Not Just Logic
Half shuddering, half leaping across my desk, I clawed my way onto the bed ensuring to avoid touching the floor at all costs. Who knew if it travelled with an entourage of loyal minions. Maintaining my position high on the bed, I peered over, praying the predator had found another prey. Alas, it had glued itself to the dust coated corner, happily beginning the construction of its new home. I sighed. I guess I would have to move into my parents’ room for the year.
Being of Indian heritage, my mystifying fear of such eight legged souls always evoked thousands of laughs. Compared to my fearless great grandmother (who could pick up a scorpion and toss it out with just two fingers), I ranked at ridiculous.
“Look at its size and look at yours. It should be afraid of you!” I’ve heard this advice a million times. And while it seems all logical, I fail to understand why these words fail to make me see reason. After all, logic presides in my brain during any decision making process.
But then again, sometimes logic isn’t the answer. Sometimes only emotion, visualization, and sheer perseverance can achieve the impossible. People said that the bumblebee’s vestigial wings should never be able to lift its large size. But then again, the bumblebee never asked their opinion. It just flew.
When my Carnatic music teacher introduced me to gamakam in my first lyrical piece, I tried to reproduce the musical embellishment using solely my left brain. I mapped the series of positions between the two notes, thinking of each position like a bus stop. My voice would be the big yellow school bus, pausing at each position in a timely fashion. Unfortunately, my gamakam resembled a school bus much too accurately. My voice fitfully jerked its way through the fluid phrase, lacking connections between each individual note. Logically, I knew I had to start at Sa, jump down to Ni, jump back up to Sa, and finally jump all the way down to Pa. I could see the pit stops in my head, and I knew that I had touched each one. So, why did it sound like someone had yanked my voice midway?
“Shreya, picture the circles I’m drawing.” My guru’s patient words along with his steady voice forced me to listen between the pit stops. No matter how logically I plotted the coordinates, the space inbetween simply had to be felt, simply had to be envisioned. The movement from Sa to Ni was more of a delicate fall than a convulsive jump. To move back up the scale, I had to take off with a slight leap, like a robin gearing up for an early morning flight. And, to finally finish the ornamented phrase, I had to imagine a slide, gently carrying my notes south for a final rest.
As I sang in my next class, a hard won smile donned my face. My voice flowed like water, gently touching each note without halting drastically. My left brain knew which points were to be emphasized, but it was my right brain which allowed me to imagine the graceful and melodious movement. Though logic remained an integral facet in the process, emotion and imagery carried it all to the finish.
Perhaps one day I will truly believe that creepy crawlies cannot harm me. Perhaps one day, I’ll be fearless enough to gently carry the creature outside on my own. Logical reasoning is only half of the process. The rest is up to my imagination, my emotions, my perseverance. All I have to do is imagine the spider as a friendly cuddly being that simply wants to share my home. One day, I really will achieve this. But until then, I’m sticking with my parents’ room.
*Gamakam – An artistic embellishment performed on a note or between two notes
*Sa, Ni, Pa – Notes of the Carnatic Music Scale
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