There's Static in My Brain - A Written Rant.

When in the sixth standard, i participated in a debate and won it for my team. The debate was about whether Television is a good invention. 

Back then, my self-anointed intellectual take was that 'nothing is good or bad. That it depends on how we choose to put it to use.' This was pretty much a blanket answer I used when asked about the blackness/whiteness of anything. While that answer is still applicable to many things, as i'm growing up, i'm realizing that in case of Television, this answer is actually - bullshit. 

The reason i say this is not because things on TV are too sexist or too violent. 
It's because of the fact that - says my still self-anointed intellectual brain - if we were a rational people, the Television would not have been such a popular invention. 
Think about it  OR  if your nerves are dead from a series of images beamed at you 24 x 7, answer these questions:

1. What is the most addictive mechanical device in your home?

2. What activity, no matter how satisfactory the experience itself, leaves you irritated?

3. Which service promises you a bundle of choice and still manages to disappoint you?

4. Which device makes you detest any form of physical movement?

5. What is the machine that distracts you most from your goal (long or short term)?

The answer to all these questions is - The TV. Assuming you, my fleeting reader, aren't an obsessive compulsive cleaner and your answer wasn't some sort of cleaning contraption. 

Okay, lets try this another way - 

Argument based on both on a daily level and a macro-lifestyle level - 

People who do not watch TV, who do not say - "Ooh! Friends is on!", "Ooh! Gossip Girl is on!", "Ooh! KBC is on!" are more likely to do something creative, to go out - in short, to actually HAVE a life. 

These aren't statistics - it's logic. 

TV - some might counter - gives us exposure to what is happening in the Gobi Dessert or in Lindsay Lohan's life. But it does lead us to ignorance of what is happening in our neighbor's life. 

Again - no statistics, just plain logic - the more you watch TV, the less likely you are to ACTUALLY visit the Gobi Desert or even your local playground. Also, while we're at it, who watches the Discovery Channel as much as, say, Star World or Zee TV? Exactly.

Not only does TV addict and turn us into almost-degenerates (temporarily in the least dangerous case), it is also an evil ruiner of all things good - 

an easy example - dinner. 

a personal one - the movies. You know i'm going to expand on that - 

I have this magazine called "the Picturegoer". This edition was published in 1953-54 and it's editorial was concerned of the effect round-the-clock TV broadcast was going to do to the Movie Theatres. 

This article was naive and said that the movies would have to resort to antics like widescreen and 3d to attract the audiences. The truth is much worse.

The movies had to swallow the evil pill - MARKETING. 

Today - the more you promote a movie (a major part of which HAPPENS ON TV) the more people will come to see it. Soon begun the "newer! better! sooner!" era in moviedom. Movies, now, promote themselves like donkeys in mating season (Yah! I have actually seen one!) 

Not to mention, a movie's fate would be sealed in it's first week. It is hard to believe that there was a time when movies were allowed to be savored by theaters and audiences alike. Do you think Casablanca would've "clicked" in a week? Would Gone With the Wind?

We might as well forget about movies like Citizen Kane.

In this time... Ooh! Ooh! It's 11! Grey's Anatomy is on!

The Life within Art...

What is the definition of art? How does one limit the extent of what this word means?
Art.
Something that has been created and inspires some form of opinion?
I do not know.
Even as a "department" art is undefinable and just plain confusing. Yet, people live their whole lives in it.
And very few of them do it for fame or riches. There is an element of certainty in most of the arts and yet, nothing is rigid.
Art flows.

Maybe that's why it can be so enriching.


I have always complained and moaned about the human race and all the wrongs it has and continues to do. Here's something that i'm proud about. We create and appreciate what has been created. It's something that we (I like using "we" here) continue to do. Something amazing, for a change. While most of us, most of the time live inside the lines drawn by "them", there are times - sparkling moments - in which all those lines disappear. We are drawn, inexplicably, to something.

From a van gogh painting to a gore film from a cup of coffee to a simple doodle to an eagle's flight - it can be anything that can create a wave of unbelievable amazement - even if for a moment or two.

That surge of beauty with us someone (i think it was Tarkovsky) deemed as TRUTH.






The truth that pulls the artist towards creating and that which pulls a person to the art.


That thought in itself - as in, regardless of whether its been verified - is one that clears the clouded mundaneness of being.


We are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, my william says. Maybe creating and appreciating - nay, being blown away by art is a way of seeing what joins us.
I am aware that it sounds a little cuckoo when i say we are all like threads in a giant carpet (which by the way is a scientifically proven fact, im told) but once you see, feel something or even someone (like My William) that makes those neat little lines fade away into the real glory-soil of life, it feels like a gorgeous revelation.
Something that comes by very rarely in our world of broken souls.
Art can do that - it can remind us that even if we may seem apart and different, there is something intangible that makes us whole.
That - and here i use words of the guy whose face i wear on a t-shirt because that's how much i love him -
I am he
As you are he
As you are me
And we are all together...

goo goo g'joob goo goo g'jooooob!

juste quelque chose (that's "just something" in french)

Moving images from a beautiful mind,

showing, helping, educating another;

in a brittle art of escaping the grind.

A wishful bonding of a stranger as a brother.

With me now - the remnants of a glorious dream,

that makes me realize my story is my eternal salvation.

An intricate marvel 'twas on the grand big screen

and now in my mind with other cogs, works restlessly his inception. 

Writing a Realization...

This is a letter to my reader.
I guess every wannabe-writer-cum-random-blogger does this every now and then. Its because we want to know if anyone is reading what we send out into this giant black hole called the virtual world. In my case, that is exactly what i feel i'm doing. Or, actually i'm not doing most of the times. 


That is what this post is about. 
That i haven't been writing. And its not because i've been too busy, or too low, or too preoccupied, in fact its not because of anything. 
And i'm sorry because of it.  


I like sending my words out into the this alternate virtual universe, wishing and hoping that someone somewhere in the corner of this world is reading. Because as i'm sitting here at home, gorging on plums i realize this is what i love. THIS. Writing my heart out and sending it out in the throes of a million possibilities.
There could be a million things that could happen or none. And I love not knowing.
Its called floating in the cosmic universe. Little bill hicks, little master Oogway does that to you; you should try it. 


See, I like talking to someone I don't know, someone who doesn't exist, even to myself. I mean, even I didn't know i felt this way before I wrote this post! 
So, i'll be writing more. If someone reads me, WOW! If someone doesn't - that's fine! I'll force my friends and family to read it.  ; ) 


And, I'll keep reading this blog myself! I am a narcissist, yes. 
But that's not the reason I read my own posts ("not obsessively", she says to try and repair self image : P) 


It's because i want to be a writer.