The investigative drive I’ve written about visited me again several weeks ago, and with it a tune, a motif, for a song.
One way I’ve often seen the function of my artistic expression is as an outlet to say things I have difficulty saying otherwise. Not so that I can say it in a more round-about way, as if cladding and hiding my true feelings in poetic words; on the contrary, it is so that I can say it more directly, emphatically, to the point. As I am in the process of writing this song, though, I get more clarity about what making art does for me. Creating often turns out to be my way of clarifying my thoughts and sorting out my feelings. I would begin by feeling bothered about something without knowing what the trouble really is, and only in the process of writing does it become clear.
In this case I started with the desire to confront the problem that has plagued me for as long as I remember: my life and death. As I’m writing further, quickly I discovered anger. Anger at finding myself alive with fear of death, but seeing that I have to die. Anger at feeling the senselessness of this experience I call my life, not knowing its purpose, and what more, needing, needing, to know without knowing how I can really find out. My anger, in short, is that of a helpless victim.
As I’m working on the last part of the song, though, I discovered a longing. I recognize this longing to be the heart of the song––anger only its mask. I long for a beloved from whom I feel separated. I long not for a particular person or anything I know. Could this be a longing for God? This unanswered longing often shows up as anger. I do not know God, I have not seen it, yet strange how I could feel such a longing for it.
A couple of months ago a close friend introduced me to Meera, a Hindu poet-singer, with these words: “her life, songs, poetry are all expressions of her love of Krishna.” With only this description I fell into a deep admiration for her. At the time I have not even read any of her poems, but my friend’s words evoked a sense of such beauty I saw in Meera that I thought she was a goddess.
It is not her love for Krishna that attracts me to her; I am not familiar with Hinduism and its gods. It is her unwavering love for something other and bigger than herself. Love must be such a powerful drive that it drove her to offer her life for Krishna. Oh yes, my suspicious mind thought her out of her mind, delusional, ill, just like the way Spanish Inquisitors and many of us today viewed St. Teresa of Avila’s ecstasy. But at heart, I wanted her devotion. I felt an aspiring envy toward her. What better way to live my life than how she did?
Her words are simple, direct, ardent, and real. From what I read in her poems, I learnt that loving was painful for her. It was a longing love. Meera saw her life as an experience of separation from her beloved, and thus a torture.
“I came for the sake of love-devotion;
seeing the world, I wept.”1
“Love shows no external wound.
But the pain pervades every pore
Devotee Mira offers her body
As a sacrifice to Giridhara for ever.”2
She lived her life and wrote her bhajans not only to express her love, but more so as imploration and demands to Krishna to end her separation, i.e., her very existence. She told us:
“I am mad with love
And no one understands my plight.
Only the wounded
Understand the agonies of the wounded,
When the fire rages in the heart.
Only the jeweller knows the value of the jewel,
Not the one who lets it go.
In pain I wander from door to door,
But could not find a doctor.
Says Mira: Harken, my Master,
Mira’s pain will subside
When Shyam comes as the doctor.”3
Apparently, her love-driven lifestyle made made her high-status family upset; some even tried to kill her. In several poems she wrote about this disapproval:
“Parents and
brothers
all call a halt.
Prise out, they say,
this thing from your heart.
You’ve lost your path.”4
She responded:
I will fasten the bells of his love to my feet
And dance in front of Girdhar.
Dancing and dancing I will please his eyes;
My love is an ancient one.
My love is the only truth.
I do not care about social norms
Nor do I keep my family’s honour.
I cannot forget, even for a moment,
The beauty of my lover.
I am dyed in Hari’s colour.5
The saffron of virtue and contentment
Is dissolved in the water-gun of love and affection.
Pink and red clouds of emotion are flying about,
Limitless colours raining down.
All the covers of the earthen vessel of my body are wide open;
I have thrown away all shame before the world.
Mira’s Lord is the Mountain-Holder, the suave lover.
I sacrifice myself in devotion to His lotus feet.6
A stranger to shame, daringly she lived her life. I think her lack of fear was not a personal quality she possessed; love made her immune and unable to care about social conventions.
Meera’s death is surrounded with myth. As well, the story of her life. That matters not at all to me; I’m not a scholar debating whether brontosaurus existed. Through my friend I’ve heard of her; in her bittersweet longing I recognize mine. This sense of existence that I fear losing is at once the root of my pain. Because to exist for me is to be separated from my beloved.
I do not know the relationship between love and truth; how valid is this feeling of longing for an unknown? The fact that it happens perhaps make it as valid as any other experiences. Was Meera’s lifelong wish granted? Perhaps it was, and she wrote about it, too, in her poems. But with longing still unanswered, I cannot recognize it. Can this longing be consummated, and how?
- “Mine is Gopal” https://www.poetseers.org/the-poetseers/mirabai/poems-by-mirabai-vol-2/mine-is-gopal/index.html
- “Only He Knows the Bitterness of Love,” translated by in A.J. Alston, in The Devotional Poems of Mirabai. Also in Poetry for the Spirit, ed. Alan Jacobs.
- “I am Mad” https://www.poetseers.org/the-poetseers/mirabai/poems-by-mirabai-vol-2/i-am-mad/index.html
- https://www.poetseers.org/the-poetseers/mirabai/poems/in-a-sudden/index.html
- “I Do Not care about Social Norms,” from: The devotional poems of Mirabai. Trans. by Shreprakash Kurl. Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1973
- “The Saffron” https://www.poetseers.org/the-poetseers/mirabai/poems/the-saffron/index.html