30 May 2022 
5 mins TM Krishna's Spirit of Enquiry is a collection of essays he had written over a span of 6 years - from 2014 to 2020. This also marks his period of transformation as an artist, his engagement with bodies more than just Karnatik music. This series of essays fundamentally aim to present the various problems and the subtleties that unravel when investigating the symbiotic world of art and society (and its associated politics).
In this note, I intend to only record some of these thought-provoking sentences and not get into the issues described within each essay.
The truth of being human is that - individually and collectively - we are contradictory and it is in the conversations between these various voices within and around that we remain alive. When we constantly crunch people into constricted spaces, we are not only erasing the beauty of their multiple tones from our view but also lowering ourselves further into a deep well from which our view is limited to a narrow circular opening.
The creation of an experiential object is art.
An interesting insight from the way different art forms are perceived - performance arts and non-performative arts like cinema, art, or photography - is that the non-performance arts aim to let the art evolve life of its own. Food for thought - Does listening to a live concert provide the same artistic experience as listening on a radio/streaming service?
There can be no doubt that the artist's artistry creates the art object and that the relationship between the art and the artist is umbilical. Yet, at some point, art detaches itself and becomes a limitless unfettered being. In fact, it is when this is realized that the art object unfolds to the sensitive receiver. When it remains within the artist's firm grip, it is an object of enchantment.
Should we separate the art from the artist?
When art is real, it is only an exploration of emotion, thought and suggestion; there is no audience. This is exactly why the art experience is not owned by the artist - which is why often the artist is very different from what his art communicates.
What is truly held sacrosanct even in music is not the idea of the aesthetic-musical form, it is the underpinning sociopolitical-ritualistic and possibly the religious foundation that carries the art form.
Democracy in art is both an internal and external query. it is built on structures that define the nature of the aesthetic form. It is as much an aesthetic need as it is a sociopolitical necessity.
On art and politics - :::multilinequote Art for art's sake is a lie perpetuated by the cultural elite. Art is and will always be political. An art object is an aesthetic, philosophical, political, and social being. And whether or not the artist articulates his or her politics, the art object always embodies it. :::
On music's social side - :::multilinequote Those who are disturbed by music's social realities just walk away, unable to reconcile these with the pleasure it gives them. It is actually the guilt of pleasure that makes them walk away from the truth taking with them only the pleasure unchallenged. Unfortunately, they do not, or are not able to find the soul within the sound. If they did, they might have just stayed back, grappled, discovered, rejected, accepted, expanded, and simply flown with the music. Because music lives not in the pleasure it gives but in the experience it provides of its unreconciled intensities. :::
Musicians forget that tala is not a carved-out matrix that contains music; it is the ripple that moves music.
On the association of ragas with time - :::multilinequote Once the emotions of the 'morning' are abstracted into a musical space, for everyone within that illusion, time outside is immaterial. Only the experience of the raga exists. So, once you are inside the raga, what time it is outside, actually, becomes irrelevant. Only then do you have the raga. :::
On the use(lessness) of art - :::multilinequote ..But art is more than eye candy. It helps us make sense of our existence, reflect, image, hope, change, discover, and reinvent ourselves. The arts are emotional murals. Through art, we give form to all that we receive through our senses and locate ourselves in the world. Without art, we will wither. When artists create, there is a selfless affirmation of being, and realization of a larger purpose. :::
Religious harmony has never been achieved at meetings held by religious heads.But harmony has always happened when nameless people listened to each other, reaffirming compassion.
A comment about the present - :::multilinequote We hav become a society of aural dissonance and visual clutter. When we hear friends speak, only expressions that are unacceptable to us enter our auditory cortex. The context is brushed aside and subtlety smudged. We do not read, we scroll; and, as our fingertips flip the virtual pages, words that ring alarm bells in our minds burst out of the shiny screen, disarranging our mind. It is between the constants of either taking offense or hurting others that we search for a few moments of quietude. :::
I have come to realization that T.M. Krishna is indeed a wonderful writer apart from being a wonderful Karnatik artist. His words resonate with me deeply and have even convinced me to rethink certain prejudices of mine. This anthology, to me, was in a sense dynamic - moving not from one topic to another, but the undulation of words expressing his thoughts on art and other sociological issues. I shall revisit certain essays time and again.
All the above excerpts are attributed to their original author(s). Book info -
T.M. Krishna, Spirit of Enquiry, 2021. Penguin Random House India. ISBN-13: 9780670095803. ISBN-10: 067009580X.