Creativity
The poet, or any creative artist, essentially needs to be non-believer, in every sense of the words. He has to keep a skeptical eye on the ruling class, look at them with a degree of disbelief.
He might believe in a Higher Power that sustains his life but it is very essential for him to keep his beliefs distanced to a degree. It is all very well to attend church every Sunday, light a candle; to attend the Friday prayers. Sometimes a hymn and or a song, a la Kalidasa, have its merits.
True poetry, writing, art has always come when it rebelled with its times. Rumi makes a good example; I have been reading him recently.
Francis Bacon, all flowery and beautiful, does not help much except as your first tottering steps towards writing and style. Henry Miller, James Joyce, stand tall among others. Even the recent ones, Salman and Taslima, to name two have helped the cause of literature. Though both banned books were not very good reading, to me at least.
Or could we substitute the word belief for optimism. Even though irreverence would be better.
Optimism and creativity: Your take ladies and gentlemen.
2 comments:
I always turn to Bob Dylan's lyrics. He is the "clown crying in the alley" as he tells us that in this "world gone wrong", "the gardener has gone".
True writing itself is an act of rebellion. You want to make your own universe, you want to create your own characters and control their destiny. That is not how it happens in the real world. And, of course, a writer has to be skeptical about everything, including matters of metaphysics. Interesting post OD.
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