Tomichan Matheikal's blog

I’ve been a bit out of sorts lately. I couldn’t do anything properly. Not even reading. My blogging met with unusual intervals and I ascribed that to writer’s block though my heart said it wasn’t. The whole mood changed today, a few minutes back. Life is so simple, sometimes. My car’s music system had stopped functioning a few weeks back. I gave my car for an earlier-than-usual service because driving had felt as dull as a movie without dialogue or food without salt ever since the music system went silent. The car was serviced but the music didn’t turn on. “You’ll have to change the speakers,” the service mechanic said. I managed to find time this morning to get the speakers changed. And my life changed radically. Happiness is so simple an affair. The young boy who was replacing the speakers turned on the stereo system as he was working and the song that came instantly was from a Malayalam movie of 1989. Let me give the link to the song and the scene in the movie below. I’m sur...

George Steiner God is always present in a good work of art, literature and music.  George Steiner says that in his book, Real Presences .  That God enters our being and asks us to change ourselves.  Good literature, art and music have the power to change us.  They touch our souls, in other words.  Psychology tells us that a lot of our attitudes and behaviour are determined by our subconscious mind.  The subconscious mind is the seat of all the suppressed emotions which can take the shape of the devil at times –  when we lose our cool, for example. It is this subconscious mind that good literature touches, that good music soothes or good art cools.  The suppressed feelings undergo transformation under the influence of good art, literature or music.  That transformative power is God, in Steiner’s words. Aristotle gave it a more secular name: catharsis. The process of writing is also deeply related to the subconscious mind. ...