027 - A Language for Feelings
There is a certain poetic satisfaction of writing this 27th issue on the 27th. Where it stems from I cannot say; it feels good, feels right. There are a 1000 words in this letter. I hope you have wound down a good day as you read them.
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Welcome to the second season of Bombay Daak. I am Maneesh, your writer/editor of this letter. I last wrote to you two weeks ago, but it really has been four months.
In this issue, we wade momentarily into two old letters of Daak and then plunge into a discourse on art by Brian Eno.
The first ever issue (which was really the second) that I wrote here was on Fred Hersch. I quoted from his memoir and an extended interview about his approach to art and work. Here's a throwback to the heart of that letter, Hersch's roadmap for artistic success -
... figuring it out by fucking up, getting back up on your feet ... hanging out, learning from people around you, listening to tons of records, learning the history of your instrument, learning the repertoire ...
At that point, when I read this, I brushed over the first line - figuring it out by fucking up. It is standard advice, to the point of cliche. What does it mean to figure it out by fucking up? How do you really learn from your mistake(s), more so with things intangible like art?
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In the middle of January, I landed on this conversation between Brian Eno and Vikas Shah of Thought Economics.
In the nearly two hour long discourse on why we make art, Eno points at reasons how art becomes meaningful and useful. It is a remarkable piece of intellectual scrutiny of art.
I might revisit this conversation in different contexts in the coming issues, but in this one I cast the light on one of the definitions of art that Eno mentions -
Art is a way to the Language of Feelings. It gives us a vocabulary for our feelings.
In dissecting this idea, Eno and Shah confront the fact that post the Age of Enlightenment feelings were looked at as an anathema to the thinking man. That rationality and scientific temper didn't have space for something uncontrollable like feelings. The way of science departed from that of art and philosophy from there on.
But Eno considers feelings as a way of thinking. He looks at it as a field of the brain that is waiting to be studied, much like memory. That art is a way for us to practice and rehearse and study our own feelings. And that when almost all of life's most important decisions are made by our feelings, it is important to nurture and study them.
And that's done best by experiencing art.
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As I read back Hersch's lines on succeeding as an artist, my eyes hover over those first lines - figuring out by fucking up.
It is about figuring out our feelings isn't it? What do we feel about this piece of creation. What is happening when we feel it? What does it make me want to do? This is what Eno spoke of in his chat.
And it is not natural for everyone to examine their feelings this way. And so it needs practice. It needs the experience of other works of art and your own and it needs the time to fully understand what we think when we feel. It is turning our curious eye inward. You don’t learn only by hanging out with artists and fucking up, you learn by gathering your feelings and looking at them.
I think it validates an argument I made in my Objects vs Things issue that you need to spend time with a piece of art, invest yourself in it.
To really soak it in and gather what goes on inside your head as you work your way through it. And not just move on to the next song. That art needs you to bring a sense of calm as much as it does the same. That you have a moment for yourself as much as for the art.
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Having written all this, there’s also this to consider.
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This I feel is also an excellent opportunity to share one of my favourite film scenes with you.
(I didn’t know Eno was part of early Roxy Music music)
These Tweets are Postcards
When I did the newsletter takeover over at This is my Newsletter, I spoke of my little library at home. The same week I happened to chance upon this tweet of a Library in rural Burundi in Africa. I badly wanted to include it in that letter but I couldn't get it with the flow. But over here, I suppose the stakes are a touch lower. And I have this opportunity to tell you how happy I felt to see this. Scroll down on the tweet to see what they do with the net in it.
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Closer home in India, a little less appealing aesthetically, but full of feels is this library in Hyderabad Andari Illu.
An End to February
Two months have passed too quickly for my liking in this year. I have spent most of my time in the kitchen than elsewhere. Thankfully my friends blackmailed me enough for us to take a break by a lake last weekend.
The sense of a holiday after what feels like a decade.
This weekend though, I am reading about a new kind of Blue. I'll leave you with that.
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This letter was written to the tune of Fred Hersch's Heartland on loop.
Postscript
There is a four year old essay by Nikki Brown based on Anjan Chatterjee's book The Aesthetic Brain that explores the origins and the need of art. This particular segment in it looked like it fit right in with this letter:
Scholar Ellen Dissanayake argues that art is a manifestation of the human impulse to “make special.”
Her theory puts forth that humans have an innate desire to elaborate otherwise usual objects and behaviors. This elaboration of behaviors, or “ritualization,” binds people together under a common set of beliefs and values that are paramount to group cohesiveness. These specialized relics, costumes, dances, and songs gave rise to what we now call “art.”
This is a seductive idea, but art is not always about bringing people together. In fact, much of art is enjoyed in solitude. For example, many music-lovers prefer to listen in the privacy of their own homes. By the same token, plenty of visual art aficionados choose to view paintings and drawings in the quiet of a secluded gallery.
The whole essay is over at Format.
Feeling
This letter just doesn’t end.
I will cap this night reading this poem by Rohan Chhetri -
New Delhi in Winter
Those mornings in the last days of December,
as the smog deepened over the mausoleum
& the ghost of the emperor’s first wife
lingered about the four gardens, weeping
over her dead child
until a solitary jogger tore the curtain of fog
with a flashlight, making her flee …
… I remember thinking then, This cannot be
the worst of my days, but mostly I remember
myself in some variation of afraid.
Why, I can’t tell.