A couple of years ago I was participating in a seminar on Indian performing arts. One of the questions was about the role of God in your art. Participant after participant stated that they felt their work was an experience of God, a union with the divine, or something similar. I spoke out as the contrarian: Nothing I do has any relationship with a god or gods; I experience no communion with the divine; those phrases are meaningless to me. A little later on I was asked to sing. I sang a few minutes of Bhairavi. An audience member asked me, you sing with so much passion and feeling. How is it that you can do this and not be experiencing a connection with God? I replied, Human beings have been singing together for hundreds of thousands of years; weve been singing together since before we were human. When I sing, I am part of a tradition of sharing sounds that has gone on for far longer than any human gods have ever been in existence. Surely the grandeur of a quarter-million years of song outweighs a temporally localized theological system?
Posted on: Thu, 04 Sep 2014 15:20:31 +0000
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