Jun 22, 2020
Learning Lessons- Javed Akhtar (:/1)
Welcome to the very 1st lesson of my new blog series called “Learning lessons”. Before I continue, I want to confess with you that from last 3–4 years I’ve been watching YouTube and consuming content everyday on an average of about at least 3–4 hours, and my favorite genre to watch include long hours interviews of intellectual and popular people! Since the podcast culture is on a boom I can’t see myself getting away from YouTube any time soon!
And therefore I decided to make a series(which is this), where I’ll not only note down but most importantly share with you insights, wisdom that are been spoken in long interview/podcast YouTube videos. Mainly the lines which make me go think about it more and which are intriguing in nature are only a couple of lines in length in a particular video or interview, and by mentioning them here you can also maybe choose to just learn and think about them or if interested more in any specific topic, you can go and watch that specific video as well. Enough of introduction of the series and the background story let’s dive right into the 1st lesson of the “Learning lessons” series -
About 2 months ago I watched a political podcast of Kunal Kamra (who is a Comedian),where the guest on the podcast were Javed Akhtar & Yogendra Yadav. By coming till the end of the first part, the last question asked by Kunal was, “What advice would you give to the people who are pursuing or want to pursue art (of any different kind like Bollywood, Writing, Comedy, Dance, etc.), and that don’t fall in this big trap ?”
Mind you Javed Sahab is been following and doing his art(writing) for more than 5 decades as of now(Year-2020)!
Javed Sahab very meticulously then explained that there are 2 very imperative things while pursuing or following any art-form :-
1.) ART
2.)CRAFT
He starts with saying both art and craft are contradictory to each other.
He further explains that ‘Art’ is something where one dives(or gets drown) in his/her fantasies, imaginations, emotions, dreams, aspirations,etc while creating(performing) a piece of art(example- Poetry).
Whereas ‘Craft’ he says is total mathematics! He says behind every art there is a full proof craft, which is nothing but calculations. And learning the craft is very crucial. He explains this with a beautiful example, i.e. “If you want to be a poet, first you need to start with taking a lots & lots of input into yourself by reading all types of poems of poets in past, present, progressive poets, classical poets,contemporary poets,etc. And if you’ve just started writing poems by watching some films & listening to songs then it is not apt! He says if you want to enter in any art performing field, before output(producing your own artwork pieces) you must have a good amount of intake(consuming art work/pieces created by people of that field) by reading & going through it. He tells that the more the intake you do the more it is good for you!
Continuing this, to a follow-up question he again gives a example to explain- “When a poet is writing it is possible that he has tears in his eyes, because he’s writing about a tragic incident/event, but even then a part of his brain constantly keeps instructing him things like,
- Don’t use this word, use this, this will be more powerful and meaningful!
OR
2. This word is not fitting in the meter/rhyme replace it!
ETC.
With this example he attempts to explain that even in a emotionally tough time he his able to put his art in the most beautiful way possible with the help of his craft!
All this takes place only because the amount of intake he has done is adequate and is helping him right now here while producing(writing) a piece of poem!
And all because of this Art and Craft are paradoxical in nature, one works on imagination and other on proper mathematics. They’re complementary to each other.
I hope you got meaning and lesson, and if you’re interested in hearing exactly what conversation took place then skip directly to 48 minute and 40 second of the following videos*land on 48:40*-
Hope you liked the 1st lesson of this series!
~PRITESH!
Quote of the blog-
Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
-Thomas Merton
