By Aarushi Agrawal
English singer songwriter Ed Sheeran’s latest track Sapphire, featuring Arijit Singh, has exploded among Indian listeners. With over 90 million views on youtube, the song is everywhere, from restaurants and bars to social media and ringtones. At the moment, it’s as popular as popular culture can get.
With songs like this one, which have an energetic vibe and upbeat mood, the lyrics tend to take a backseat in the listening experience. But a closer look at the words reveals what is true of most popular culture the world over — in the way that artists speak about their beloved, it’s clear that they’ve placed that person where Krishna should be.
Consider this verse from the song:
“Look what we found, Karma reached out
Into our hearts and pulled us to our feet now
You know, the truth is we could disappear
Anywhere, as long as I got you there
When the sun dies, till the day shines
‘Cause when I’m with you, there’s not enough time”
In these lines, for instance, karma has brought two people together. And Sheeran is singing about how the two of them could disappear together because all he needs is this person. They could be away together for all of eternity, till the day is bright but also till the sun disappears, because no amount of time feels enough when he’s with the object of his affection.
We’re all souls. And each one of us has a longing to return to Krishna, and to serve Him for eternity. But over millions of years, our consciousness has been covered by temptation and become materially contaminated. So that longing, to spend eternity with one being, is displaced. Instead of placing Krishna in the centre of our lives, we find someone who is probably attractive in one way or the other, and we place them at the centre of our existence. We make it all about them. We convince ourselves that true happiness lies in being with this person. And artists very beautifully express this misplaced longing in their own unique ways.
But even if we do connect with that person, we experience only temporary happiness. And sooner or later, that longing will return. That hole, that emptiness, will continue to live in our chest. We can try to fill it with another person, with art, with food, intoxications. But from the soul’s eternal perspective, these are all temporary matters. And still that longing will return. Till we don’t find Krishna, that longing will stay. Sometimes, even after we’ve learnt about Krishna, that longing comes back, because we aren’t putting in the effort to connect with Him through chanting and other activities prescribed by Prabhupada.
But artists like Sheeran, who perhaps don’t know that much about the soul or Krishna but are in touch with the longing, will continue to create art like this, art that focuses on the body as the self and their lover as the ultimate. And we continue to listen, to sing and dance along, subconsciously internalising ideas that relate to the self as the body and not the soul.
The moment we actually understand that we’re the soul, and that Krishna is the ultimate goal, the ultimate friend, family, partner, we’ll start to lose our taste for materially situated art. It’s not that art is a bad thing or something to be shunned, but as one creates and consumes art, it’s prudent to keep in mind that most of it is not spiritually aware, and to ask ourselves what we can do about that.
