 This is the concluding lecture of the first module of this course. The lecture is divided into two parts. The first part, it deals with the convergence and divergence theme primarily to create common ground for creativity. The second part reworks exercises for writing performance. So, let me start with the title of this lecture, which is being, doing, writing as performance. What do I mean by these? I am again not introducing completely new terms, but I am refining some of the ideas that we have already discussed in different ways. This may give you another kind of perspective on the same thought process. While I was actually working out this title, it just immediately came to my mind when I came to the concluding lecture. And I realized with certain amount of pleasure and surprise that an essay that Richard Schekner had written in performance studies and introduction and this chapter title is, chapter two is titled, What is Performance? This had resurfaced in my consciousness, you know, and therefore it is highly influenced this way of describing our perception. It is highly influenced by this essay and this approach, but it is certainly also modified because we have applied it to the writing process, whereas Professor Richard Schekner has tried to enlarge the scope of human theater and its patterns of behavior and how to theorize about variety of instrumental and symbolic activities. So, therefore, let me now come to the terms of reference. Doing is existence, doing is activity and performance is to do something up to a standard. Now, what does that mean and how do we handle these ideas and what do I want to do with these ideas? So, then what I am again trying to draw your attention to is this connection between experience which is seamless, perennially influx, reflection which requires pause and it also leads to self-expression. But the self-expression when it is a conscious act of communication that is performing up to a certain standard, it requires working out, crafting and in that sense, this particular approach of writing as performance is also devoted to the processes of writing that require first the writing process, then the drafting, redrafting and editing out of material that does not seem to really hold the kind of significance one would like to highlight. So, from that point of view, what we have done is again to bring all the elements of the earlier lectures into some kind of focus for you and therefore, in while talking about these ideas, let me go over some of these important connections and I will spend more time with one or two new ideas that I have introduced here. So, the first thing is to maintain the writer's notebook or a kind of memoir so that you can dip into it for further refinement of your writing process. This inevitably may be an kind of act of random writing, it may also be an act that captures your epiphanic moments. So, it depends on you as to how you describe it, but this is one step which was seen as a preliminary step for the writing process. The second idea was related to the honesty of the amateur or the apprentice and this idea again is not an idea that does not demand certain amount of focus and activity from you. On the other hand, what it does is to require on the one hand a sense of wonder that really makes you write, makes you see the world from your own perspective and relish that perspective, but at the same time there is this perpetual sense of learning that is involved in this process and therefore, this is the second major step which often is ignored by apprentices or new writers. Although if you look at the suggestions that many of the professional writers have given across the board, it is constantly to suggest the need for reading and to share their own process of reading as a very significant aspect of their growth and also their search for their own distinctive voices. We will take this up in the second module when we talk about writers and their own perspectives and reading as writers by looking at this process in a slower more elaborate manner. The other idea is related to revisions and additions that is it is not just enough to read cursorily and retain some semblance of what you want to retain from that reading, but I think this reading should be careful process. So, you can learn from reading carefully and widely. The next step very crucial step is the ability to paraphrase or summarize the important aspects of the content you have gone through and the third thing is this ability to fathom your own connection to themes, ideas, experiments in writing. So, there is this constant search which should animate this process and I think one good way of handling this is to maintain a separate book of readings. So, separate it from your memoirs although some of the writers we are going to discuss later on especially Albert Camus, he did not quite separate the two, but I think I would sort of feel more comfortable if you separate the two so that you can see the overlap between the two processes in some interesting ways. So, now the other aspect of writing process is related to the language that you are going to use and of course you are using English. As I said you can also apply these ideas to writing in your own mother tongue, I think they are equally relevant and if I were to give a course on Hindi writing then I suppose some of the examples would vary, but none of the ideas and attitudes would vary at all. So, the first thing is grasp of standard English. The second is to the need for active exploration of words and their connotations. I find many of the students are fairly weak on in this area because they just take words for granted, I think that should be reviewed. Vocabulary development should not be just seen as memory or memorizing words and new words, their meanings, etc. But you should also begin to see which of the words lead to perceptual growth. For example, the word liminal that I had added to your vocabulary last time. I feel that that's the kind of word which you can, you know, grow with. Many of these words require experience. They generate their own dynamics and therefore, I think it is important to see which set of words can help you in your perceptual growth. There may be a sudden moment of recognition of a new insight that has developed through a new word and that's a marvelous process. You should not deny yourself that process. The next important idea seems to be related to a sense of judgment and really this is very, very important because I see all kinds of very awkward overlaps between the domains that I have just listed for certain amount of judgment that you require about appropriate use of language in different situations and for different purposes. For example, if you are using English for formal letters or official communication, your English will be different from the language you use for mobile SMSs or for informal communication and then again distinctly different in academic writing with its own rules and regulations and protocols and of course, creative writing. Of course, you can say that in creative writing you can use all of these ways of writing which is true but I think you need to have certain amount of judgment about this matter and this is really not to tame your sensibility but mainly to make you more educated and sensitive person because otherwise often there are all kinds of affronts that can affect your interaction and your writing also. One important idea now that I'd like to share with you is the significance of figures of speech so far. I have really not discussed this idea and so we are building block by block and so please add this block as a very vital one. Now figures of speech of course, when we undertake literary education, we often talk about that this whole idea in terms of how figures of speech are often used and crafted for emphasis, freshness of expression or clarity and so we often give the examples of metaphors, paradoxes, similes, etc. in order to highlight this idea but I want to add to that discussion in a slightly different way and this departure from that is not a departure in terms of doing it in a radically different way but by bringing in the theme of convergence and divergence by looking at metaphor as an activity which actually permeates everyday language also and at the same time some of the very important thinkers of scientific creativity have used this insight about the significance of metaphors in scientific creativity in a very, very interesting manner where literary and scientific creativity are brought together so I want to really use this opportunity to share this idea which I have really cherished for a very, very long time so I am indeed very glad that I am able to share this with you. The insight comes from two physicists and they are Bomb and Pete, one of them was a quantum physicist, the other one describes himself as a holistic physicist. I will leave that those tags and descriptions to you but let us see first what a metaphor is and then we will look at how Pete and Bomb have linked literary creativity with scientific creativity by placing metaphor as a very crucial element of the process of cognition so now this is what metaphor is so in a metaphor it is a figure of speech which establishes comparison between two different things or ideas and what Bomb and Pete have done is to dip into metaphor from Shakespeare but also the frame of reference in which they have undertaken this explanation is really related to scientific progress and scientific revolution so let me first give you the title of the book so that you can see the context a little better so I am sort of not able to see the full title I think we have given it at the end but this is science order and creativity and in this chapter they talk about scientific revolution and the crucial significance of metaphors in scientific revolutions and in their perspective or in their perception of scientific revolution normal science often is displaced by leaps of imagination that great scientists have undertaken and in this particular chapter which is devoted to metaphors they talk about the example of Newton and they also talk about the example of Archimedes so now they actually give the example of Newton in terms of this very well-known example of the falling apple and how through that image and through the comparison of the falling metaphor this comparison between the falling metaphor and the moon and the earth he developed very rigorously and mathematically this whole important theory of universal gravitation so let me read what they have said with reference to metaphors in the case of Newton and how this actually required a leap of imagination and then I will also read out their interpretation of Shakespeare's metaphor in all the world's stage and also their hypothesis that scientific and literary creativity have the same sense of sudden perception of two very different set of ideas which lead to a new paradigm so then this is what they had to say about the example from Newton's work according to them it involved a radically new mental perception radically new mental perception although that mental perception is shaped by the discourse within the field and they actually go back into it I am not a scientist so I think if you are a scientist and you are watching this you are better equipped to understand this idea in its intricacies so according to them it involved a radically new mental perception of nature it was Newton who perceived the universal implications of the fall of the apple for example Newton's initial insight into the nature of universal gravitation it came from this metaphor that developed in his mind which can be translated in this manner and again I am paraphrasing from Bohm and Pete so this can be expressed in metaphoric form as the moon is an apple which is then extended to the moon is an earth so these are different you know the moon is different from the earth from the apple but similar in the sense that they attract each other and obey the same laws of motion so then after the after establishing this connection which was a result of leap of imagination and it was also an expression of heightened perception according to them of course this metaphor was unfolded in mathematical language by you know through the theory that he established and then of course it led to corroborative experiments in order to you know accept this theory and so on and so forth so according to them metaphors are really very very crucial aspect of scientific creativity and the leaps that science has taken from stage to stage so let me again read their specific statement about metaphor metaphoric perception is indeed fundamental to all science and involves bringing together previously incompatible ideas in radically new ways so this is what they had to say and then they went on to look at the example from Shakespeare and the reason they picked this up is because they felt that for a non-scientist I suppose like me and many others it is somewhat difficult to understand these scientific leaps that easily but according to them these can be understood very clearly if you look at literary metaphors which reach a larger audience so the they picked up Jacques monologue from Shakespeare's as you like it where I will just read the first few lines all the worlds stage and all the men and women merely players they have their exits and their entrances and one man in his time plays many parts so this is the excerpt that they have chosen in that book and according to them these two ideas the world being a stage these are two different or incompatible things and at first side they appear to generate a paradox and therefore and again I am quoting from Pete and bomb if A is the world and B is a stage then the corresponding metaphor would be A is equal to B but common sense dictates that the world is not a stage therefore A cancels B the metaphor therefore appears to involve a simultaneous equating and negating of two ideas concepts or objects according to them this leads to heightened perception so very very interesting moment of heightened perception and that is where creativity emerges it is a combination of startlingly new come you know ideas expressions etc. So now it leads to heightened perception and then according to them Shakespeare proceeds to unfold the inner meaning of the metaphor by exploring the subtle similarities between A and B and finally and I think before I read this what you can do is to undertake this analysis yourself although I have also tried to do the traditional literary analysis in the you know PowerPoint and the slide that I have shared with you but I think you can also undertake this exercise yourself and I feel that if you begin to have a hold on metaphors it will really help you in a very very big way. So now this is how they conclude this idea in perceiving a new idea in science the mind is involved in a similar form of creative perception as when it engages a poetic metaphor. However in science it is essential to unfold the meaning of the metaphor in even greater and more literal detail while in poetry the metaphor may remain relatively implicit that is the beauty of poetry remains vibrant and keeps growing and you can interpret it in different ways at different points in your life. So this is an absolutely marvelous take on metaphors and I would like you to add this to the pool of ideas that we have shared and also see its connections in everyday life also that can also lead to lot of inventiveness even while describing characters and also describing their perceptions and many other ideas. Let me add a slightly more complicated idea here I actually debated whether I should add this idea or not but I have a feeling that many of you may be ready to actually explore ideas at a fairly complex level also. So with the geopolities you know I would say that if this idea works for you treat it as something that you want to think about right now otherwise see this as an add on and look at it whenever you feel like it. I have also given you the resource for selecting this idea which is Rob Pope's wonderful book on creativity but he I will explain where this idea comes from in a minute but let us see now some enabling metaphors for the imagination. So we have been talking about leaps of imagination and how metaphors can be a key element in this whole process and therefore now some of the enabling metaphors are imagination as a mirror, imagination as a lamp, imagination as a laborant of looking glasses and as I said this is a complex idea from a lot of theoretical work that has gone on and what Rob Pope is referring to is Kearney's conception of creative imagination as a further refinement of M. H. Abrams very famous study the mirror and the lamp and what he has advised is to think about these metaphors to model a particular kind of imagination as well as a specific historical stage. Now it is difficult to decipher these statements so easily but as I said this is a layer that I have added on and you can keep it in abeyance and also come back to it whenever you feel ready for it. While talking about imagination my suggestion is to play around with these enabling metaphors and therefore what I would like to do is to also quickly dip into this elusive nature of play that Richard Schekner has talked about in play and performance from the same source you know in the same book that I mentioned earlier and I think I will not read this full quotation but mainly it talks about the elusive nature of play and therefore I think I will leave it at that and move on to also some of the terms that have been generated by him in order to describe play, free play, Maya Leela playing in the dark, dark play and then I think this is time to move to the second part which now begins to tie up the discussion around writing as performance. And so now let us look at the series of activities and exercises that now we have identified as further kind of refinement of the earlier exercises that have already been shared with you. So I will not actually read everything here in detail but what I would like you to do is to mainly keep one or two main ideas in mind and look at the power point yourself, the slide yourself and also dip into earlier lectures in order to make sure that you have understood the ideas properly. So that is why my statement here is related to proper comprehension of previous lectures and ideas in order to conclude given writing exercises that the first one is observation exercise, the second is memory exercise, the third is multilingual exercise. There are two multilingual exercises because again remember we have talked about the vitality of multilinguality because it is really that is where some kind of fresh energies can be generated. A lot of advertisers now use this strategy but I think advertising is a very different kind of outlook whereas the search for authenticity that a writer undertakes is a different kind of activity. So I think you can do a lot of interesting work by exploring your multilinguality. So the two exercises are given here. Then there is an investigative exercise, we call it investigative because it would be possible for you to sort of see if you can also look at some of the words, the key words that we have discussed earlier and undertake certain amount of careful investigation in order to see how the words culture and creative are used in your setup because that can also give you some idea about different kinds of values that circulate change and redefine the world around us. So that is again take on earlier exercise. The next one is fusion exercise we have given lead terms here and these lead terms I think express our point of view very clearly in point of view where we want certain amount of fusion we do not want polarization in your thinking process because I feel that that is an obstacle to the wonderful potential that you have and so in that sense these two exercises again are fusion exercises and I think you can have a look at it and undertake them yourself. The next exercise is a flow exercise with infusion activities it is a flow exercise and the reason we have described it as flow is because while listening to great music I think you are able to reach a state of mind which is close to that of flow that is of total absorption and so now we have picked up two pieces for your consideration. So what we would recommend here is to listen to these two pieces I would really like you to listen to them but in case you really do not feel comfortable with this music you can listen to something else but these are really great pieces. So what you can do is to listen to this music and immediately write a short literary piece that the music evokes. So the suggested pieces the first one is Kumar Gandharva's Nirgun Kabir Bhajan, Suntah Hai Guru Gyani and actually even within this particular Kabir Bhajan what I would like you to really notice is the part which is captured in these words this is I think towards the last bit of this composition Bin Dharati Ek Mandal Di Se Bin Sarovarju Paneeray. Now in my own perception these two lines evoke the convergence theme that is a kind of Nirguni scientific take of sorts where Dharati without the name seems like a mandal and also Bin Sarovar without the name Sarovar you would just see whatever for what it is. So to me it seems like that kind of Nirguni observation which also is a starting point of scientific observation too. So you can again listen to this piece and see what you feel about it. The second piece that I have recommended is also a piece that I love very much. It is Vivaldi's Spring from Four Seasons and Vivaldi was an Italian composer and this is a violin concerto. Now this concerto has a sonnet. It is very interesting. It has a sonnet because there is a lot of debate about who wrote the sonnet but it is there many people believe Vivaldi himself wrote the sonnet. It also has some very interesting instructions like in the second movement of this piece Vivaldi would like to retain the sound of the barking dog. Also what I actually I mean I love the music for itself but what I also found really very interesting is that he wrote much of his music for the female music ensemble in this house of orphan girls which you know he was involved with he was taking care of these young abandoned orphans and so much of his music was composed during this period while he was teaching these young children also he was trying to empower them. So there are a lot of layers in this music that you can also try and sift. So this is an exercise and very much like you to undertake and enjoy. The next one is of course the pastoral activity where the ejective pastoral we do recognize we did not really explain it earlier quite deliberately but we do recognize that it has many meanings and connotations and you can look at all these meanings and try and see how you view nature. So we are relating nature to pastoral so write about nature as per your understanding of the terms nature and pastoral in order to establish a personal relationship with this phenomenon and this is also a fresh idea that we have included endorsed in this course because I do feel that our relationship to nature also it is a pre-given no doubt about it and it can also be seen in so many different ways but at the same time this is something that can help us see ourselves better and also establish better relationships with the world around us not just the social the cultural but also in terms of nature and also its larger ramifications today. In the middle of the blank page within the same frame of reference you can undertake an activity which we have actually borrowed from another text that is available but in the middle of the blank page write down a list of plants or animals and to the left of this list write a column of adjectives which describe the plants animals their textures special features memories they evoke and to the right of the list write a column or verbs which illuminate the features of the subject the verb should be energetic and exact you can dip into culture and nature related discussions undertaken in lecture 5 and 8 before you undertake this exercise. Neha had undertaken this exercise actually she undertook this exercise and in a fairly elaborate kind of manner but we decided that at this point in time what we would do is to choose only an accessible example. So we have chosen a very small part of what she had undertaken because we are constantly also trying to see if our ideas make sense or not we have tried it with the students who have undertaken the courses but sometimes we also try and undertake these exercises ourselves in order to keep learning and also keep exploring the effectiveness of our ideas. So she chose the plant orchid and the adjectives that she has chosen are expensive fragile rare purple and the verbs that she has chosen are decorate adorned freshen. So this is just to give you a feel for what can be done. The other activity that is added to the list of the ideas that we have already shared and this is to give a sharper focus on writing is to write a short autobiographical piece which constructs the agony or ecstasy of your educational processes keeping in mind the discussion generated in lectures 8 and 9. Redraft and edit this piece from the viewpoint of presenting it to an audience. Now that is very important because sometimes if you feel that you are writing in a vacuum you may not be able to really refine the process of your own writing very much but if you have a sense of an audience you may not think about a specific audience because of course once something is printed as Margaret Atwood has mentioned this is a work we will this is an essay we will discuss later on she says once something is printed then it gains different kinds of meanings but it is very good for a writer to have at least some sense of an audience. So try and do that and redraft and edit it from the point of your presenting it to an audience and if possible present it to your friends. The next exercise again is a very I think very entertaining and interesting exercise and this is related to the media. Watch any of the films mentioned in lecture 9. Write an analytical review of the art and craft involved in bringing alive the script or theme. So the interviews of the script writer, director and actors will help you understand the process of artistic creation better. I missed out on that whole package of DVDs that Mr. Hirani had released after three idiot you know came out in the public space but so I do not really know if what you think of that material but certainly with a social network the material that is available is exceedingly interesting and I think we can really do a lot with that material by way of engaging with this whole process of team work in some of the forms that we are talking about. This writing can be isolating but let us say in filmmaking it is a lot of team work is involved. So even a young team is not generally seen only from the point of view of the young it is also seen from the point of view of the older people mercifully I would say. So now the other media exercise I think relates to the young medium that has really changed everything around us. So what I have done is to choose this statement a very interesting statement made by Brindal Laurel regarding computers and so you can examine this idea it is taken from a book called A Companion to Digital Literary Studies that came out couple of years back and so this is what the statement is. Every user's interaction with the computer is a unique performance and moreover it is one that like theater typically involves an element of make-believe. So it's your young medium see what you have to say about this. So respond to it and create a piece or create a performance or create some team work by doing different things you know. By way of more ideas in this regard I think I have already identified the essay and in the reading list you can also see this once again. So now the reading list that we have suggested here actually we have suggested only two books really speaking. So this earlier book that I talked about if you want you can just have a look at it because we have only used one statement. We have not really used the concept and the approach in a radical way and that is why we just have retained this here. So you can have a look at this digital literary studies or just feed the word Brindal or Hill in Google search and gain more access to material. So then Pete we definitely you know would like to explore further ourselves and Shekner's performance studies also is a very interesting take on many of these ideas of performance, theater, human behavior in different situations and its variety. So anyway two more books I think that we have identified are related to reading and writing from literature especially Schwabbert's chapter on metaphors although we really haven't used this book much but we while offering our ideas to you we have also been reviewing new fresh material and this is a new way of teaching literature it's very vibrant. So we thought we would include this reference too and the last one Simon Ray and Susan Scheberman editors companion to digital literary studies and that's what we dipped into for performance and interaction idea. I think that's about all that we have for you and this concludes the first module for us and I think we are beginning to feel more excited and many of these ideas will be developed further in the subsequent modules. I hope you will stay on board and also give us feedback about what these ideas have done for you. Thank you.