rarer. The exceeding beauty of this love letter makes us wonder, is it real !

Read this other exceptional post by him, where father gets seduced by him and "offers" his daughter to him, and in between he throws his most-modern ideas on Feminism.

Manchi Pani Chesaav, Raju gaaro !

On Illness, Jolts and Past...

The last few days in India were very hectic and probably that’s why emotionless. There is no right time to feel right, or is there any right feeling. We feel and forget, and we feel again, and try to throw things in the dustbin of past. What we feel seems so random and misplaced that it seems like a trick played by nature to keep us busy. But sometimes, after a while, patterns emerge, some things keep coming back, others wither away, may be to come back at more unexpected times. Two things kept coming to mind in those last days. One is quite personal; other is more of a by-product of random thinking.

My last few days in India were hospital-bound. Three of my close relatives and family friends, old and not too old, were unexpectedly admitted to hospitals and were diagnosed with serious illnesses. Taking rounds of ICUs, general wards and homes, seeing people you have known for long, drugged and tired, talking with effort, is not a good feeling. People sitting next to them say things like "You cant share someone’s illness", and it seems so true at that time, not that you want to share anything but it reasserts that they alone will bear it, and you helplessly try to make peace with the fact that they are enormously loaded with pain. Does illness of loved ones humble you? Or it just makes you fearful that you will age too? I don’t know but to see people, whom you have seen upright, talking to you, scolding you, unable to talk and recognize you, brings a feeling of eventual collapse. If everything in you and people you know, will end so mercilessly, why try to be so smart and clever in life, and then comes a thought rushing, probably thats why, just to keep us busy and going. A thought of achieving a simpler life, closely knit with the knowledge of its futility, passes by unnoticed and we again stand here, as clever as ever.

The other thought originated from the Tarkovsky's quote at the end of this post. The quote talks about the momentary influence of art on the viewer; it says that art just provides a jolt -the occasion for psychical experience. Viewing this quote from the other side one might ask - when does an artist create [good] ?, I think it comes out as a jolt too. I acknowledge the role of past experience to create and shape up such flash, and the need of afterthought and introspection to polish the ideas to convey them. But I think the idea and the urge to create sparks from that momentary jolt. We all get such jolts through art or personal experiences (like the humbling in case of illness of a loved one) and we quickly try to forget them to move on but an artist stays and observes.

The main point, which may not be anything new or can be utterly superfluous, is that a person can become an artist when he has the ability to stay with the jolt for a longer time than others. It is not to say that an artist understands all the times, but to say that an artist elongates those moments of understanding to create something out of them, yet utterly personal. If we would like to consider the creative life-time of an artist as a better person, a more open and understanding person, then we can try not to nip the jolts, not to trash the past.

Pachelbel's Canon in D

I am listening this for few months now and tried to hear as many renditions I could find on youtube or otherwise, by expert or otherwise, and obviously, I found it truly amazing, exactly fitting into my idea of music, which is not so much of an idea though. Now its a near-cliche in personal circles that I am musically challenged, I dont understand it, although I try to. In a recently read Bergman interview, he quotes what Stravinsky once said "I have never understood a piece of music in my life. I always only feel" to emphasise that his films (and films in general) should also be felt, which I think is bit problematic exposition, because when it comes to images, their preciseness makes them discursive. All said, I always felt and will feel that for a beginner its very important to understand, rather than to feel. I might take pleasure in what Stravinsky said but that is not an earned pleasure. So whatever little music tends to stay with me for a while and dont get butchered by over-listening, begets high respect from me.

As far as music in films goes, I dont like if images try to supersede it, also I feel little uncomfortable, if because of music slight images try to seek some power. Thats why some of the beautiful Hindi film songs, sound so bitter when seen. In films, I think if music is used, more than anything, it should match the camera movements. Anything, trying to match with emotions and themes, is guiding, belittling both music and images. Look at the use of music in Wong kar-wai films, it gyrates with the camera frame. Or be like Fellini, use same music for almost every film, the music you like, which is also true with Kar-wai. A Bollywood movie is a different game, a different theory holds there and I seriously feel that no other movie genre could and would accommodate so much musical variety, its like a genre which has nothing to lose.

Coming back to Pachelbel's Canon in D, I think I liked it because it sounds like Indian music. I dont know the technical terms, but the main difference that I find between the two is of the long and short notes. In music I like long notes, the dragged, the better. Hold the key longer, use major keys. In Hindustani classical, they will stretch it left and right. Thats why I think, I like most of the things played on cello, and I think if Indian music can be played on cello too. So here are few versions of Pachelbel's Canon. This one is little faster than the original but photographed very well. I am fundamentally against music videos, the best is to shoot the recording or the public performance, which shows the creative process, the hardwork into it and most importantly the pleasure to perform, and the second best is to put a montage of emotionless faces [no kids please], like the montage of pictures in Code Unknown. The idea is not to channelize or steer. This and this are very close to the original. Few versions here, here and here.