Ilaiyaraaja on creativity

It’s only imitation.Creativity is impossible to define in fine arts and music. First of all, creativity is not a process. Process connotes a quality of science, of physics and chemistry, a methodology, which can be used by anybody to explain a thing. Creativity is a happening. Like laughter.There is no such thing as a ‘creative’ moment if you want to know the real truth. Everything exists in nature and we just stumble upon it, either accidentally or by sweat. But you must have the awareness, the consciousness to know what you are stumbling upon, what you are knocking against.Only the Creator can create, and create every moment, if you care to see, to look around.

I could come across a new Sa or a Ga that can perhaps be called creative. But everything is already beautiful contained between the two music nodal points Sa and Sa. So where is the question of being creative? Everything exists already.A small sparrow spreads out its wings, beats them with all its force, contracts its body and takes to the sky. So does a hawk. Both the moments are creative. It is your apparatus; call it spiritual if you want to, that must be tuned to come face to face with those moments. Each one takes according to his equipment.Aristotle said Man is a highly imitative animal. Man is not intelligent at all in the sense in which Osho uses the term intelligence. He learns only by imitation.

Where now is ‘creativity’? There can be, and there exists creative intelligence, an awareness that my predecessors in music have left behind. I take it from them. If you want and if you can, you are also welcome to it. The moments are forever. Whatever you claim you have created, is only that what you have found. You underline your discovery.Everything has its own in-built pattern, a form. An elephant runs, so does a horse. Can you reckon the elephant’s speed in terms of horsepower?

Poetry has a form, painting has a form, music has a pattern and form. One can never ever alter it. When you look at a painting your visual faculties only are at work. But in poetry and music and the words that carry the sounds, the person who redresses it, the arrangement of sounds and the visuals that the words themselves generate are different. The imagery bombards our senses on two levels - aural and visual. Music and poetry have an edge over the other forms of art.Every tree, every seed is a chip with its own characteristics. Mother earth nourishes each one of them in the required measure. But the chip takes only what it needs to qualify or characterize itself. So is it with music – rock or jazz or reggae – there is an organic structure within it. As all things have.

Surprising as it may sound to you, there is a mysterious link among them, as in all beings of Nature, which cannot be defined or explained by our logic. Each genre of music has its own beauty.Earth provides the proper environment for the genesis, growth and development of music and people. Like earth, every human being is endowed with all the emotions, but the proportion and expression varies. I may be late in getting angry. The quality and dimension of Sankaracharya’s anger will be different. The display of anger by a murderer will be on a totally different key. Why I say this, is each kind of music, like human beings, has its own body corpus, inherent organic structure and strength. It is upto the seeker to tap and draw from nature his nourishment.

All music is beautiful and intrinsically moving and divine. What you need is an ear for it.Film music is contextual, obviously. And it is limited. Whereas the symphony that I create (for the London Philharmonic Society) is non-contextual, free and there is no limit or barrier. The field is wide open, and not constrained by 24 frames!Whatever I have done over the years in film music isn’t a banquet. It is just papad and pickle that I carefully prepared, and they can hold their own taste for any length of time. And it is totally different from others.I have never felt that I have become stagnant, my music stale. Because it is done with total involvement. It will always be as fresh as the morning dew.

Sound is sound - pure and total. Simple. In the seven notes, which note is good, which is bad and which is indifferent?You know something? A simple tune is the most powerful and is easily carried on the lips of the listener. It gathers the strength of a storm. As an ordinary man is rare to find, so are simple tunes the most difficult to create. Children are simple and that’s why they grasp the simple tunes spontaneously. You must have the mind of a child, the innocence of a child to create a simple tune.That is the Kingdom of God.