Nalla Rasiganadi: March 2012

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Manifesto

"..the only meanings we take away from cinema are the ones we ascribe to it, during our very personal viewing experience." -- Lights, Camera, Conversation... - Analyse This
"..belong to the Authorial Intent school, deeming that the author decides the meaning of art, whereas I am a card-carrying subscriber of the Reader Response club, which shifts the responsibility of gleaning meaning from the person who creates art to the one who experiences it." -- Lights-camera-conversation-the-awakening-of-unconsciousness/
'I wonder what Shakespeare in Heaven would think of this analysis? I can imagine his saying something like “Interesting idea! I never thought of my sonnet that way, but I guess his way is one of many interesting possible ways of looking at it.” My point, of course, is that Bucke’s analysis is interesting irre- spective of whether or not Shakespeare really had this in mind.' -- Who knows a study of Religious consciousness by Raymond M.Smullyan
"Ultimately, perhaps it's more enjoyable for the full intentions of the author to remain unknown during the reading of the book." -- Is Alice in Wonderland really about drugs?

"..one must also consider intention when distinguishing dance from other patterns of movement." -- Stretching beyond idea
"In a way, it doesn't matter," says Browne. "I don't think Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland to be interpreted. He wrote it to entertain." -- Is Alice in Wonderland really about drugs?

"Scientists have known for some time that what we consider beauty is mostly looking normal. Beautiful people have more averaged faces, their faces and bodies have fewer deviations from symmetry. This underlies a lot of the more variable appreciation of beauty which depend on fashion and culture. This suggests that what we think might be an exceptional trait, such as beauty, may actually be the result of lacking major deviations from normalness." -- Nonconformers Need Better Social Skills

"The term "recognition" is commonly used to describe the point in a story when all of a sudden we understand what is going on, and by that very process understand ourselves." -- The Hour Between Dog and Wolf by John Coates
"Ah! Books give you sentences which you can roll around in the mind, throw in the air, catch, tease out, analyse. But in whatever way you handle them, they widen your vision. For they are essentially Idea-creating, in the sense that Coleridge meant when he described the Idea as containing future thought – as opposed to the Epigram which encapsulates past thought. Ah! Books give the impression that you are opening a new account, not closing an old one down." -- Vernon Sproxton in introduction to the book "MiSTER GOD, THiS iS anna"

"Radha is not Krishna’s wife. Yet without her image, Krishna is never complete. She inspires him to play the flute. Without her there is no music. In some traditions she is considered Krishna’s aunt. In others she is married to another man. In most she is older than him. Thus the love of Radha and Krisha defies all social norms. Their meeting when they are surrounded by a circle of dancing milkmaids, the Maha-Raas, always takes place at night, outside the village in secret. It represents the desires of the heart that unfortunately have to be denied or repressed or sublimated by the demands of the society. Though denied, repressed and sublimated they exist, And Krishna acknowledges their existence." (Myth - Mithya by Devdutt Pattanaik)
A milkmaid called Radha

Nataraja

The rise of a global icon
Two pages of poetry (atleast it feels like it to me) in the books "The tell-tale brain: a neuroscientist's quest for what makes us human" by Vilayanur S Ramchandran

"Although Ramachandran’s nine laws are intended to explain why artists create and why people enjoy viewing it, I enjoyed section on metaphor mainly because of his enthusiastic description of the Nataraja, a 12^th century Indian sculpture of the cosmic dance of Shiva. Ramachandran writes:
But the sculpture is much more than that; it is a metaphor of the dance of the Universe itself, of the movement and energy of the cosmos. The artist depicts this sensation through the skillful use of many devices. For example, the centrifugal motion of Shiva’s arms and legs flailing in different directions and the wavy tresses flying off his head symbolize the agitation and the frenzy of the cosmos. Yet right in the midst of all this turbulence – this fitful fever of life – is the calm spirit of Shiva himself. He gazes at his own creation with supreme tranquility and poise. How skillfully the artist has combined these seemingly antithetical elements of movement and energy. . . ." -- http://thefprorg.wordpress.com/2011/05/18/karereview-of-ramachandrans-the-tell-tale-brain-a-neuroscientists-quest-for-what-makes-us-human/

Illayaraja

"The highest spiritual experiences feel, see, hear, taste, and smell at the same time wihout conscious differentiation. " -- The Shamanic Synesthesia of the Kalahari Bushmen
"He was sweeping the garden one day and a stone flew up from his broom and hit a bamboo and went "tock". That wonderful sound. And at that moment he heard the sound as if for the first time and his whole universe opened up. " -- MUMONKAN CASE # 5

ThiruValluvar