Probably it was a sad rainy day. Raining, not cats and dogs. Neither rats and fox. But a slow patient rain. Tapping on and on and on. Turning the green leaves wild among the wilderness. Hooves were drumming once- like distant thunder, and then vanished, leaving only broken reeds and the bitter smell of wet soil.
The hunt failed.
With his hands empty and shoulders heavy, he returned. But his eyes were full. All day a sight had possessed him- of the bison he had seen at the edge of the plain. Not slain, not captured. With muscles moving beneath the hide like living hills. Body ablaze with color. Warm and alive. For a moment their eyes met. Instantly he felt so small yet so strangely complete.
He entered the cave as the dusk thickened the rain into shadow. To find warmth in the flickers of the primordial fire, fed by the last bunches of dry twigs. Others slept or stared into the dark with hunger folded into their silence. Even words would have been felt thin, if they could speak.
He knelt. Knelt before his existence.
From the ground he gathered red earth, yellow clay, blackened ash. All the strange things that he had stored away from the things of need. He crushed them with a stone, mixing with water and fat until color was born.
And color was born, in his otherwise bloody palms. The hued tokens of emotions. While the wall stared before him, cold and uneven. Very old. Older than memories.
He lifted his hands, hesitated. As he had never done this before…perhaps no one had.
The bison had not left him yet.
He began with the curve of the black- slow and reverent. His fingers followed the remembered strength of the animal; the proud slope of its shoulders; the power gathered in its legs. He painted the bison as he had seen it- standing in the rain. Not falling beneath a spear. Untouched, Sovereign, Sublime.
Soon there appeared a body on the the stone- bright and alive, emerging from the darkness of the cave as if it had always been there, waiting. Waiting to be looked upon, to be amazed at, to be celebrated.
The rain outside beat its rhythm, as if urging him on. The firelight made the lines tremble and breathe. As he worked, something shifted. The hunger-eased. The failure- softened. That was not a conquest. Neither was it a weapon against the hungry cold night to come.
When he stepped back with his hands stained with earth and memory, the cave held its breath. The animal on the wall gazed at him with its ancient eyes. In that very moment the man understood something without knowing its name: all encounters are not meant to end in blood, some are for wonder.
…
After that, days after days were spent by. By the time weapons got sharpened, predators tamed. Domestication slightly replaced violence. Hunger started to be satiated with cultivation. And leisure was born. Time came to be recognized as something to be spent with consciousness. Consciously.
A harvest made. A birth sprouted. A demise happened. A success accomplished. Or a hope to live for. All were started to be pondered over. Started to recreated. That what started with a desire to express an awe tainted with fear-failure-loss, became a way.
Some “hopeless” men got trapped into this business of recreating. They started to make a flower more beautiful or a face ‘more’ sad than they actually were. While the prudent ones imitated. And the wiser ones started to profess through.
Norms were established. Then they were broken. The broken ones, then, became the norms. Thus germinated Choice. Choice to express things one likes. Choice to express things the way one likes. So it started to grow complex as the mind of the mankind walked through complexities.
Things to use for got amplified too. A brush, a pen were invented, made and then by time ‘manufactured’. Eventually the curiosity and achievements of humanity made the cave photographed & the bison ‘digitized’.
…
Now a great great great granddaughter of that bison-man has gotten into a beautiful trouble. A trouble to have an urge to speak a troubled mind; to open up a troubled soul.
She has all the recent discoveries at her hand to do the job for her. So when she wants to make a bison of her own, one very intelligent genie is present out there to make her job done. Makes the curves more accurate; the lines more refined; the color more vibrant.
For her.
Without her.
But there are times when she wants it to be very personal. Wants to draw the firmness trembling, as she tries to survive her own nervous breakdowns. Wants her words less articulate, according to the mood “confusion” of a depressing day. While the genie builds an exotic palace for her, she wants a home. A home ‘woven’, the secret places of which only she knows. With an ambition of that lonely power-freak dictator, she wants all her lines, words, colors belonging to her only. To her hidden sorrows, her sins, her horrors.
The genie is attractive though. Potent. Efficient. Swift. Saves her time, effort. Makes her a painter, a poet, and all the other things she wants to be. It’s a happy space!
But what about the ‘gene-e’ living in her? That ‘gene-e’, carrying the creative restlessness of that bison-man? Making her tormented while possessed by a bison?
This ‘gene-e’ does more magic, in fact. Does all its pain-staking, pleasure-giving magic.
Magic, that hides not into the cloudy bubble as the popular images of Aladdin’s story shows us. Rather, the bubble itself is the powerhouse of magic, where the enchantment dances around the millions of atoms in it. Into their sub-atomic particles, along the electromagnetic waves, in their ions, through their reactivity- all. All magically creates the magic. And in the process satiates the Bison-Aladdin-e. It’s not the finished item, wrapped in a mysterious colorful cover, which the otherwise bearded Arab genie conjures up for his master.
The mystery, rather starts to take form moment by moment. Right from that first romantic eye-lock, from the initial nervous exchange of words, from the magnetism of bonded lips, from the passionate making of love, to the forbidden thirst-quenching physicality. Right from the earliest signs of seeding, from the unusual happenings of life-keeping, from the silent blossoming day by day, to the sudden cramp of labor. It gradually unfolds, then, to visibility, when the cramp turns into a pain unfathomable. Squeezes the hindrances to make way for the unbearable. Pushes out the womb-fire through the threshold. With bone and flesh. With mind and heart. With all of a procreator’s strength and senses.
With all of a creator’s strength and senses, thus arrives the creation- through rupture, through endurance.
It’s not the genie’s gift of momentary finality which mends the yearning of the Bison-people. Rather, the beauty of carrying out the unspeakable and the process of the creative celebration of it, that sates them.
…
Some say it’s a gain at the expense of someone’s bread. That some would lose their foot in this world if the genie always do all the jobs.
Apocalyptists, on the other hand , cry for preservation…of our artistic capabilities.
But can the process of creativity be ‘commanded’ to be frozen into preservation? Mummified with coded standards? Besides, who doesn’t want to be an Aladdin with the magic lamp in hand?
While the open-hearted Philanthropists celebrate it as a means to ‘democratize’ Art. Little they are ready to confront the fact that Art is not for the ‘demos’. Rather it belongs to the demons only. To the silently rebellious peripheral souls…the Lovers of Bison.
Perhaps it’s happy twist in the history of mankind. Perhaps it’s a predestined event, where two roads diverge, leading us to two completely different destination…two different destiny.
Mankind would eventually take shape into it. While the majority would go with the flow, reaping the fruits of invention; of the comfort of creative surrogacy. A tiny portion would dive into the unexplored; would go through the frustration of creative infertility, through the immeasurable miscarriages to finally giving birth to a new shade of humanity.
Probably the genie would leave us empowered with a Choice. A choice to be more Artist; a choice to be more Human.
Would encourage us to share our suffering.
To assure that not only you, I also. To be assured that not only me, they also.
Far from being a doomsdayer!
It is from this space the Bison-people create. Like that hungry cave-man, indifferent to recognition. And will continue to be creating. With a genie or without. For a bread or without…while possessed by a Bison!
From that passion, from that angst.
To tell a tale.
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