Much of what we know sacred is mostly abstract, incomprehensible, and abrupt. As humans, we operate on binary ordering; for things to be categorized, organized in order to be fathomed. We even organized love beginning from Uns (Attachment), Dilkashi (Admiration), Muhabbat (Love), Aqeedat (Loyalty), Ibadat (Worship), Maut (Death/Meeting the divine).
I believe that the Love that we understand is not Love at all, or is not sacred. Sacred itself, from what we’ve understood so far, is unfathomable, something that the mind can not comprehend, it is the language of the heart that can not be understood by mere meat bag beings gliding through the galaxy on a debatably large rock.
When we speak of Sacred we must understand that anything sacred we know has been in an unrecognizable order. Somewhat as a heart beat, incessant but consistent, until neither. It’s rise and decline in pace perhaps says something that we don’t understand, because we can’t.
ACT I. Dadaism
If I ask you to think of ‘Good Art’ you may think of ‘The Starry Night’ by Vincent van Gogh or ‘The Birth of Venus’ by Sandro Botticelli. But what precisely constitutes good art, and who judges whether art is good? furthermore, who gets to decide if something is art to begin with?
The image you see above is a submission by Marcel Duchamp whom titled it ‘Fountain’ and submitted an upside down urinal to an art exhibition that claimed they wouldn’t reject any piece of art — this by the way was the newly established Society of Independent Artists that Duchamp himself had helped found and promote on the lines of the Parisian Salon des Indépendants — And even though the piece wasn’t rejected, it wasn’t placed in the show area either. They didn’t really consider it art.
If something isn’t deemed art or isn’t deemed ‘good art’ it is considered worthless. And that’s exactly what Dadaism critiques.
Dadaism is one of the most revolutionary movements of the twentieth century created to question the entire concept of art itself. It emerged in World War I and was deemed as anti-authority, anti-war, anti-capitalism, anti-establishment, anti-museums, and most importantly, anti-art.
Originally a colloquial French term for a hobby horse, Dada, as a word, is nonsense. As a movement, however, Dadaism proved to be a response to the modern age.
During the First World War, countless artists, writers, and intellectuals who opposed the war sought refuge in Switzerland. Zurich, in particular, was a hub for people in exile, and it was here that Hugo Ball and Emmy Hemmings opened the Cabaret Voltaire on February 5, 1916. The Cabaret was a meeting spot for the more radical avant-garde artists. A cross between a nightclub and an arts center, artists could exhibit their work there among cutting-edge poetry, music, and dance. Hans (Jean) Arp, Tristan Tzara, Marcel Janco and Richard Huelsenbeck were among the original contributors to the Cabaret Voltaire. As the war raged on, their art and performances became increasingly experimental, dissident and anarchic. Together, they protested against the pointlessness and horrors of the war under the battle cry of DADA.
Reacting against the rise of capitalist culture, the war, and the concurrent degradation of art, artists in the early 1910s began to explore new art, or an “anti-art”, as described by Marcel Duchamp. They wanted to contemplate the definition of art, and to do so they experimented with the laws of chance and with the found object. Theirs was an art form underpinned by humor and clever turns, but at its very foundation, the Dadaists were asking a very serious question about the role of art in the modern age. This question became even more pertinent as the reach of Dada art spread — by 1915, its ideals had been adopted by artists in New York, Paris, and beyond — and as the world was plunged into the atrocities of World War I.
Beyond these artistic media, the Dadaists also probed the literary and performance arts. Hugo Ball, for instance, the man who penned the unifying manifesto of Dadaism in 1916, investigated the liberation of the written word. Freeing text from the conventional constraints of a published page, Ball played with the power of nonsensical syllables presented as a new form of poetry. These Dadaist poems were often transformed into performances, allowing this network of artists to move easily between media.
Ball wrote this poem “Karawane,” a poem consisting of nonsensical words. The meaning, however, resides in its meaninglessness, reflecting the chief principle behind Dadaism.
What Dadaism failed to eradicate was the meaning behind these absurd and abrupt creations. But created perhaps the most sacred artwork humanity had ever seen.
Hugo Ball is who fascinates me the most, how he took something sacred and crafted sacrilegious verses that were not sacred but became sacred once crafted. Now let me blow your mind a bit. The latest Spiderman’s opening scene where his identity get’s exposed and he takes MJ and runs around the city trying to hide, there is a sound in the back ground whilst he’s running. But here’s the catch, it isn’t a sound it’s a song. It’s gibberish. It’s Dadaism. The song writer of that back ground song, is actually Hugo Ball. His poem, ‘Karawane’ were the lyrics, they weren’t just random sounds.
Dadaism was meaningless for the ignorant, but meaningful for the conscious.
ACT II. Sacred
Now as much as we explore religion we find various holy scriptures, The Qur’an and the Bible being the most popular and prominent ones. Christianity and Islam being the most dominant religions in the world. Both with similar faith in a holy book sent from one God. Now we know that the bible has been fabricated in more ways than one, don’t take it from me take it from this pastor’s article.
So for the arguments sake of disorderly understandings let’s take the Qur’an since it hasn’t been fabricated nor has it been changed in anyway. It is the most protected and sacred scripture you may find as you explore religion in general, there’s a consensus amongst all sects of Muslims that the Qur’an has remained the same since it’s arrival. It is claimed that it hasn’t been conveyed through scripture, it has been conveyed through the heart.
Every month over 1500 Hafiz-e-Quran complete their memorization of the Qur’an, in Pakistan. Whether they understand what they memorize or not is a different debate. But let’s for a moment establish that the Qur’an is the word of God and is sacred and divine.
As we examine and study the Qur’an, in the second surah, Al-Baqarah. We observe that there is an inconsistent mention of various topics. Upon my first notice of this, I found it strange and irregular. How can God speak on one topic and then abandon it completely until the end. I started making connections, with the influence of a book by Nouman Ali Khan and Sharif Randhawa, ‘Divine Speech.’
What I realized was that these topics were not in order, they were incessant and disjointed, the first topic would be partially spoken on in the beginning of Baqarah and then would be concluded in the end. Similarly the second with the second last, and the third with the third last and so on. All this would happen with the common theme of the Surah still staying intact.
As a writer, this was absurd to me. It defied every law of writing I knew. In writing, when writing a story like this, various topics cannot be introduced because it deviates the theme. Overlaying connection to plots cannot be introduced because it deviates the plot. Interconnecting plots can also be not introduced because it deviates from the grand plot of the story. Even if I would go Khaled Husseini on writing, then too, the plot left behind should connect to the plot being introduced, it cannot be totally abandoned.
For me personally this was one of the evidences of the divinity of speech of the Qur’an. Because what should’ve been gibberish and irregular was closely intact and intricately crafted although it was incessant and irregular. Brings us back to Dadaism. Divinity is irregular and improper and disorganized because it is free. But it is also crafted closely. So this experience with Baqarah was to understand a quixotic concept of writing literature.
But what really blew my mind was that on further exploration I realized that this wasn’t just the span of one Surah, this was instead, the pattern spread all over the Qur’an. Each ayah and each Surah connected in some way with the other. This could not have been possible for a middle eastern man in his 40s, living in a desert to create. The literary brilliance was unfathomable. It could not have possibly come from man. As psychological study confirmed that incessant correlation in speech is unachievable for a human. This was the way of the divine speech. This had to be something else. This had to be God.
Meaningless for the ignorant, but meaningful for the conscious.
ACT III. Death.
I’ve always been told that there is something a person sees in their dying moment. I’ve seen around five people die in front of me. Some died in peace, others died in agony and shame. Shame is a strong word, but there’s no other way to explain twirling and twisting in agony screaming “I’m sorry”
Amongst the five people included my father, at age 16. I find myself most aware of silence when I am thinking about the many ways it can be punctured. Under the wrong circumstances, a hospital room can become a symphony of noises, each of them courting the worst of a person’s anxieties. There might be an incessant but inconsistent beeping, or the sounds of several machines doing the work of keeping a person alive. And that beeping is when we truly and clearly hear the heart either saying, ‘I’m fighting, and I will win’ or saying, “I’m tired, I can’t do this any longer.” I unfortunately it was the latter in my father’s case.
It is a privilege to be told that someone you love is going to survive. The message comes from some exhausted doctor, eager to give the good news after the tests, or the surgery, or whatever else. I have also been on the other side: knowing that I would be watching a person I love slowly fade until they vanished altogether, and understanding there’s nothing that can be done.
At the time ofcourse I didn’t know what this was or what this idea of seeing someone implied but my father, looked into the distance and said, “Allah tera shukar hai.” (Thank God.) before falling into his endless slumber. It always bothered me, he didn’t have anything to be thankful of, he didn’t have to say what he said, his last words could’ve been anything. Why this?
Now for a brief moment, let’s examine the possibilities of after death. It could be, that you fall into oblivion; utter darkness and nothingness or it could be another door to another place that was much better than this. From what we understand from scriptures is that Good will be rewarded in that land and Evil will be punished. But how can we decipher what is truly Good and truly Evil.
In the book ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ by Friedrich Nietzsche these two concepts are briefly discussed, and in the many ways that I disagree with the argument posed by Nietzsche, it’s an argument that could be thought of. I saw the argument through the lens of ‘no existing law of good or evil’. The argument he poses suggests that in a certain light good and evil can shift places, by that he meant morality itself is subjective, the problem I had with this was that if there was no definitive evil and no definitive good, then the purpose of sustaining sanctity is irrelevant, the concept of morality itself is irrelevant. I feel remorse to say that this idea has largely now influenced the entire world. And if, perhaps, good and evil are not defined then punishment does not exist.
But let’s come back to death: if we were to believe that there is nothing beyond what we can see, life becomes meaningless, but if we hold on to the idea of something existing beyond, this life becomes a source of absolution, or of vindication.
Now here’s my belief, from what we learn from the definition of love, Maut is to meet the divine. It is not the end, it is to return. And that’s where I place my bet. I believe that death releases us to understand that which we were incapable of, it frees us from ignorance, and allows us to truly and utterly meet the divine, as divine.
All rights to this piece are reserved by the Birmingham Post & Free The Verse
