In my mind art falls on a spectrum of ‘that which is to be consumed by people’ to ‘that which is only to be consumed by the maker of the art’. Wherever it falls on the spectrum, all art, I believe, at its core is made with the itch to express oneself. The desperation to express is always met by secondary thoughts of, “Is this how I should say it? Would this be the right imagery to use? Maybe I shouldn’t even be saying this.” Adding filter on filter on filter on our thoughts and ideas, passing them through different mediums to check its viscosity, to make our expressions more palatable. The more people that are going to consume our art, the more filters we attempt to put, the more we are afraid to express our vulnerabilities to the world. Our obsession with ourselves and our thoughts, and our deep fear of showing our most naked self, lands us in creating magic.

The first time I decided to make my blog public I was terrified. I was not the most popular person, I did not have social clout, you know the type that creates the space for you to voice your opinions and have them respected? My blog was read by four of my friends and me. Five people in the world had access to my thoughts, my ‘brain puke’. Making it public was a fear, an irrational one of course because who even reads blogs nowadays? But enough to make my stomach churn the next day when I went to school. I felt like everyone had read it and they were saying nothing about it. Now that either makes it terrible, or it makes it so good that people are jealous (which my self-doubt labelled as highly unlikely). But the real reason for the silence was the fact that no one had read it. Why would they have? Only I knew that it had gone public. There was no publicity for it after, nor was there a sudden notification for people, there was nothing to even mark the trace of my treasure trove of brain puke. I was the centre of my own universe because I had done the diabolical, I had expressed myself, and then let people see it.

As the word got passed on that I had a blog the uneasiness began to rise. Every time I sat down to write, I noticed the censorship that adorned my every word. How can I say that I like this boy without really saying I like him? How can I commit to an emotion without really committing? How can I casually swim in the grey area of abstractness and cover up what I really want to say? Writing provides you with devices, allegory, metaphors, analogies, red herrings, all meant to distract you from the real purpose, from the actual story. You adorn your writing with these to escape saying the obvious. Then why not just simply do some technical writing? Why did I not simply tell the boy I liked that I liked him instead of going on and on and on about how the cobbled streets of Italy might look even more beautiful if we were both walking on them? Why did I insinuate that I was feeling sad rather than write, “I am sad?” Anton Chekhov had said, “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” Art does just that. We choose art to make our lives more liveable. To make those feelings of love have more words to cling onto, to have sadness find solace. Analogies, red herring, metaphors are tools to make our everyday into art, our censorship into creativity.

My blog is back to being private again so if any of you who are reading this want to read it, you cannot. From the time that I started the blog till now I had gone back and forth from making it public to making it private with no readers, to making it public again and doing publicity for it to hiding the link and now we’re back here, it’s private, and only my friends read it if they remember it exists. In the extended game of hopscotch, I have played I have realised three things, one, I love writing, it settles me, it lets me make sense of the world, it is a rush to make something out of words, to weave stories, to give life to characters. Two, all writing is not meant for everyone. My brain puke is not for everyone to read, my brain puke is for me to read and remember. How I can write to myself is not how I can write to people. There is more explanation to do. I measure the words I say online to not receive flack (which comes anyway) but more so because my art needs to be consumable. If art is my mode of communication of my opinions, then I need to make it communicable. But then, how do I not lose the essence of the expression, that which fueled it. Does it mean I make an angry letter to the government less angry? Does it mean I do not tell you that the death of my pet left me sucker punched, gasping for breath? Does it mean that I do not tell the boy that I like him? No is my answer. I write anger, but with words that perfectly sum up the blazing uneasiness in my head. Nayyirah Waheed had once said something along the lines of ‘choose a word like you would a fruit, it needs to be juicy and succulent’. Art challenges you by giving you the tools to break the rules that art made before. So when I write an angry letter to my government I make them know exactly how disappointed, dejected and hopeless their having power makes me feel. How what they have done is blasphemous to the very social fabric this country has taken years to build. How do I straddle bubbling, irrational emotion and competent, clear writing? How do I tackle the anger at my government without getting accused of sedition? How do I tell the boy I like him without telling him that I like him? (This seems to be a defence mechanism, ignore this example). Art is nuanced, just like my thoughts, so why not take up the challenge to do it? The third thing I learnt from the hopscotch is that I want to get better at this. I want to be good, very good and by that, I mean, I want to be able to straddle my genuine emotion with my skill. I want to be able to not tell you that the moon is shining but show you the glint of light on broken glass.

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