an article by Advika Daryani
With sunsets come the moon & whether she’s crescent shaped or round, she’s present, as though a friend to whisper your secrets to through your window. Learning to play the piano, as though a musician in an 18th century ballroom. Running into the pouring rain & dancing as though in a movie. Reading Shakespeare for your literature class out loud, in accents, as though you’re part of a ghost theatre.
Wearing jewelry you made & calloused hands because you stayed up writing. Sleep laden eyes because you were up past midnight reading & fur matted jeans because you stopped to pet every animal you met on your way home. The hues that come with autumn & the goosebumps that come with winter. The smallest of reasons to live bringing unfathomable scope for the imagination. The unprecedented notion of life serves no rhyme, nor rhythm. Its within human nature to long for stability & assurance & security. As this very life gradually reveals its downfalls, for many of us acclimatizing to realism brandishes challenges. The ways we cope with these obstacles essentially determine not only our fate, but the journey we embark upon to fulfil it. Buried within the cervices of media, through Tumblr blogs, Tiktoks & Instagram posts, emerges the concept of romanticism.
Romanticism; a seamstress altering synapses on our timelines, inspiring creativity, subjectivity & the primacy of the individual. Throughout history, romanticism, perceived as an attitude or intellectual orientation has seeped through various works of literature, painting & music, architecture, criticism & historiography. It can be visualized as the rejection of laws surrounding harmony, balance, idealization & rationality & simultaneously emphasizes the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary & the transcendental. We, as individuals, constantly crave a routine, to thrive on the default. And yet, irony remains the product of satire because we battle the unstable nature of life by formulating our days through fine print, by scheduling our every move. From the second we sip our coffee, to the minute we step out of our homes. Its undeniable that these routines provide a certain level of productivity, however, one must admit that they simultaneously lack artistry. At the same time, quitting these routines lead to a path of self-destruction. Cue romanticism.
You might be an extra in the life of that stranger you locked eyes with on the bus & the supporting character in the life of your best friend seeking love & in the lives of many, do you even exist? While we’re all inadvertently a part of the stories of people we’ve crossed paths with, should we spend our lives dwelling upon the role we’ve been assigned in theirs?
That being said, pair your rose-tinted glasses with vintage corduroy & claim the role of the protagonist! Romanticism extends to seizing control over your perspective, and as we begin enjoying the subtleties of life, we slowly fall in cadence to its meter. You’re claiming a preoccupation with the main character (you) & the focusing on your passions & inner struggles. Its only when we break free from the shackles of fixtured glances, do we begin to appreciate our own. As much as we’d like to believe in happily ever afters, their significance prevails more in the context of hope - one for leading a captivating life. More often than not, they’re only temporary. Conflict doesn’t simply dissolve after making its grand appearance, it’s an inevitable, recurring part of all our lives. What truly matters at the end of the day is how we progress despite the conflict & how we overcome its obstacles whilst maintaining our sanity. We can’t brew awaiting enticing circumstances, we need to begin seeking them. You as an artist should become a supremely individual creator, whose creative spirit is more important than strict adherence to formal rules & traditional procedures.
Romanticizing your own life doesn’t come with the accord of raising expectations from the ones around us, rather that we’re in charge of our own narrative. Entrusting our emotions to people, circumstances, or events can lead to a plethora of negative emotions when those expectations aren’t greeted. We tend to wish ourselves somewhere we’re not & anticipate the future constantly & in doing so neglect the present. Perceiving our lives by the second can draw intriguing revelations…
As the seamstress sews fabrics of our reality to cater to our intimate ideologies, we do indeed fall in love- with ourselves & our way of being.