The matrix is and will always be our home. A forgotten reality. Within us is the cell which itself is as astounding as they can get with their miraculous self-generating network. Also within and outside us is a delicately woven ecosystem. A sparkling interconnected web of life. Above us, the musical rhythm of the planets suspended, and in communion with dark matter or god particle as the scientists would have it. In short we are surrounded and embraced by the matrix. They say that when a butterfly’s wing shudders on this side of the globe, a cyclone is unleashed on the other side. Meaning, the whole earth is one unified, alive and moving entity. Zoom out a bit further and we see this galaxy of ours wearing a sun and its planets. Zoom out further and you have millions of galaxies and all of this is one massive cauldron of seething matter made of fluids and gases. Suppress here, and it shall express elsewhere.
And yet somewhere, somehow man thought himself separate from the matrix. He thought that the matrix was for him! And this delusional mind that wreaked havoc on nature is now collapsing into and as a part of the web that spun him. This return to relationships, interconnectedness, explorations, and the experience of communion infuses in us the forgotten taste of a sacred space. Only it tastes surprisingly ordinary. Plain Vanilla! This taste of the sacred is still alive and throbbing in the rich reservoirs of mythology and culture. But culture is also a petri dish of controlled environment and medium allowing the growth of an organism. Only here the organism is human. It is an organized, controlled psychological pill that helps us survive in a society. At times the organism becomes resistant to the antibiotic and it decides to scratch the cultural veneer a bit here, rip a bit there, and that’s when it touches the eyes of the sacred, staring back.
As for mythology, its magnetism propels us into its cyclical currents, not because it is exotic, ancient, religious or spiritual, but because of the sheer explorative journey it had the strength to undertake. A journey somehow so ordinary and yet leading you to the bizarre, that it stifles your thoughts and leaves you tamed and suspended like a snarling lashing cat held by the nape of its neck. Mythology brims with the exploration of the human psyche so that it may establish contact with the human as ‘being’. A totally different perspective which requires a vast, flexible playground as is also seen in the new emerging art trends. The Sciences and the Arts merging and emerging.
You do not surface from this exploratory play with your eyes sparkling with the knowledge of a singular truth. Most of the time it’s a placid lake that you see reflected in them and a voice that reiterates after every episode lived that ‘you just don’t know.’ Very relevant to our times whether in the field of Art or that of the Sciences. A word of caution shall help tether us to the fluid, intangible pathways of the Arts. Difficult, because it demands immense stability of being from the artist. He cannot ride on the stable nature of concepts. Documenting, quantifying and concluding based on conceptual statements and also technology, cannot masquerade as art. These can only be used as tools on the pathway of exploration.
When ideas and concepts manufactured by the mind crumble, what seems to rise in its place is reality wrought in the cooling embers of the blacksmiths iron. Reality springs from the heart. Since you cannot get ahead of it you might as well fall into its depth. We have outdated the word ‘heart.’ But growth without the heart? Yet, we believe in it! Heart space is that space which makes us unique individuals, one a doctor and another an artist. It is our dharma and the way to growth. All other ways bring us right back here, and at the heart of it all, are unifying patterns weaving the earth and its creatures.
Anuradha Nalapat-2015
The Stillness Project 