“We as millennials need to stop circulating around ideas modelled by others and plastered all over our digital screens.” – Razek

Let’s begin with our perception of art. 

Art can be anything, but we choose art to be a form of self-expression of emotions. It is love, heart break, affection, validation, pain, sacrifice and a streak of emotions expressed & dealt with, in this mirage of life. It’s perceptive, subjective and sometimes objective. Art doesn’t involve a set of heavy duty/time consuming or preachy tasks, but can be of any form. It need not always lead to major movements and waves of changes. At the same time, it does not even need to depend on the mercy of the audiences’ approbation. It is not selfless, it is selfish; it is you, your emotions and your space of mind, all poured into a tangible form that can be seen/heard/appreciated or assailed by others. At the end of it, it still belongs to and reflects you. 

How can art be made relevant to the new age world of digitally clambering, self-assailing millennials preaching to highfalutin notions & nuances created by equally pretentious westernization-obsessed radicals & marketed by even more pretentious herd followers?

We as millennials need to stop circulating around ideas modelled by others and plastered all over our digital screens. We need to find bouts of time in our adrenaline sucking, tribulations building, competition driven impressionable lives & create our own notions of art.

Virtually transmitting our streak of emotions and beautifying it by adding shades of creativity & self-exploration, make us feel productive, confident and admirable. At the same time, it’s an escape from the drudgery of life that does not mean submerging oneself into the digital world of memes, fashion and Bollywood updates. We have a power, which is the ultimate power of making sense (I believe we all make sense, only situations don’t). This power is so positively durable that it can suppress and win over all negative emotions by transmitting them into an effective piece or form of artwork. 

 We all wonder, how can this be an escape if our window of expression is being curtailed by some other content creator? Is it imperative? For sure. Can it be enticing and savage? Hell yeah! Is it inspiring and motivational? Of course! 

Keeping that in mind, the digital spectrum & celluloid universe are filled with content creators. While it is important for us as millennials to reap benefits of creativity off entertainment, it is also important for us to express our nuances and notions. That’s the gap we need to abridge between admiring creativity and experiencing creativity.

The mere fact of being branded as an artist swaddles me in an airy cushion of pride and reverence. That slightest liberty we are given to create something admirable from pain or happiness, provides us with a chance to channel our inside thoughts and feel lighter. Equilibrium and equanimity between the soul & the environment can only be maintained if there is an equal load of emotions on both sides. You could call it the balance of life or you could call it our freedom of expression. Art is our chance to channel those emotions from the inside to the outside, balancing the lopsided seesaw of emotions.

Just a few squabbles or even an intent to channel whatever is going on inside. Try it, build on it & win over your negative emotions.

We all have been so beautifully engineered with a whole universe inside us. Let’s follow this trajectory & create beauty of our own. Beauty which can win over all the negative thoughts.

Let’s art! 

By Razek Das Burma