The first lesson again

Today, I learnt Swati Tirunal’s oft-heard kriti in Mayamalavagoula, ‘Deva deva kalayaami’. The familiar intonations of the beginner’s raga completed yet another cycle in learning music. “Anda ga-va-attara ashakanam” said my teacher reminding me that the Ga in Mayamalavagowla contained glimpses of three notes. Another of the realisations that form the everyday in learning and relearning music. 

Sa-Ri-Ga-Ma... and so on we are taught in that very Mayamalavagoula  in our very first class on Karnatik music. Then to now is a long way indeed, as is now to the many ‘then’s in future!

Meanwhile, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson here are telling me how reason is not completely conscious but mostly unconscious. That it is shaped by the body, and constrained by it. That we deal with a cognitive unconscious. How we learn in spite of our fundamental unconsciousness of the way we learn has always hugely intrigued me. And even as I try to consciously understand, through speculation and science, through the bizarre language of neurons and through the pleasure of having consciously realised what I have half-known for years, I find myself equally interested in tapping our unconscious learning abilities to enhance our methodologies of education as well as our creative endeavours.

To end this post, I like what Rashmee said the other day on FB: art helps digest. I would like to add, art helps rearrange. As we rearrange, add or brush off a shade, a note, an imperceptible so much here and there, much more than the shade or note, picture or tune, gets rearranged.  And that could be potentially as big as the butterfly's flapping wings.