As days melt into weeks into months (especially in this place called IISc), the mind is a continuum of time marked by days of work, mixed-bag days of sub-optimal work and fun, and days of pure play.
Sunday comes and the mind ticks itself into a realm of self indulgence and laziness! It is in fact a great idea to work real hard during the week; a lazy Sunday when you feel you have ‘earned’ your rest is awesome by a whole different league. Relaxing this way on any other day comes a very distant second. On a Sunday, Relaxing rises in stature; it becomes a process, a phenomenon, a salubrious entity enriching the human entangled in its pleasurable mire.
It is so good to vegetate – to sit on your own, with a movie. What makes us all enjoy movies so much? It is a parallel universe. You walk through the world of someone else’s imagination. You find something to relate with in what you are watching – a person, even a landscape. It is a great feeling to break away from your own reality that you face every day. However charming your world maybe, however much filled with beautiful people, it feels good to take a break from it all and virtually tread unfamiliar grounds.
It is fascinating to follow a character’s life, be a part of the multitude of feelings; it is like watching a whole lifetime in fast forward, cutting out the mundane and going through the interesting parts rapidly. I tend to appreciate fine camera work and a lot of attention to detail. Small things can make so much of a difference. I have wondered how it would be if we could do the same with life. You know, tweak around and increase the light here, the color there, add songs here and a little romance there.
Freaky! Actually, I like it the way it is now.
Coming back to Sundays – I think movies go so well with Sundays because they are both removed from reality in a similar manner. They are both parallel tracks to a ‘normal’ existence. And a big hurrah to them both!
Monday, May 18, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Bob Dylan
... is a phenomenon that I am sorry I did not get in touch with a lot, lot earlier. Through his songs you can get in touch with the phases the man went through. His earlier songs that became slogans on behalf of "protest" of various forms in American society at that time - black equality ("Blowin' in the wind"), his veiled references to a possible nuclear holocaust ("A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall), just to quote two famous examples.
The song that has enamoured me and that I have been listening to in an infinite loop is "Mr. Tambourine Man". The beauty is in its simplicity. It's straight from the heart. It can be about anybody - you, me or even the Queen of England! Anyone who has a shadow of bitterness lacing their thoughts at that moment, and want to go away to another part of the mind leaving the sadness behind. Look at the last paragraph; I am putting in the Chorus para first, just for the flow.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.
Then take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind,
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves,
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach,
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands,
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves,
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.
Beautiful. Poetry. "Twisted reach of crazy sorrow". And the picture he paints. The last line. Genius.
The song that has enamoured me and that I have been listening to in an infinite loop is "Mr. Tambourine Man". The beauty is in its simplicity. It's straight from the heart. It can be about anybody - you, me or even the Queen of England! Anyone who has a shadow of bitterness lacing their thoughts at that moment, and want to go away to another part of the mind leaving the sadness behind. Look at the last paragraph; I am putting in the Chorus para first, just for the flow.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.
Then take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind,
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves,
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach,
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands,
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves,
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.
Beautiful. Poetry. "Twisted reach of crazy sorrow". And the picture he paints. The last line. Genius.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Magic and Ockham’s razor
Two people meet. A beautiful setting, a gathering of likeminded people. Or it can be a random chance event – just two people meeting. Them being together can lend so much to a particular setting and raise it above the normal realm. A glint of an eye, a hint of a smile dancing around the corners of the mouth, an energy that flows and charges all the particles between them. What is spoken about is immaterial; squiggles of electricity form and pulsate from both, intertwining in the middle and wrapping them together in the same energy field. A certain ‘chemistry’. Cannot put it too well in words, but I am sure you have experienced it. Magic.
If you feel all that magic, what do you do?
You apply the principle of parsimony, pick up Ockham’s razor and shave the meeting of everything except the bare essential. Two people met. Ha.
I was looking through a friend’s pictures, and there was a picture of two of our faculty playing a game that the students set for them. They had to shave the surface of a balloon. Apply shaving cream on it, and use a razor blade to 'shave' it clean. The image is sort of stuck in my head.
Imagine various situations in life to be a balloon; the razor to be Ockham’s razor, and the shaving cream, our minds.
Firstly, the how we perceive the incident will determine the color of the balloon – if you are angry, black with lightning on it and so on. Then, how much we blow up the balloon. Whether we are looking at the incident in its true magnitude or blowing it out of proportion!
Too much cream. Different fragrances, different consistencies of cream, leading to different types of layers on the actual event. Until we start believing in our perception of the truth so much, that the truth itself ceases to exist.
Too much pressure with the razor – it can burst the balloon.
Too little pressure can allow a lot of residual cream to remain; we are not looking at the balloon ‘correctly’, there is still some color to the perception.
We need to be very careful with all these components. People might say each thing is important in its own way. But according to me, the most important is the razor. Let’s not shave everything away! Life won’t be that much fun anymore! Let the Magic remain! :-)
If you feel all that magic, what do you do?
You apply the principle of parsimony, pick up Ockham’s razor and shave the meeting of everything except the bare essential. Two people met. Ha.
I was looking through a friend’s pictures, and there was a picture of two of our faculty playing a game that the students set for them. They had to shave the surface of a balloon. Apply shaving cream on it, and use a razor blade to 'shave' it clean. The image is sort of stuck in my head.
Imagine various situations in life to be a balloon; the razor to be Ockham’s razor, and the shaving cream, our minds.
Firstly, the how we perceive the incident will determine the color of the balloon – if you are angry, black with lightning on it and so on. Then, how much we blow up the balloon. Whether we are looking at the incident in its true magnitude or blowing it out of proportion!
Too much cream. Different fragrances, different consistencies of cream, leading to different types of layers on the actual event. Until we start believing in our perception of the truth so much, that the truth itself ceases to exist.
Too much pressure with the razor – it can burst the balloon.
Too little pressure can allow a lot of residual cream to remain; we are not looking at the balloon ‘correctly’, there is still some color to the perception.
We need to be very careful with all these components. People might say each thing is important in its own way. But according to me, the most important is the razor. Let’s not shave everything away! Life won’t be that much fun anymore! Let the Magic remain! :-)
First Rain!
It rained today. It was beautiful; a miracle of a day in itself.
It caused a friend to say, ‘today was so good that tomorrow cannot be better’.
If you take the time and watch a drop of water form at the tip of a leaf and then slowly drop to the ground. Plop.
If you inhale the smell of wet earth and fill your lungs till they feel like bursting into a thousand drops of rain water. Snifff…. Haaaa..
If you let your ears fill with the rain falling on trees (not buildings, and with the SERC generator off, if you please) till a drop of rain forms on your nose because of some unsaid connection between your ears and nose. Patter patter pit pit pit…..
If you let yourself stand in the rain - water falling on your head, seeping into your hair; water falling on parts of exposed skin and percolating into your very body; water falling on clothes and weighing them down with happiness! Streaaammm..
If you let your bare feet sink into wet mud on a paddy field ankle deep in water. Squeellcchh..
You will just laugh out loud. Your laugh will start from the top of your head and spread through the rest of your body! The sound will come from your larynx but in effect, your whole being, from tip to toe, will be a-laugh!
How many of us enjoy all this? Even if I am noticing these things and writing about them today, how many such days have I allowed to go past without just stopping and wondering about them? And hey, why do I need the rain to get me so poetic? Why should I call a day “just another day” in any case? I am not looking hard enough for the Magic. The very fact that the Magic is not apparent to me and I am having to look for it smells fishy – have I grown too old, too used to my surroundings? Or am I just “comfortably numb” to them?
Shucks!
It caused a friend to say, ‘today was so good that tomorrow cannot be better’.
If you take the time and watch a drop of water form at the tip of a leaf and then slowly drop to the ground. Plop.
If you inhale the smell of wet earth and fill your lungs till they feel like bursting into a thousand drops of rain water. Snifff…. Haaaa..
If you let your ears fill with the rain falling on trees (not buildings, and with the SERC generator off, if you please) till a drop of rain forms on your nose because of some unsaid connection between your ears and nose. Patter patter pit pit pit…..
If you let yourself stand in the rain - water falling on your head, seeping into your hair; water falling on parts of exposed skin and percolating into your very body; water falling on clothes and weighing them down with happiness! Streaaammm..
If you let your bare feet sink into wet mud on a paddy field ankle deep in water. Squeellcchh..
You will just laugh out loud. Your laugh will start from the top of your head and spread through the rest of your body! The sound will come from your larynx but in effect, your whole being, from tip to toe, will be a-laugh!
How many of us enjoy all this? Even if I am noticing these things and writing about them today, how many such days have I allowed to go past without just stopping and wondering about them? And hey, why do I need the rain to get me so poetic? Why should I call a day “just another day” in any case? I am not looking hard enough for the Magic. The very fact that the Magic is not apparent to me and I am having to look for it smells fishy – have I grown too old, too used to my surroundings? Or am I just “comfortably numb” to them?
Shucks!
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