One moment of closeness

Walking off a heavy lunch down the alley, parallel to the neatly trimmed lawn of the Old Parliament, I loved that sight.

That was evening, or sometime between evening and afternoon. Sky touched the glistening waters of the Galle Face Green. For a moment I forgot this very same sea caused ripples for a tsunami a few years ago.

I tried to do a little meditation, but the noise of waves hitting each other disrupted me. In a little while the vastness was taking a shape of a river. Deer came to drink, while birds chirped. Crossing the river was a crooked old man with a stick. He was followed by some people carrying a patient on a stretcher. They were followed by pallbearers with a monk chanting something.

I felt two figures around me.

“I’m the artiste.”

“I’m the critic.”

They both introduced themselves and shook hands with each other. They do not seem to notice my presence, or are they ignoring me?

“This makes me younger.” Artiste said.

Critic was silently staring into the river.

“Why, don’t you see anything special?” Artiste asked.

“It’s just a river. Well, animals drink water. People cross the river. Nothing else, right?”

“That’s all?”

The critic nodded in positive. They were both silent for a few seconds; artiste smilingly looking at the surrounding, critic still staring into waters with a blank expression. The critic spoke at length.

“Maybe I was too busy.”

“Busy?”

“Yes, busy. Busy analyzing what you guys do out of these experiences.”

“Why do you analyze?”

“The critic’s job is to evaluate the artiste’s work. It’s a serious job, you know.

You need analytical power to do that. If it is poetry, we first check if the poet succeeds conveying his or her experience. Then we examine how h/she manipulates the theme.”

Artiste fell into thought.

“I don’t know what manipulating the theme is or how to convey my experience. But when I see a withering flower, I just happen to see it. It tries to say something. I can feel how injured the petal is. I never try to analyze the injured petal. I try to share its feeling. Then I get something called ‘thoughts’.”

“What do you do with thoughts?”

“I paint them. I sculpt them. I write them. I do many things.”

“And I? I analyze them. I spend time tying to find methods to evaluate what you do with your thoughts – like I said before. I mostly follow practical criticism.”

“Practical criticism?”

“Yes, you need to have some academic discipline to know such things. It is one criticism branch that teaches how to look at literary works scientifically.”

“Oh I see. And now what have you gathered?”

“That’s what I have been thinking.” Critic was actually thinking for some time and continued: “Honestly I think I haven’t gathered anything.”

“Well, don’t think you have wasted time then. Your criticism helped me mature. It nurtured my creativity in a way.”

Critic smiled.

“My criticism helped you mature. But it didn’t mature me. My analysis seems to have been used up, and everything seems flat. Even when I saw the beauty, I did thrust that aside and dug in for more methods of criticism.”

“Why is that?”

“Because I thought criticism is so holy and that’s everything.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you try to see beauty now?”

“I’m not used to that. I am an academic as well as a critic.” He said with a surge of pride, but it grew melancholic later noticeably.

“But now I repent that. I have been trying to assess good and bad about works. I was never used to express the way I see the beauty.”

“Then my friend, listen to me. I have something to tell you.” The artiste said.

In the evening shade, I continued listening to them, in silence.

“There was a time when I had an eccentric habit. After a wave hit another, there is hardly any trace. I wanted to find that trace. When I was disappointed, it spirited me up to paint my thoughts. When the sliver of the moon slowly faded away, I could see the world darken second by second. That was blank. But that tried to say something. I tried to read into that. In the same way when a cancer patient dies in a hospital, I could see his face trying to say something. I painted that thought.”

The artiste was silent. He looked at the critic’s face.

“And do you know this? Do you know when a flower withers, you cannot go for criticism or scientific analysis to explain why that happens.

That happens even without your criticism. But when you breathe in the beauty, it makes you younger. If you forget analysis and all, then you will realize how many things are there for you to discover.”

Looking at the critic one last time, and with his gaze fixed on me for the first time the artiste said: “Thoughts will then come involuntarily. You don’t have to look for expression anywhere. You will find it within yourself.”

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