Colour of music; song in a painting
i can hear
i can feel
i can smell
and i can taste
through the four senses
i can see
(Inequality. 2005)
Sometimes a visually handicapped person could be able to see better
and appreciate what they see, better than a person with normal vision.
This thought came to me as I realized that January 14, two days from
now, it would be 35 years since Mahagama Sekara departed this life.
Sekara had all his senses functioning properly and probably using
them better than most of us. He must have been able to see the colours
of the music he listened to, or hear the music of the paintings he
created.
Humans express themselves through images in paintings, photography
and sculpture, through movement in dance, and in speech and music.
Sekara excelled in most of these forms of expression.
Sekara has imparted to us some of this wonder, as we too can see the
paintings he had done with his pen on paper when he wrote a poem, the
visual images he created in his novel Thunmanhandiya, long before we saw
the film he created from it. We can hear the songs in his prose writings
in the same way. It has been called a 'Union of the Senses'.
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Mahagama
Sekara |
Scientists have a term for this: Synesthesia, because they want to
fix a label to everything and try to find an explanation to everything
happening around us. (Synesthesia is a perceptual condition of mixed
sensations: a stimulus in one sensory modality (eg hearing)
involuntarily elicits a sensation/experience in another modality (eg
vision). Likewise, perception of a form (eg a letter) may induce an
unusual perception in the same modality (eg a color), according to
www.synesthete.org.) Vladimar Nabokov has discussed his synesthesia in
his autobiography, Speak, Memory, and it came up in his novel The Gift.
Before him the French poet Arthur Rimbaud had referred to 'coloured
vowel sounds'. Much earlier, in 1818, Mary Shelly in Frankenstein,
mentions "A strange multiplicity of sensations seized me, and I saw,
felt, heard, and smelt, at the same time." In The World of the New Born,
Maurer and Maurer wrote "we all begin life as synesthetes".
Vassily Kandinsky had talked about "coloured hearing" and about the
relationship between music and art. Amy Ion and Christopher Tyler had
written that Kandinsky's paintings "have a dynamic musical feel to
them".
Religion can be thought of as something like the metaphoric
confabulations of synesthesia, seeing nature and hearing the voice of
God or the Buddha-nature in all things (Ramachandran 1998).
Richard E Cytowik, says "synesthesia is actually a normal brain
function in every one of us, but that its workings reach conscious
awareness in only a handful." There must have been a reason for the
alphabet of the Devanagari script to be called "Varnamala", the garland
of letters, which represent the universe of names and forms (Namarupa)
that is speech (Shabda) and meaning (artha).
This goes with the Indian view that Sound precedes creation, that it
is more ancient. Anything that moves makes sound. Feel, form, colour,
taste and smell are all complex sounds.
This is one way of describing what scientists call synesthesia. In
the Unnabha Brahmana sutta, (Samyutta Nikaya 48.42), we read, "There
are, Brahman, these five sense-faculties... which do not share in each
other's sphere of action. Mind is their resort, and it is mind that
profits from their combined activity."
The best example for synesthetic experience in our country is from
the works of Mahagama Sekara, the poet, lyricist, artist, novelist and
film director. A person who could appreciate all the true wonders of
nature and share his feelings with us in so many ways.
"Starshine on the lake
Disturbed by rain drops
Mingles into soft music." (Prabuddha 81pp)
"Had I been an artist
I could have created a painting
of this whole world
to the rhythm she heard" (Nomiyemi 127pp)
We may have our sense organs separately feeding our brain with the
different signals, but it is our mind which grasps them and in the mind
the signals could mingle to give us greater perception.
Digital technology has entered the scene with the capability to
convert a painting into music, or a piece of music into a painting, and
so there is 'Visual Music' today. But would machines ever be able to
give us what our own minds could give us? When we read a novel or a
poem, let us try to listen to the music it generates, or the painting
that appears before our eyes.
When we look at a painting let us taste it and smell the aroma. Let
us enjoy all that is gifted to us by Mother Earth, using all our senses
together. This will help us appreciate the real beauty and wander around
us.
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