Perfect is the enemy of good

I suspect that they put Socrates to death because there is something terribly unattractive, alienating and non-human in thinking with too much clarity. Nissim Nicholas Taleb

It has been observed that at the beginning of electronic music, some German studios claimed that they could make every sound a natural instrument could make – only better. Then they discovered that all their sounds were marked by a certain uniform sterility. So they analyzed the sounds made by clarinets, flutes, violins and found that each note contained a remarkably high proportion of plain noise: actual scraping or the mixture of heavy breathing with wind on wood: from a purist point of view this was just dirt, but the composers soon found themselves compelled to make synthetic dirt – to ‘humanize’ their compositions.

Returning from a show at one of Chennai’s most expensive theatres, I found myself agreeing with my co-passengers about how the piece did not work in that space at all … my mind kept returning to the numerous shows we gave as a dance company, in ships, ball-rooms, courtyards, open grasslands, moving barges, all too often with stained, torn sheets pinned across the space and battered screens to conceal the quick changes. It is true that a beautifully constructed space may never bring about an explosion of life, while a random corner might be a tremendous meeting place. Does this mean that as far as art and architecture is concerned, there can be no relationship between conscious, articulate design and good functioning? That it is not a matter of saying analytically what are the requirements, how best can they be organized. I let the thought hang in my head.

The next day in the studio, after the initial warm-ups I found myself looking at the methodical structures I had arranged for the day’s trials and discoveries. After an hour of work, I began feeling that this could go on endlessly, that perhaps my computer might have an advantage over me in this line of random sequencing. Why weren’t my chance procedures working? What did I have to do to keep a hold on the element of surprise and fulfilled expectation equally? How do I nurture the quality of my imagination and craft that go into making the process work?

Perhaps the answers must come from studying what is it that brings about the most vivid relationship between people and things – and is this best served by asymmetry, even disorder? If so, what can be the role of this disorder? Perhaps a music composer is better off thinking like a chef, an architect like a scene designer moving scraps of cardboard by intuition than building a model from a plan. Perhaps a dancer is better off thinking like a calligrapher where the outcome of movement is a brush stroke, a visible aspect of space.

It has been written that prisoners watching the play Waiting For Godot had no trouble at all in following what to regular theatre-goers was incomprehensible. A friend once said that the best Shakespeare he ever watched was an actor’s version of the action as observed by a child, in all its simplicity and directness. In both cases, an extraordinary homogeneity was achieved because of the absence of laborious artifice and rigid attitudes to what makes good art.

What Do You Really Do?

My new neighbour catches my eye as I’m locking up and leaving. ‘Off to work?’ she asks me. ‘Yep, bright and early!’ I reply. ‘What do you do, by the way’ she asks. I tell her I’m a dancer. After a moment’s hesitation, with genuine earnestness, she asks, ‘Okay, but what you really do?’ I give her my best smile and leave.
On the way to my studio, I wonder why the morning’s encounter with my neighbour seems familiar. I recall years of countless such conversations with various folk – parents, family, friends, patrons, sponsors, business partners, often even students. The questions are often the same – ‘What’s in it for you?’ Or ‘What’s in it for me?’
I remember the answers, at one time having to do with thoughts about searching and finding, holding a mirror upto one’s life, exploring chaos, uncovering contradictions, commenting on a social action or inaction, challenging perceptions and providing alternate views of the world to perhaps let it breathe …
I remember thinking also how none of these reasons exhaust the value or need for the arts. My discussions thereon were about how within the place of committed arts practice, performances can be a place of play – playing with modes, playing out modes, leaving actions hanging unfinished. That the creation of beautiful moments is by itself a valuable pursuit as it deals with ordinary, familiar phenomena in a transforming way.
My thoughts shift to the numerous grant proposals I’ve written over the years to fund production and research and the invariable responses – ‘Great potential, but we don’t quite see what you are seeing … how exactly is this going to shape up, what will it look like, what effect will it have …’ Typical of the canons by which success is measured by immediate social relevance, tangible results, predictability of outcome and therefore grounds for investment in the first place – If public money cannot be repaid, then why should this be an investment.
I look at my peers and the die-hard painters, dancers and writers who’ve walked the road longer than I have. I recall a number of great works which were staged once and never saw the light of day again. It follows that real art, often even great art, can fail every measurable objective set by those dispensing funds. Can this by any means represent it’s worth? The standards by which it is judged should be appropriate to the activity. A dance teacher cannot take on responsibility for a student’s weight loss objective!
We live in an age of homogenization, where we are constantly propelled into mass appeals, undifferentiated thinking patterns and habitual responses to most things. It is all-too easy to forget our received legacy of thought, seeing and words that have been working subconsciously to represent what is uniquely individual in us. It is through the arts that we can find a link to ourselves and strengthen, challenge and engage with that which makes our individual output count.
I reach my studio with the conclusion that putting money into the arts will always be a risk, but a risk far better than the immediate advantages of denying their possibility. While my neighbour will always wonder why I refer to dancing as my profession, she and I will play our part in stimulating the creative thinking potential of the larger collectives we belong to.

Traditionally Speaking

The story goes that an ocean-liner bearing toxic waste, bound for the ship-breaking yard in Alang, made a halt in the port of Chennai some years ago. Green activists in the city were incensed and decided to protest. In a couple of motorized rubber dinghies, they staged a protest alongside the ocean liner. While one group held up empty banners, another group would race by and spray-paint a message of protest on the banners. It was a large operation that was coordinated, precise and well-rehearsed, so much so that the coast guard patrol could not stand by any longer. The leader of the protest group was questioned and pulled-up for trespassing. The activist calmly replied that all they were doing was a traditional act of protest. Upon hearing the word ‘traditional’, the until then belligerent coast guard was swiftly mollified.

A story though it may be, it is an all-too-familiar sentiment that ‘tradition’ must be something good even if we don’t quite get it. Concepts like culture or tradition are often associated with a sense of duty, thereby perpetuating a sense of boredom. Tradition becomes a historical artifact, which, barring possible anthropological interest (where you study it like a lab experiment) becomes officious and boring. So much so, that just the right degree of boringness is a reassuring guarantee of a worthwhile event, given the case of performances. Too much and the audience is driven out of its seats, too little and it may find the theme too disagreeably intense. Mediocre practitioners unfailingly find the perfect mixture.

Terms like ‘tradition’ and ‘innovation’ are often pitted against each other as polar opposites thereby ensuring that we never arrive at the more important discourse of what distinguishes mediocrity from potential excellence. How much better it would be if we could approach our practice by putting yesterday’s discoveries to the test, ‘ready to believe that the true play has once again escaped us’, (Peter Brook, The Empty Space). How much better if we could resist the trap of being complacent, of being bored, of believing that somewhere, someone has found out the way and it does not have to be questioned any longer. As practitioners and audience members, we are all implicated in the act of creation – an act that requires us to be critical, alert and involved.

Face Value #1

Immigration at Heathrow airport, UK. Officer asks me where I’m from, what I do, who I do it with, why and where I am in the UK and so on. I explain patiently, giving him along the way, a mini summary of my life, education, dodgy livelihood. He listens impassive, eyes like slits, mouth slightly open. Slowly the ice thaws and something akin to a smile (more a sneer) breaks over his face as he nods his head and stamps my passport.

“Your english is very good, by the way”, he offers. I gather my things and meet his eye saying, “Thank you! So is yours.”

Now, most of us assume that all English people speak the polished English that we colonized folk take for granted in exactly the same way that a lot of people in the world believe that in India, one speaks ‘Indian’ or that people in Scotland speak ‘Scotch’ or that the French can’t think beyond their cheese and wine and that Fosters is the password for entry into Australian culture. That potters are craftsmen - not artistes, that nursing is a ‘noble’ profession for women, that senior citizens are a community of passive consumers, that writers write, actors act, thinkers think and dancers dance … to the exception of all else.

When you think of who you are and what the things are that make you amazed, angered, astounded, saddened, perplexed and reassured, it is likely that you stumble upon areas that are as far away from your chosen profession as chalk is from cheese. Yet, your ability to identify yourself with the largest number of ‘sets’(groups, issues, people) is what makes you rich, what gives you identity, what gives substance to your output. Though your knowledge will never be complete, your intelligence works at the intersection or interference of several other areas of knowledge.