For all that I am a theatre person, perhaps the closest proof that there is divinity lies in music. I've just returned from a concert by Parveen Sultana - some madness made me buy a ticket I could not afford - and I feel truly blessed for it.I've heard her on CD ... but to be there, in the concert hall, hearing that voice - that huge voice - come out of her with such tremendous ease, slide up and down the scales, octaves ... I don't know, I'm a music ignoramus, but her voice climbs and drops, gets loud and quiet, slips from one end to the other, fills the hall, resounds, resonates, envelopes you, gets into you, fills your breath ... just takes you. Just before her show someone remarked that her experiences with divinity were usually with Parveen Sultana ... and if there is something called divinity, certainly this is it.
To be in the presence of an artist who gives herself up to her art - who lets the music become her - it is an experience in humility and truth. I don't know how else to put it. But the purity of the experience is amazing. This is perhaps the truth of art. And as I watch Parveen Sultana forget herself, sing with her voice, her arms, her entire body - as I watch the lack of 'show' that we have got so used to with pop performances - I find myself thinking that there is a truth here that we get to see so rarely - where the art is all, and the art is in offering to something higher ... where when the artist performs, the artist forgets her ego and is no longer herself but only her art. To see Parveen Sultana sing is an experience. She literally launches herself into her song .... song is too small a word. Its like she stands on the edge and dives. And flies. And there are no limits. And there is no time.
I am out of words.
