Poetry of an uncompressed life

Photo: Lorna Sim

What is already compressed do not open.

What is unopened do not compress.

-Atharva Veda

The enigmatic lines from the Veda quoted above hold the quintessence of poetic invocation. The vast (unopened) realms of mystery must not be compressed by analysis and definition. Equally, what has been analysed and compressed must not be stretched or opened by mystery. The stretching and expanding intelligence is Soma, the “herb” that is poetry.

In a world where analysis and definition are the norms of knowledge, the proposal that there are domains of intelligence that are unyielding to these norms is a challenging one. Over the course of my dance life, I have been approached many times by people interested in analysing my work or subjecting it to an academic approach. While I am honoured by these invitations and I respect the value of such approaches, I feel that subjecting an invocatory practice to scientific analysis is an unwarranted task.

What is of the "compressed" world benefits from its paradigms of measurement and comparison. What is outside the bounds of this —the unopened, underworld, “secret” or “cavernous" (to use archetypal parlance) realm —is best encountered on its own terms. As the philosopher J Krishnamurti said, “When there is no measurement at all there is the quality of wholeness”.

To my mind the pressure to legitimise a poetic and creative intelligence in terms of anything other than itself is a destruction of its unique intelligence. We have an abiding fascination with the artistic realm. This fascination may be one of envy, aspiration, suspicion, contempt, or admiration. In my fifty years of being an artist I have met with all these responses. An artist is a curiosity in a world driven by the mechanics of profit and loss. People who choose to do something that has worse chances than a lottery ticket of bringing success challenge the status quo. It is not surprising that artists have been condemned as mad from ancient times!

One of the oldest texts in India on poetic intelligence, the Atharva Veda, has been dismissed as occult and magic. The lines I quoted above are from this text. The disorder of the poetic is terrifying to a world that must compress complexity through reason and analysis. It is easier to designate the poetic as insanity or superstition rather than to acknowledge things beyond the bounds of our very definitions of knowledge.

The poetic in the Vedic context begins with relinquishing the known. As other Vedic hymns suggest, the village must be buried in the grave along with our maidenhood. The maiden is the innocent one, who assumes that Reality is waiting to be conquered with knowledge. That maiden must become Death’s bride and lay her lineage and kin next to her in her own grave. In other words, she must relinquish the known. It is then that the Deities of Darkness enfold her to begin her journey into the underworld. This darkness is not to be "opened" to daylight, or lit by lamps of knowledge from the village which she has left. Anything we say about the “underworld” in the language of the village is “maya”, an illusion.

Only those who have undertaken the relinquishing will know the ferocity of its invitation. It is easier to renounce than to relinquish the known (this will become clear in the story of Arjuna later in this essay). Archetypally this is the sacrifice of one’s head. This relinquishing strikes at the very basis of one’s architecture of the world and of oneself, which in the end is the same thing. There is an unbearable silence as meaning itself as a lens of Reality disappears. Meaning does not morph into its opposite of meaninglessness, which would still offer a refuge of sorts. Rather, Reality shimmers with an invitation for which we have no words to make sense.

What happens when sense making is not a valid approach? We immediately assume it means senselessness. If we cannot compress experience into sense, then it must be madness. I think this is why artists increasingly feel they must validate themselves in terms other than their creative domains. They must serve social justice causes or health, psychology, religious and spiritual philosophies to find a place in the world. I am not saying that artists do not fulfill an important and underestimated role in all these domains. Here I am inviting attention to the “unopened” domains of Reality, which is both the source and the intelligence of the poetic imagination. In other words, poetic intelligence is about itself and not referential to some other domain.

“Art for art’s sake” is a deeply contentious proposition. This is because we consider art recreational. We have also degraded poetic intelligence by making it metaphorical—we claim we can be “creative” businesspeople or politicians or bankers. We divorce creative intelligence from its expression or activity in the world.

Ancient traditions centralised the encounter and expression of poetic intelligence. The philosophical text, Bhagavad Gita, brings this intelligence into the battlefield, and into the politics of society and the psychology of self. In this text, the archetypal warrior Arjuna faces a seminal battle with his own kin. The Deity Krishna is his charioteer. Just as the battle is about to commence, Arjuna loses heart and decides he must renounce his role and retreat into the forest. Krishna invites him to relinquish his usual lenses of sense making and to attend to the realms of the primordial (the unopened).

Krishna brings the poetic into the centre of the life and death predicament that Arjuna faces. This is not a peripheral and recreational inquiry. It will determine Arjuna’s fate and the fate of his people and of those he opposes. Krishna’s invitation brings Arjuna into the poetry of the cosmic movement of Reality (Rta) as ever unfolding flow that has always been and will always be. In this flow, we must be poets, He says. This is because the intelligence of Reality is poetic. It is when we transform perception in concordance with this poetic intelligence that we experience our responsibility within Reality.

A poetic vision, such as that suggested by Krishna, is not a linear cause-effect paradigm. Arjuna perceives responsibility and agency in a linear world where he can draw a line between his actions and the results. Krishna splinters that perception by transforming what seems to be a simple event into a multi-dimensional constellation of circumstances. And this dispersion is not a result of an analysis of the compressed (the defined and known). It is through a descent into the primordial, into Arjuna’s archetypal “underworld”, which is the “unopened” elemental experience. This approach is not of closure through definition but of a poetic invocation that meets the shimmering, infinite and vast Reality with a concordant intelligence.

It is impossible to account for every dimension of such a constellation with a linear approach. It is the poetic intelligence that underpins the quality and nature of one’s expression in a multi-dimensional Reality. This also fundamentally restructures perception, intention, agency and, most importantly, the experience of Reality as an autopoietic flow where we participate within this choreography as dancer-poets rather than as deluded managers.

What is revealed in the Bhagavad Gita is that poetic intelligence is always renewed and entirely experiential. Experience is the inquiry. Arjuna must engage with the Reality in front of him rather than flee to the forest based on an analysis of the theories of right and wrong. Experience relocates us within our intimate subjectivity. Our nature is intensely subjective rather than generic. The industrial models of social systems are incongruent with this subjectivity. The poetic and creative essence of Reality accords our subjectivity its proper place. It is this uniquely poetic soul we each have that weaves us into the tapestry of a rich and multi-dimensional Reality.

Krishna also reveals the interplay between the intellect, and poetic intelligence. While analysis will destroy the very fabric of poetic intelligence, we cannot attend to poetic intelligence without a strong theory of mind capacity. We need to be active and present when we explore the poetic. This is why I am reserved about the (mis)application of labels like “trance” on embodied ritual traditions. My inquiry into my archetypal dance tradition has revealed the necessity to be alert and discerning during poetic unfolding.

The mind is not absent in a poetic exploration. Many spiritual philosophies speak either of being mindless or of controlling the mind. At the same time, they may also propose that the Body as a sensorial site is not to be trusted. I am not sure what we are when we are untethered to both mind and Body! In poetic invocations, both intellect and Body are honoured as a choreographic interplay of sensation, discernment, experience, and expression. These are dynamic interactions with ever renewing and infinite possibilities when we have an approach that enlivens and recognises the nuanced nature of its dance. Poetic choreography teaches our intellect to be in concordance with the complexity and unfolding multi-dimensionality of Reality.

I hear many commentators speak of the dystopia of our times. We appear to be in a tangle we cannot unravel with our linear cause-effect models. People speak of “wicked problems” in social policy where a solution-oriented approach is challenged due to the multi-dimensional circumstances. Our managerial approaches to life, Nature and Body seem to have brought us to a deadlock with Reality.

I will not offer poetic intelligence as a “solution” to problems. This is to try and open the compressed. I am, however, delighted to suggest exploration of the poetic on its own terms. Poetic vision is the Krishna of the Bhagavad Gita. It is the charioteer that takes you on a journey into Reality, which is the archetypal mansion with many faces. However, like Arjuna, you will have to stand and do your own releasing of the arrows. There is no free pass in poetic inquiry!

To abjure the poetic is to live in a compressed world ignoring the unopened domains within us. These are the recesses of our underworlds, teeming with intelligences that can never be captured by the compression of analysis. When we allow the poetry within to lead our expression, we bring that vast inner cosmos into form and movement. Thus, we manifest concordance with a sentient and poetic Reality.

Photo: Lorna Sim