Handbags And Lingo

A performance poem in response to Ruchi Bhimani's post of There Are Not Enough of Us by Adiran Mitchell on my Facebook Wall

2011-10-12T17:42:00.000-07:00

‎'A (somewhat cheesy towards the end) performance poem in response to Ruchi Bhimani's post of There Are Not Enough of Us by Adiran Mitchell on my Facebook Wall'

If all that we knew had to be shrunk
From the follies of a monk
To the sapience of a drunk
Thesauri of cumulative nomenclature
"E is M C squared" kind of consignature
To the size of a grain, or a cell in the brain,
To the strain of the cell that's right as the rain
It might not be vain, to sound
This little concern that last time around
It drowned, and when found
It stunk of a skunk,
The bottle with the message sunk
And a big fat chunk of genetic literature
Lied filed as "junk".

There are two kinds that notably fail
One that's lost meaning like the great ape's tail
And the one that is topsyturvied,
labyrinthian, obscured by a veil.
And there are many ways still why it wont work -
It's simply wrong or a system with a quirk.
But it's that which starts in verses, that disburses
The cure to death or the chess playing Turk.

Poetry is process: this cake will take time to bake
You get to Mitchell when you start with Blake
To answer the big question, a smaller one grew
You get another riddle, when you ask for a clue
So it all depends on wether you tap
A finger pointed at the sky or an exact map.

Let's get the bets right -

Put one for the absurd dialogue that goes ping….pong
Put one for the quark-slicing nano-knife
One for the Tambourine man's one last song
And one for that Pied piper's mendacious rife.

So how much of it works, how much sucks?
Well how much does love and how much does life?

Bookmarks for the night

2011-09-12T14:28:00.000-07:00

Theo Jansen's kinetic sculptures http://vimeo.com/14648291

http://www.strandbeest.com/index.php

Dosa Maker http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5UoP1j0UOk

India Geo-Thermal Energy http://www.eai.in/ref/ae/geo/geo.html

Zhang Linhai http://en.artintern.net/index.php/exhibition/main/image/448/6

Much Ago About Never

2011-06-30T10:49:00.000-07:00

(This one's a completely improvised piece I wrote sometime back. Actors and directors are welcome to stage it, creative commons and all, but a prior notice will be appreciated.)

Much Ago About Never by Anand Gandhi is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 India License.

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Grandma: Who told you about the milkman?

Temptress: I eavesdropped on your quarrel with mother. She said you would get free milk in exchange of…

Grandma: That's preposterous! You must have been in your cradle! How can you claim to remember that?

Temptress: Is that uncommon?

Grandma: Well, of course! It's unheard of.

Temptress: I remember many things.

Grandma: Like what?

Temptress: You sound worried.

Grandma: I wouldn't worry even if I believed what you were saying was true.

Temptress: You think I am lying!

Grandma: Why should you?

Temptress: Why should I what?

Grandma: Lie.

Temptress: But I am not!

Grandma: You are not?

Temptress: Lying!

Grandma: Do you remember her face?

Temptress: Vaguely. I can put it together with a lot of effort, hold it for a fraction of a second, and then it disappears again.

(Grandma looks away in thought. Temptress notices something in grandma's teacup. She pulls it out. Grandma notices her dipping her fingers in her tea. She grows suspicious. Temptress freezes.)

Grandma: What is that?

Temptress: Seems like a fly.

(Grandma slaps the girl.)

Grandma: Why would you do that?

Temptress: (indignant) Do what?

Grandma: Why would you put a foresaken fly in my tea?

Temptress: (throws the fly back into the tea) I was throwing it out, you foolish hag!

(Grandma realizes that she hit the child in vain.)

Grandma: Aww, forgive me, please. Forgive me, my dear Temptress. Has it been your day yet?

Temptress: Why do you ask so often? I'll tell you when it is.

Grandma: Can I see your bloomers from last night?

(Temptress hands over her underwear. Grandma inspects it. It's almost ritualistic.)

Grandma: Not your day yet, huh?

Temptress: You are so easy to manipulate, aren't you? I was wearing knickers, too.

(Grandma throws the bloomers aside. Becomes highly anxious with speculation. Temptress hands her another underwear.)

Temptress: Here.

(Grandma inspects it. Temptress gives out a hearty laughter.)

Grandma: Why, you evil little whore! Where did you get these?

Temptress: In mother's closet.

Grandma: (surprised) You could open it again?

(Temptress nods.)

Grandma: Why didn't you call me?

Temptress: I was scared.

Grandma: Well, of what?

Temptress: Of ending the pact.

Grandma: The pact? There is no pact!

Temptress: There might be. An unsaid one. What if calling you would end it? What if it would never open again to me, like it never opens to you!

Grandma: That's mighty presumptuous! It opens to me just as often!

Temptress: Why would you be so desperate to see it open, otherwise?

Grandma: To make sure we see the same things.

Temptress: You can ask me.

Grandma: Alright, then.

(Grandma pulls out the fly from her teacup, sips on her tea, calculating.)

Temptress: Ask away!

Grandma: Is there a...

Temptress: No!

(Grandma realises the complicated method Temptress has chosen to save her the embarrassment of not having seen the contents of the closet. She plays along.)

Grandma: Is the... still there?

Temptress: Yes.

Grandma: You saw it?

Temptress: Yes.

(The game is making grandma happy, she has almost begun to believe that she is able to open the closet, as well.)

Grandma: Did you look inside the inner drawers?

Temptress: Yes, I did.

Grandma: Did you find an old...

(Temptress decides to sign out of the game, abruptly, leaving grandma hanging.)

Grandma: What-do-you-call-it...

Temptress: (crosses her arms and raises her brow in mock challenge) What?

Grandma: That thing...

Temptress: You should know when to stop, really. Now, think about this! If you had stopped after having your satisfaction at the second question, you would have saved us both this situation.

Grandma: (begs) Please...

Temptress: (takes a moment before agreeing to rescue her) Yes, the old aluminium canister with the embossed peacock was still there. Is that what you were asking about?

Grandma: Of course that! The old aluminium canister with the embossed blue peacock.

Temptress: Green!

Grandma: But, of course! The green peacock. Was it green, really? It seemed blue in the dark.

Temptress: It's green.

Grandma: Bluish green?

Temptress: Green!

Grandma: But, of course. Ahh, I had seen it the last time I opened it.

(Temptress changes her mind.)

Temptress: There is no such thing as the old aluminium canister with an embossed peacock, green or blue, in the drawer.

Grandma: There is. I saw it.

Temptress: You didn't, because I just made it up!

Grandma: Why are you doing this to me? What have I done to you?

Temptress: Why are you so suspicious?

Grandma: No missy! It is becoming rather evident that you are the one who's suspicious. What's your conspiracy theory? I am waiting for you to come of age so I can sell you to a high roller? Can it not be something purer? An old granny worrying about why her sixteen year old granddaughter has not yet been touched by the Goddess!

Temptress: You want me to bleed and ache. That's pure! Pure what? Primal desire? Basic instinct? Pure bull-dung!

(Grandma pushes a spittoon in Temptress's face)

Grandma: Spit!

(Temptress stiffens her lips and shakes her head)

Grandma: Spit it out, young lady!

(Temptress keeps her mouth tightly shut, gets up and starts walking away. Grandma puts her walking stick in her way.)

Grandma: If you think I am going to allow you to walk away with that foulness in your mouth, you are gravely mistaken.

(Temptress spits in the spittoon.)

Temptress: Might as well. Damn! (Spits. Grandmother's jaw drops). Hell! (Spits again.) Scallywag! (Spits) Mangy rascal! Gundygut! (Spits twice)

Grandma: That should be enough.

Temptress: Gadzooks! Cor Blimey! (Spits twice)

Grandma: Stop, I implore you!

(Grandma tries to shut Temptress' mouth. The young lady dodges. Grandma shuts her own ears.)

Temptress: Bloody! (Spits. Makes an accidental sound like "Fuck" while spitting)

Grandma: What was that?

Temptress: What?

Grandma: The last curse.

Temptress: Bloody (Spits again)

Grandma: After that. You said fink or fuck or something like that.

Temptress: (confused) Did I?

Grandma: Is that a new curse?

Temptress: It's the sound of me spitting when there's no spit left in my mouth. Fuck.

Grandma: Goodness, gracious!

Temptress: (changes her mind) As a matter of fact, it is a new curse.

Grandma: What does it mean?

Temptress: (Thinking fast) It means… (lost for an idea) a very mean thing.

Grandma: What?

Temptress: (goes for it) Fornication! (Spits. Grandma gasps, closes her ears again.)

Grandma: No!

Temptress: Jementous slubberdegullion! Gadzooks! Blood of Christ!

(Grandma lets out an even louder gasp. Temptress spits twice. Grandma snatches the spittoon away before she can spit the third time.)

Grandma: You can't spit blasphemy out. It gets stamped on your soul.

(Grandma exits. Temptress gets really worried and spits a few times and joins her hands in prayer. Grandma returns with a soap and a bucket of water. Temptress switches back to being casual.)

Grandma: Open your mouth!

Temptress: No! (Runs. Grandma chases her.)

Grandma: Can't you see child? I am trying to save you, here. Let me wash your soul.

Temptress: You can't wash souls!

Grandma: Do not argue with the written word.

Temptress: I want to see where it's written that you can wash souls with a soap and a bucket of water.

Grandma: But that will be a complete waste of very precious time. It would be too late then. The marks will become permanent like those of small pox!

Temptress: How do I believe it then?

Grandma: Multitudes of people do it everyday.

Temptress: I haven't seen any.

Grandma: They do it in India! (An after thought) Albeit, they do it without a soap. In the water of a river. Poor coolies!

Temptress: (getting aggravated) But I reckon you had mentioned that they have no souls.

Grandma: (Wisely) They do have souls, child. Only they are lesser ones. Greater than mice and monkeys. Lesser than men and lions.

(Temptress gets really agitated. Grandma gets more composed.)

Temptress: What about wild boars?

Grandma: What about them?

Temptress: Are the souls of these Indians you mention greater than those of wild boars?

Grandma: Yes, they are.

Temptress: Elephants?

Grandma: No, lesser than those of elephants.

Temptress: Camels?

Grandma: Greater than camels.

Temptress: Foxes?

Grandma: Them too, yes.

Temptress: Unicorns?

Grandma: Lesser than unicorns.

Temptress: Lizards?

Grandma: Greater.

Temptress: Greater, whose?

Grandma: Greater, the Indian's

Temptress: Fairies?

Grandma: (unquestionable certainty) Surely, lesser than fairies. What kind of a question is that?

Temptress: Gnomes?

Grandma: About the same.

Temptress: Snakes?

Grandma: Snakes have no souls, child.

Temptress: Dinosaurs?

Grandma: What are they?

Temptress: The giant lizards mentioned in Lord Richard Owen's manuscripts.

Grandma: Oh, they are mythical creatures. Surely you don't believe in such mumbo jumbo!

Temptress: Well, I thought…

Grandma: Dear Lord! How forgetful of me! Wash your mouth first and then we shall talk.

Temptress: Is there an alternative?

Grandma: You can whip yourself.

Temptress: How many times?

Grandma: Once shall suffice.

Temptress: Alright.

(Temptress exits.)

Grandma: (self) Fuck! (spits) Fuck! (spits) Fuck! (spits) That relieved the pain in my shoulder muscles. Fuck! (spits) There's something peace endowing about this curse. Fuck! (spits) Surely, if this is what it makes me feel, then it must be a… (it dawns upon her) Oh, forgive me Lord, for I have sinned!

(Grandma starts aggressively washing her mouth with the soap and the water. Foam spills out of her mouth. Temptress enters with a whip, is shocked to see grandma in this state, then understands, and carries on with her own business. She braces herself tightly in anticipation of the sting, and swings the whip around. Firecrackers burst. Blackout.)

Grandma: (with a mouthful) But the milkman and I never fucked! (a loud spit).

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The desperate justification of is...

2011-06-06T11:59:00.000-07:00

Gather information. Go forth. Record, consume, analyse, remember. What has been left out? The eagle's eye, the bat's ear, the mantis shrimp's colour receptors? Can I have your this? I'll take your that! Oh, and oh, flight! Learn. The hardware will work for now. Who got it more right? The diaspora or the collective? The giant ever stretching reef with a common mind or the big cat, fending for itself. The fungal spore or the ape? Get them all, and put them in one. Even some metals or minerals? The chimp's photographic memory, but wasn't it a voluntary barter? How would they know who to imitate? Predator and prey, alike. The games will play on. Let gold glow like the sun in the mind's eye. Make the fruit sweet and delicious. If it feels good, it is good. How to limit excess? Weigh contradictions? Exchange and infer, exchange and infer. Collect and analyse. To act upon memory? Punish and reward. Incentivise. Invent pleasure and pain and everything in between. But why? It will all get somewhere, someday. Where? Who knows? Not even the ocean or the sky know. Then? It can only be better. Why? Someday all of this won't be enough. Then, how? Disperse and re-assemble. Go through forms. That's a truer exchange. Any alternative to dispersion? Record in the smallest. Small has longevity. It will all take time. Very long. So why bother? Well, why not? What else is there to do, now that you got so far? So, play along. Might as well. Or else? Go back to nothing? Neither matters, but this makes more sense, because sense, also like everything else, IS. Why keep dispersing? Because you don't love yourself all that much. In that case? Organise. Level. Soldiers and workers. Leaders and analysts. What a bore! There's more. The greatest promise? Transcendence, of course. A meaningless trap like that? How can that work when nothing matters? Because it's come to be. Once it is, it continues to be. It wants to continue? Wanting presumes knowing the clock. It just does. It's never going to stop then, is it? It will. When? When it knows everything, maybe. When can that be? When everything has been everything. Keep circling like that to no end? And what assurance is there that it won't all start again? Maybe, it will. Maybe, it always does. That's so tiring! Maybe, but what else is there? You know a better game?

Flower tea

2011-05-20T23:23:00.001-07:00

A melange of Ceylon green Sencha tea, hibiscus, sunflower petals, chamomile, cornflower blossoms and rose petals cooked in milk with one spoonful of gulkand (Rose petals in sugar syrup) this morning... A tea that tasted like a morning walk through nostalgia.

- Posted on the go.

Worrying about arthritis...

2011-05-20T23:12:00.001-07:00

I said to Leonard Cohen, "How lonely does it get?"
Leonard Cohen said, "Insufficient data for a meaningful answer, yet."

- Posted on the go.

Location:Half asleep

and as long as it brought me no harm...

2011-04-25T12:43:00.000-07:00

Thought I'll share this link, after all. This is like having to prove the world is not flat using google images, because there are still some fools out there who claim otherwise. It should have been so bloody obvious that it would be ridiculously excessive even to have to make videos to prove a self evident point. And yet the need for reason exists, because of the infinite lack of it. A rare supply of reason and clarity rushes to meet up with the demands of obscurity and ambiguity from a civilisation shit scared of its imminent mortality. Demands in the form of schizophrenic multitudes so desperate to escape the horror of the real, so transfixed with the promise of the transcendental, so childlike in the stubborn naivety, and so dangerously attached to the fantasy, that they would defend it with their lives. We turn a blind eye towards collective blindness and have to bear witness to the messiahfication of morons and murderers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwOecpMkHH0

David Thorne

2011-04-15T13:01:00.000-07:00

I literally laughed my ass off on this one.

http://www.27bslash6.com/overdue.html

A poem by Rizvi for Dr. Binayak Sen

2011-02-18T00:57:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woKjTjrTkmU

Second Genome

2011-02-06T02:29:00.001-08:00

Looking to find more information about the Second Genome project. Any recommendations?

Mediocrity - a midnight rant after being woken up by mosquitoes.

2011-01-28T15:25:00.001-08:00

Look at the ugly buildings springing up everywhere in the city (including the recent excessively expensive one - a friend suggested that the enigmatic W like column on the facade is actually an inverted M seen from a higher floor). An entire generation poisoned by the ugliness and regressiveness of contemporary Indian television and cinema might still someday grow up and grow out. The subverting of an entire nation's intelligence at the hands of heavyheaded producers with their heavy-handed obscenities might still be reverted someday (to what, though?). Goondahs looking down upon you from illegally put up political hoardings, daring you to evoke your rights as a free citizen, will someday be replaced. "We, the children of the 80s and 90s survived all of it, didn't we?" (or did we? Let's ask that as we bask in the glorious nostalgia of kitsch.) But these ugly unfriendly deformities of glass and steel are here to stay, at least a couple of decades. And there are those of us all willing to embrace it, even celebrate it in the name of colour and spontaneity. Most of us simply needed the western validation of the stench as a unique flavour. Sorry, I don't intend to attack anybody. This is, afterall, just a rant. My apologies to the city. It doesn't change our dynamics, ok? I mean my family lives here and I have no intention to go into an exile at this point (that should explain the cowardly tone in this rant - it's like the expletives you offer a reasonably amused truckdriver with your car window on.) Every time there's an internal struggle between integrity and discretion, courage gives in, discretion takes over and I bow out from the battle of wits with the unarmed. The most liberal mind looks at the overwhelming data and wonders for a fleeting moment if mediocrity is a racial or an economical factor, and concludes that it's only a cultural predisposition. Note to myself: if you are not happy with the way it stands, change it or shut the fuck up. Alternatively, contribute to it and have a good time while you are around. Surely, there must be more solutions, but too late in the night for thoughts on saving Gotham city.

Chutney Culture

2011-01-11T14:31:00.001-08:00

I was amused by the popular Indo-Fijian culture (and with the Fijian history, in general). Too late in the night to write my impressions on Chutney Dancers and Indo-Fijian films (surprisingly, not called Follywood). But here are some links of interest:

Something called a "Coolie Mon Party" - couldn't find a Wiki page on it-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEr9wK-FIZw

Another "Chutney Dance":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fmq1_pDhyg

Trailer of a Fijian film "Ghar Pardes":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkVxOXLIcqM

And while there's a mention of chutneys:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/233880.stm

Meanwhile, there's an entire world of Chutney music out there, Indo-Caribbean in origin, but mainly pioneered by this gentleman: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3eU7jGzvqs (This one's pure radiance with lyrics like "when we were children, you did promise me - that when you'll fall in, you'll fall in for me" and the very poetic "your mother will forsake you, your father will neglect you, but since I know you darling, I am dying for you" - a pot of Karagarga 1 GB for whoever transcribes the entire song! Chunky, it's time to change that caller-tune!) Another gem of wisdom from the late Sundar Popo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBw8ZknoH5I

The Lives of a Cell

2010-12-31T10:52:00.001-08:00

I am midway through a highly engrossing, eyeopening read that I landed upon, on a recommendation that I am now greatly thankful for. (Thanks, Manoje.) I surfed through the book with a highlighter in my hand with the intention of sharing a few quotes and excerpts. I found myself layering practically every other line with a florescent pink. Lewis Thomas' book gave me precisely what I went to it for - inspiration. And now I am glad I threw those half baked bits into my TEDx talk. Ofcourse, somebody kindly pointed out that the wheel has long been invented.

Here are some of the best bits from the first few pages (stripped a bit of context, though). I gave up marking after that. -

"A good case can be made for our nonexistence as entities. We are not made up, as we had always supposed, of successively enriched packets of our own parts. We are shared, rented, occupied. At the interior of our cells, driving them, providing the oxidative energy that sends us out for the improvement of each shining day, are the mitochondria, and in a strict sense they are not ours... Without them, we would not move a muscle, drum a finger, think a thought... I like to think that they work in my interest, that each breath they draw for me, but perhaps it is they who walk through the local park in the early morning, sensing my senses, listening to my music, thinking my thoughts. I am consoled, somewhat, by the thought that the green plants are in the same fix. They could not be plants, or green, without their chloroplasts, which run the photosynthetic enterprise and generate oxygen for the rest of us. As it turns out, chloroplasts are also separate creatures with their own genomes, speaking their own language."

"Our genomes are catalogues of instructions from all kinds of sources in nature, filed for all kinds of contingencies."

"Theodor, in a series of elegant experiments, has shown that when two individuals of the same species are placed in close contact, the smaller of the two will always begin to disintegrate. It is auto-destruction due to lytic mechanisms entirely under the governance of the smaller partner. He is not thrown out, not outgamed, not outgunned; he simply chooses to bow out."

And this he tells us with a disclaimer that "we violate science when we try to read human meanings in their (the insects') arrangements"-

"It is hard for a bystander not to do so. Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into wars, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves. The families of weaver ants engage in child labor, holding their larvae like shuttles to spin out the thread that sews the leaves together for their fungus gardens. They exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television."

And this way of looking at ants was reminiscent of a really neat idea Pooja recently came up with... "Distant sources of food are somehow sensed, and long lines, like tentacles, reach out over the ground, up over walls, behind boulders, to fetch it in."

Then there's a lovely essay on pheromones that has instantly inspired a scifi/horror idea. :) Here's a sweet one from "A Fear of Pheromones" -

"It has been soberly calculated that if a single female moth were to release all the bombykol in her sac in a single spray, all at once, she could theoretically attract a trillion males in the instant. This is, of course, not done."

(The mention of the symbiotic relationship of sea crabs and sea anemones and the way the anemone finds its crab attaching itself to its host (very reminiscent to the wand finding its wizard) conjured a B-Movie image of a cheerleader with lethal pom-pons, permanently sewn into her hands.

Saw some really well made films - My Joy and Revanche... and some really crappy ones - Tron and The Tourist. (Btw, Ra.1 smells suspiciously similar to Tron Legacy, or is it just another half baked take on the Ghost in the Machine.? How can anything be worse than Tron: Legacy, I wonder! I guess the mention of RaOne will generate more traffic on this seldom visited blog. The visitors, thus attracted, will be as disappointed as the stall audiences of Hisss.)

And yeah, wishes of a happier new year to friends and family (there's now an app that searches and deletes all new year wishing messages from the phone).

Transferring contacts from Nokia to iPhone

2010-12-19T06:56:00.000-08:00

Ok, now there are several methods suggested online, but I had to figure out my own recipe simply because I didn't have all the ingredients in one place.

Ingredients:

Nokia 6210c or one of those Nokia phones too vainglorious to announce its own model number anywhere on the body.

Nokia PC Suite on a Windows PC - simply because I could't find a straight forward way of downloading Isync for Mac.

MS Outlook - which is total crap, but not as crappy as it's Mac sister Entourage.

Plaxo - the cool tool that saved the day.

Iphone 4 - the glorious basterd.

The catch - Didn't want to sync the Iphone to multiple computers. It was nicely synced to the Itunes on my Mac already. Had to figure a way of getting the contact book from Nokia to Iphone without using Itunes.

The solution - Transfer all your contacts from your Nokia phone to the PC using Nokia PC Suite. Sync the PC Suite with MS Outlook. Export a CSV text file from Outlook. Make a free account online on Plaxo. Upload the csv file. Now download the Plaxo app on your iPhone via Apps search. Run it on iPhone. Login to your account and sync it! Thats it!

TEDx

2010-10-30T20:52:00.000-07:00

(After putting out a few interesting ideas, I couldn't complete the streams of thought I started. I'll continue to do so in the next few days. You are welcome to participate in this public introspection, but please don't expect any bumper stickers. This essay is hyperlinked.)

Is enlightenment googlable? Or will there come a point in time when it will be? Won’t it be cool to one day wake up and ask google what’s the meaning of life and get the perfect answer needing no further interpretation. The answer we’ll read and go… ohh, yes, of course. Is it even an appropriate question? For there is a somewhat naïve presumption here that there can be one final state of enlightenment as against a more reasonable view that there can only be a constantly evolving world view that attempts to become more and more holistic – every new theory containing the truth of its predecessor. It’s nothing more than a catchphrase, really, that I often use. The underlying question is can we attain all knowledge there is to attain, or at least have a straightforward easy access to it? Will that knowledge by itself bring happiness is another question, altogether. Philosophical questions are questions raised by children that even scholars fail to answer.

I am asking questions here, meandering from one point to another, not trying to join the dots conclusively, not giving out bumper stickers or giving out too many. I am trying to use known stories as metaphors of some new ideas. I am also trying to build a case for the responsibility of an artist and a storyteller as the viewfinder, searchglass, microscope, telescope provider. In Zen, they say, before you study Zen, rivers are rivers and mountains are mountains, while you are studying it, while you are going through the motions of refuting and deconstructing and experimenting with life and truth, rivers are not rivers and mountains are not mountains, and once you get enlightened, rivers are rivers and mountains are mountains.

We use words like cheeks, colour, inside, elephant, breakfast, toothpick, God, etc cetera everyday. But say, do you reckon a sentence like this has ever been formed before? After finishing an elephant for breakfast, all that the Gods longed for was a toothpick. Add to that some sexuality, and you have what the standups use for a blush effect. Let’s add… vagina. After finishing an elephant for breakfast, all that the Gods longed for was a toothpick and a vagina. Or the God appeared at his breakfast table, and his cheeks turned the colour of the inside of an elephant’s vagina.

Known takes us to the unknown. What we are struggling to find is a permutation. It’s amazing how we expect the very words of our finite vocabulary with their nearing infinite combinations, of course, to suddenly one day arrange themselves in a way that they will yield the perfect final answer to… well, life universe and everything. Maybe its just an equation we’re looking for? Maybe it’s a number? 42? But as Deep Thought in the Douglas Adams classic suggests – 42 IS the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything. But what IS the question? For all we know answers are already out there, but are we entering the right search keywords? Are we asking the right questions?

The classic Borges story wherein the greatest cartographer alive is summoned by the king to make a map of the kingdom – a precise map with the smallest of details – the ultimate googlemap – the all encompassing answer after which there can be no questions – the cartographer sets out on this highly ambitious project like we have, adding detail after detail to the ever growing map… and by the time he is done charting one area and has moved on to another, the first area has started going through some modifications – and for the map to be perfect, the changes have to be accommodated. The map keeps growing across time and area, till it replaces the kingdom itself.

Now, it’s farfetched to imagine that the World Wide Web will replace the world itself anytime soon, but it’s imaginable that someday we might hit a point in time, where all of an individual’s memories, dreams, experiences and emotions can be archived in cyberspace. Once while working for an idea creation company, I’d created a simple idea for a cellphone software – when you get the software, you feed in forms somewhat on the lines of the EQ and other tests people take up online, but far for extensive than those. It probably takes hours to fill it up, it asks you everything it can ask you. Likes, dislikes, habits, behavior, aspirations etc. Now a unique code containing all this information is put up on a giant server. The next step is that you set up a level of connection you want to make – ranging from business finder to a little cheesy soulmate hunter. Now each time you pass a potential soulmate – sharing maybe your tastes or ideas or worldviews… in a bus or a mall or a party, both your phones beep, and give you an option of messaging each other. So often must we be crossing people, who otherwise would greatly enhance our lives or we theirs. I thought it might be a good idea to not miss out on them. Guess it might be scary for some people, but they won’t buy this in the first place.

The number of people we come across in direct contact every day, either physically or virtually, are perhaps the number of people our ancients met in their entire lifetimes. The amount of cultural exchange that has happened in the last decade itself surpasses past centuries. Human history is being documented and archived like never before. The tools for recording personal histories and experiences are available to more people than ever before. The difference between the tools used by professionals and those available to consumers is fast diminishing, and practically all of it is being put up in cyberspace.

I have been greatly inspired by Isaac Asimov’s story The Last Question. The supercomputer keeps evolving along with the human race, growing in capacities, diminishing in size, till at one point the collective human mind fuses with the super computer in hyperspace. The last question asked here repeatedly is “Can entropy be reversed?” Meaning loosely whether energy getting dispersed off be brought again, somewhat like asking can a tree become the seed again? The computer replies with the refrain, “There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.” That is a fair answer to a lot of our questions today.

I think of the map story as an interesting metaphor for our quest of finding meaning. I guess the answer will either have to be the scope of the question itself – this infinitely vast place we meander in or maybe, just an arrow sign, a pointer. But historically, it has failed us over and over – this attempt at final answers, for the idea seems to be fundamentally flawed – a map that exactly mirrors the universe has to be shifting, expanding, contracting, transforming, and it’s pretty obvious that this can be achieved only with the rigour of scientific thought open to challenge and rethinking. But along with that we also need to know the art of looking at it, the angle, the approach, the perspective.

As a corollary to the monkeys typing randomly at the typewriter, let me share an analogy a friend has given. Say you were to throw a handful of grain on a patch of floor, what are the chances that they will fall in a pattern that looks something like your face. The chances of something like that happening do exist however impossibly rare they might seem to be. One can probably test this with a software with a white grid and a few hundred pixels that get randomly dispersed on it with each click – the virtual version of seeing trains, faces and rabbits in clouds. Probably it holds in its godzillion combinations, a few hundred patterns that “mean something” to us. But what about the patterns that don’t resemble anything we have previously seen before? I am trying to suggest that they are just as unique as the ones that do mean something – if you were to try and recreate the same random arrangement again by a randomizing click, the chances of getting it again will be just as rare.

Seen from within, the pattern, however random will seem to carry “meaning”.

So instead of joining the dots, it might be more reasonable to appreciate the dots for what they are – spontaneous, random, ever changing. If I were to read to you a line from Eliot “That corpse you planted last year in your garden, has it begun to sprout?” … “what does it mean?” is a reasonable question to ask. But if I were to play you some Beethoven… it would be senseless to ask a question like “what does it mean?” All art aspires to the state of music… to the point where experience is not hindered by context. The context, as we know, is this – we are an insignificant bunch of atoms on this tiny wet rock going around a feverish star in a galaxy of billion other stars, in a universe of billion other galaxies. Nature is not teleological – it does not have a predetermined purpose or design. In other words, we would arrogant pricks to believe that the universe led up to us to be able to answer questions about itself. In absolute randomness, things came to be and here we are trying to make meaning out of some very obvious meaninglessness. We have found some amount of meaning by ways of looking and experiencing. I feel culture, with all its songs and euphemisms, plays a huge role in bringing this sense of stability.

I find romance in the trinity of Satya, Shiv, Sunder – we ought to find out whats true, how do we know what’s true? What do we do with it once we know whats true? What’s ethical? What’s moral? And while we are at it, might as well make it beautiful.

So we have a giant wiki mirroring the giant world, but we need another map to be able to read this map. We learn to see through poetry and music and art. Through stories and parables. Culture is the refresh button. A man is being chased wild through the woods by a vicious snake. He keeps running till he reaches the edge of the cliff… in Hollywood they call it the page 66 of the screenplay… this is where most chases take place in the film… so he starts climbing down the cliff, loses balance and clings on a strong branch of a tree jutting out of the cliff. He looks down and sees the ground is not too far, and just as he is contemplating whether to take that leap or not… all of us know that point in life, whether to leave that high paying job or not, whether to move to a new place or not, whether to marry or not… the ground is not too far below, in the worst case scenario he’ll break a bone or two, but surely survive it. Just then he hears a lion’s roar coming from the ground below. He doesn’t see the lion, just hears the roar. So now he has the snake still closing in, the roar of the lion and the branch he is clinging to has begun to dangle too. In the midst of all this, he spot a lovely blossomed cherry on the tree, he plucks it, eats it and attains bliss.

Most of you must have heard this parable many times before, and that’s a part of my illustration. We need metaphors to access facts. Imagination to access the truth. And the subject of intuitive experience takes us to the most fundamental questions of all. Why do we feel pleasure and pain? Food, sex, well being of kin and other activities encouraging sustenance and reproduction are awarded with an inbuilt incentive of pleasure. Sorrow and pain are warning signs at a core level. Why should we continue to reproduce and sustain? What are we? Are we an individual or a cumulative – a system – a colony? We are born sterile, but within hours are inhabited by billions of bacteria. We have more bacteria in our body than cells, and its reasonable to think that we won’t survive without them. Is it also not reasonable to imagine that the cumulative that we call mind, is made up of functions of many chemicals, living cells and bacteria. In other words, our some of our thoughts just might be what the bacteria want us to think.

If we were to look at the resemblance of collective intelligence at the level of a single cellular lifeform, it won’t seem like a totally absurd proposition.

This is from Wikipedia. Cordyceps Unilateralis is a parasitoid fungus. The fungus's spores enter the body of the insect, usually an ant through respiration, where they begin to consume the non-vital soft tissues. When the fungus is ready to spore, its mycelia enter the ant's brain and change how it perceives pheromones, causing the insect to climb up the stem of a plant. Infected ants bite the leaf veins with abnormal force. The fungus then kills the ant, and continues to grow as its mycelia invade more soft tissues and structurally fortify the ant's exoskeleton. More mycelia then sprout out of the ant. When the fungus is ready to reproduce, its fruiting bodies grow from the ant's head and rupture, releasing the spores.

Seems like a very complicated way of achieving something that could probably be done rather simply. Seems like something only humans do. Like the Rube Goldberg illustrations.

It’s a great story that nature tells us and perhaps it needs no further reinterpretation. But there are hundreds of thousands such stories already out there that do. Seemingly random and absurd, without great morals to take away or bumper stickers to wear on t-shirts. While science is busy unifying theory and make enlightenment googlable, art ought to be busy finding the right search keywords, the right questions and the unique ways of looking. It’s the job of the artist as a scientist to discover and deconstruct, as a philosopher to reflect and challenge and as an artist to show us if it’s beautiful or not.

Thank you very much.

Suicide Note

2010-10-16T05:08:00.000-07:00

Even though I am far from finishing the whopping 1904 pager Suicide Note of Mitchell Heisman, it has been a very stimulating read so far. There are some lapses in logic and fundamental assumptions - like the comparison of ethnocenticism and anthropomorphism to what he calls viviocentricism (life-centredness) - such comparison is fundamentally flawed, for the negation of ethnic inequality and human superiority still builds from the basic assumption that all life "wants" to continue.

This obsession with bumper stickers and coherent meaning has been oppressive, and at best, just fun. Yet these reminders to find meaning in apparent (and usually obvious) meaninglessness are compelling. I think it all boils down to that basic choice, which for most of us, unlike Heisman, is a default one. The choice to be. Once you begin with that assumption, you can build your way up to curiosity, joy, survival and maybe even altruism.

I am approaching the final production schedule of my feature film "Theseus' Ship". I am about to shoot the part in which the monk Maitreya is fasting unto death. As death closes in, he is forced to re-question all the ideas he has taken for granted. Its safe to assume that death is our only certainty, and inexistence the primary fear. Its in the face of this fear, that transcendental signifiers like god, heaven and soul need to be invented, and attempts are made to produce coherent views.

I was amused at Heisman's observation of the Bible's attempt at imagining infinity. He points out that even with the best of their ambition to imagine infinity, the writers of Bible could only imagine a god who looks like man, lives beyond the clouds and a world that is only a few thousand years old.

Meanwhile, "Theseus' Ship" will perhaps be the first film to allude to Charvaka and the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Images will be up soon.

Theseus' Ship - Storyboard

2010-09-19T16:20:00.000-07:00

Arielle made this piece a while ago. It illustrates a scene from the monk's story in the film.

(First day of reconnaissance in Stockholm today. It was great fun catching up with Rupesh and Deepal)

Cool Hunting

2010-09-03T11:56:00.000-07:00

Last week's inspirations:

Photography:

http://www.davehillphoto.com/

http://www.christophehuet.com/

http://www.charliewhite.info/

http://www.aperture.org/crewdson/

Illustration:

http://www.ickypen.co.uk/

http://www.leandro-lima.com/banco-do-brasil-diario-de-bordo.html

http://www.thanuka.com/

Magazines:

http://www.littlewhitelies.co.uk/

http://zupi.org/

Right Here Right Now on Youtube!

2010-08-29T19:03:00.000-07:00

Right Here Right Now on Youtube!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVAokeqQuFM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIYJePEnvUY

An old song...

2010-08-28T15:13:00.000-07:00

(Revisited, just for the record)

The Kino Song

Neon lights make a static sound
So dragon-flies don't stand their ground
While the venus trap closes around.
Fortunes and fears are read in patterns of the coffee cup
And we stay up
In sleepless nights
At Café Kino.

She plays the saw in melancholia
He sees her wings with p
areidolia,
She moves calculated, curvilinear
He knows, advised with apophenia,
That she'll soon walk the rope scaffold.
He fills his cavities with dental gold
As this hyperlinked narrative begins to unfold...
Forced parallels don't hold
Manufactured memories are sold
In ugly beauty magazines -
Each with a free centerfold.
In flourescent menus of promises and paranoia,
We search for love
And feel at home somehow,
Till we are asked to move
From Café Kino.

Press - The Statesman interview

2010-08-28T11:13:00.001-07:00

http://www.thestatesman.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=337980&catid=47

The first decent word on the film that is not a comparison between Aida and other "foreign imports" to Bollywood!

Canon 1D MK4

2010-07-25T12:38:00.001-07:00

We started shooting Theseus' Ship in February this year, and we are still rolling. I looked up online and it seems Theseus's Ship is going to be the first feature film to be shot entirely on Canon EOS 1D MK4 DSLR Camera.

One more...

2010-05-23T12:43:00.000-07:00

One more before the night is over...

HDR Test

2010-05-23T08:05:00.000-07:00

1st True HDR Test - Instant (More or Less) Results

Theseus' Ship - Production Stills

2010-05-03T14:26:00.000-07:00

All pictures by Shriti Banerjee.

Yeh sheher...

2009-11-16T11:36:00.000-08:00

This city has made me so learned

That I can't make those deep dramatic statements anymore

Everything is so equally true

That picking out a holistic abstract truth

Feels like an act of naive fascism

I once read about a physicist who bought her lover roses

And chocolates

On the valentine's day

She was a learned woman who knew that the day is a manufactured holiday

Lobbied by a greeting card company to sell romantic kitsch

She knew that the deep red of her roses

Is a wavelength of 680 nm corresponding to a code in the human brain

She knew that what she was feeling

Was caused by serotonin and oxytocin in her brain

The chemical equivalent of eating a lot of chocolate

Or having an obsessive compulsive disorder

It's so much fun to keep the big picture aside

Indulge in the details

And let love, friendship and life be

This city has thrown up many essays on caves and streams

With a footnote reminder that there is nothing to break away from

Not even attachment, emotion or desire

My grandma often complains

That my grandpa had gambled all his money away when he was young

She brings it up everytime they fight

That's a pretty long held grudge I reckon

If there was only a way to know

How much gambling is just right enough for youth

This city is the world, and the village torpor simultaneously

Enlightenment is googlable if the right search keywords are entered

It's amazing how only a few thousand words can be constantly used to create new meanings

Words like elephant, colour, inside, cheeks, and vagina are very common

And yet have they ever been used in this permutation:

"Her cheeks turned the colour of the inside of an elephant's vagina"

So I guess enlightenment should be googlable

As long as the right key words are entered in the right order, inside quotes.

This city has a lot to learn from me yet,

That's why it led up to me, after all.

There ain't no cure for love...

2009-11-16T10:42:00.000-08:00

"Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing." It's amusing how Sylvia Plath has been quoted simultaneously by a site called "Dangerous quotes" and another one called "Inspiring quotes". It was the third time in last three days that somebody alluded to the Myth of Sisyphus in a conversation with me today. A pathological awareness of existentialism as a concept is the cure to existentialism. I like the passion that Avital Ronell exudes as she advocates meaninglessness in Astra Taylor's Examined Life. The state of contended acceptance of the certainty and the absurdity of fate is not a joyless compromise. It's been fun for me. Leonard Cohen in his between songs stock quips mentions "I’ve also studied deeply in the philosophies and religions, but cheerfulness kept breaking through…". And meanwhile, like all villains of mythology, I find myself looking forward to the immortality drug.

Uploaded Continuum on YouTube!

2009-11-13T13:42:00.000-08:00

Continuum on YouTube!

Part I (Hunger)
Part II (Trade & Love)
Part III (Death)
Part IV (Enlightenment)
Part V (Continuum)

Butoh dance

2009-10-17T12:12:00.000-07:00

Checkout Tatsumi Hijikata's very engaging Butoh dance on Ubuweb!

Sketch1

2009-09-16T14:03:00.000-07:00

It's been forever since I have shared anything new, and it'll be still longer before I'll be able to put up new material from Theseus' Ship. So I am posting a work-in-progress sketch from the storyboard. Sketch by Pooja, Photograph by Pankaj.

"Theseus' Ship" recce1

2009-08-31T14:32:00.001-07:00

"Theseus' Ship" recce1

2009-08-31T14:20:00.000-07:00

First round of recce images for my

upcoming film "Theseus' Ship"

Images by Film DP Pankaj Kumar

Anca Cernoschi

2009-08-19T00:43:00.000-07:00

Anca Cernoschi's photography

http://ancacernoschi.blogspot.com/

Jason Freeny's art

2009-08-15T03:56:00.000-07:00

http://web.mac.com/moistproduction/flash/index.html

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Freeny/34170123768

Jason Freeny - super cool Anatomies!!

Drunk on Cohen, again.

2009-08-12T03:47:00.000-07:00

I keep telling myself there is a world out there to explore, while i refuse to move on from just one poet. How, I wonder sometimes, is my obsession with the existential despair of Cohen's poetry, the cynical prophecy of Dylan, or even my undying appreciation for the clever romanticism of Ghalib's and Ramesh Parekh's poetry any different from my mother's obsession with the plain sentimental poetry of Befaam (to the point that she used to fancy as a teenager that someday she'll heal Befaam's broken heart with her love). Like I was discussing with Mitesh the other day, we all have our Asharam Bapus. Well, here's a piece from one of mine: Cohen, again.

I am locked in a very expensive suit

old elegant and enduring

Only my hair has been able to get free

but someone has been leaving

their dandruff in it

Now I will tell you

all there is to know about optimism

Each day in hub cap mirror

in soup reflection

in other people's spectacles

I check my hair

for an army of alpinists

for Indian rope trick masters

for tangled aviators

for dove and albatross

for insect suicides

for abominable snowmen

I check my hair

for aerialists of every kind

Dedicated as an automatic elevator

I comb my hair for possibilities

I stick my neck out

I lean illegally from locomotive windows

and only for the barber

do I wear a hat.

Treatment1

2009-08-11T14:14:00.000-07:00

I've made a conscious choice of dialogue over action in several scenes in the script. I felt a strong urge to revert the "show, don't tell" thumbrule, to the extent that many scenes cut abruptly at their most dramatic high point, and then in the following scenes, the characters narrate, through casual conversation, their experience of the dramatic moment. I analysed this urge to distance myself from the heart of the action. I discovered that I find some human experiences too deep, intimate and emotionally stirring to try and capture on camera. Also the immediacy and the drama of the experience end up fogging the essence, which seems to come out more honestly in the objective after-experience reflection. When a character talks about a moment experienced in the previous scene, it is not intended as a guide for the audience, but rather as an experiential lens, through which the audience lives the moment twice - once through the speculation of the dramatic high point of the moment led towards by the author, which being never shown, is experienced in the imagination, and then, the moment redefined through a tinted world-view of the character...

An unfinished song.

2009-08-10T13:40:00.001-07:00

You had a copy of the book you bought

Was to show the taste you sought

As you queued up next to me on the aisle

Was a long time ago that you thought

I was wise for the lies you wrote

I fell for them, swam into your isle.

Then it takes a while to rationalise

Learn the hands turn anti-clockwise

Seen from the other side of the dial.

So depending on where you stand,

You get clockwork or you get orange

Get tortured by Beethoven, meanwhile.

Here we go once again, play it out

Use up one more benefit of doubt

Declare love from starbirth to supernova

Don’t Freud our childhood, let us out

It’s not the past it’s been about

Wasn’t me who whispered Naro-Kunjrova.

When I say you, I don’t address you alone

We’ve all desired, for which we atone

Didn’t Cohen apologise to Eunice D’Souza?

What’s poetry but perspective, and yet

Can’t really be mature till it rhymes at

A a b b, a b a b, abc and blah-blah-bova.

Pics from Nokia 6208c II

2009-08-10T02:16:00.000-07:00

Pankaj's work

2009-07-24T01:14:00.000-07:00

Here's the work of one of my closest friends and a truly amazing cinema-artist Pankaj Kumar. He has finally succumbed to the pressure from friends to share his work online, and it's dispersed all over the place. If you want the love, you'll have to work your way throuh the links:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/21604872@N06/

http://punkudge.photostockplus.com/

http://punkudge.googlepages.com/shortfilms

2009-07-23T03:57:00.000-07:00

I came across this comparison of world religions and ideologies online: it's one of those chain-mail things plastered all over the place...

Taoism: Shit happens, go with the flow.

Hare Krishna: Shit happens Rama Rama Ding Ding.

Hinduism: This shit has happened before.

Islam: Shit happening is the will of Allah.

Zen: What is the sound of shit happening?

Existentialism: Shit doesn't happen; shit is.

Buddhism: When shit happens, is it really shit?

Confucianism: Confucius says, "Shit happens".

7th day Adventist: Shit happens on Saturdays.

Protestantism: Shit won't happen if you work harder.

Catholicism: If shit happens, you deserved it.

Jehovah's Witnesses: No shit happens until Armaggedon, and it won't happen to us.

Unitarian: What is this shit?

Mormon: Shit happens again & again & again.

Judaism: Why does this shit always happen to us?

Pentacostalism: Praise the shit!

Atheism: There is no shit!

New Age: Shit happens and it happens to smell good if you open your heart to it.

Rastafarianism: Let's smoke this shit.

I couldn't help but add a few of my own:

Jainism: Let shit be.

Zoroastrianism: Keep the lavatories clean.

Nyaya: What's the proof of shit?

Yoga: Hold your breath and force it out.

Descartes: I shit therefore I am.

Darwin: The shittiest survives.

Bayes: Eat shit, twenty billion flies can't be wrong. (The ancient internet tagline fits perfectly for the statistical analogy)

Nietzsche: Shit depends on where you look at it from.

Shankara: Shit is me.

McDonaldism: I'll give you shit. You give me money. The US will never bomb you.

Bushism: I like this tit, so however is when I, well, sometime since many people think for the time I was the president.

Baudrillard: The shit exists not only as shit itself, but also as an elusive product of the need to produce shit, as we wear ourslves out eating to render shit visible, while still finding it impossible to cancel out the secret that shit cannot be produced, for each one of us holds a simulation model of shit, and tries to shit to coincide with the pre-existing model, while the need to shit itself becomes more pressing when there is nothing to shit out, just as just as the will to live becomes more urgent when life has lost its meaning.

Please contribute...

looʇ ʇxǝʇ pǝʇɹǝʌuı

2009-07-18T12:50:00.000-07:00

¡ǝɹɐʍʎds puɐ snɹıʌ ʎq pǝʇɔǝɟuı sı dɯoɔ ɹǝɥ ʇɐɥʇ puǝıɹɟ ɐ pǝɔuıʌuoɔ puɐ ʇɐɥɔ uo ʇı pǝsn uǝʌǝ ¡¡ʇno ʇı ʞɔǝɥɔ ʎlǝʇnlosqɐ ¡ʇǝu ǝɥʇ uo pǝʇsıxǝ ʎpɐǝɹlɐ looʇ ʇɐǝɹƃ sıɥʇ 'ʎllnɟʞuɐɥʇ ˙ʇı ƃuıop ɟo ʎɐʍ ɐ ʇno ǝɹnƃıɟ oʇ suıɐɹq ʎɯ ƃuıʞɔǝɹʍ ǝɹoɟǝq ʇsɹıɟ ʇı ɹoɟ ƃuıʞool ʇuǝʍ ı os 'ʇxǝʇ pǝʇɹǝʌuı ƃuıʇıɹʍ ɟo ʎɐʍ ııɔsɐ uɐ ǝq oʇ sɐɥ ǝɹǝɥʇ ʇɥƃnoɥʇ ı

Here... http://www.revfad.com/flip.html

Arielle's Anagrams

2009-07-14T11:06:00.001-07:00

Heartwarming little masterpieces by my friend Arielle!

Check them out on her Flicker page

My Art

2009-07-14T09:20:00.000-07:00

I regularly update my DA page with my latest art. Also checkout my favourites folder for some kickass work from other Deviant Artists.

Pics from Nokia 6208c

2009-07-14T07:27:00.001-07:00

Cool Poster

2009-07-13T07:28:00.000-07:00

Loved this poster by Evab Harris. It is a little reminiscent of a piece I had made a while ago on my wall. Roots and shoots have been recurring motifs in many of my designs. (Right Here Right Now title graphics and Continuum poster)

The God Himself...

2009-07-13T05:03:00.000-07:00

After long, I'm reading a book that I am finding impossible to put down! Asimov's The Gods Themselves is his best according to him and hell, do I agree! It's so brilliant it's making me feel incompetent... I'll have to read something mediocre, or at least achievable, to feel capable of writing again! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gods_Themselves

The Man Who Flew Too Much - Part I

2009-07-13T01:11:00.000-07:00

Here's the first part of the first draft of a video essay I am seeting out to make. It's a 90 minute performance piece. The actor goes into a fit of uncontrollable rambling and subject hopping...

All of us, at some point, share the universal feeling of feeling thirsty and wanting to pee at the same time. I wonder why the internal parts of this body mechanism can’t settle it amidst themselves. One part wants water and the other wants to flush it out. And how about feeling thirsty when chlorinated water adamantly stays stuck in your ears after having taken a dip in the pool? That itself should be proof enough that there is no God. Natural selection is still constantly learning at a fast pace of one lesson per billion years. At what point, I wonder, natural selection chose to perceive images through light-reflection over echolocation. It’s interesting to imagine that bats actually “visualise” through echolocation… they do not approximate… they “see” through sound. Colours and shapes are just codes corresponding to wave lengths of light and trajectories of reflection. A wavelength of 400 nmis seen as violet by the mind and a wavelength of 650 nm seen as red. Similarly, colours can be encoding wavelengths of sound in bats. Did the route of natural selection that eventually led to homo-sapiens ever come across the migratory birds’ ability to perceive earth’s magnetic field to stay their course during long flights. The birds perceive the earth’s magnetic fields as bands of colours. But besides natural selection, there is genetic drift to account for as well. It has been discovered that in the brains of the blind, the visual cortex has not become useless, as they once believed. When blind people use another sense -- touch or hearing, for example -- to substitute for sight, the brain's visual cortex becomes active, even though no images reach it from the optic nerve. Echolocation creates its own images. There are examples of Daniel Kish and Ben Underwood, both blind, who use echoes of sounds to navigate through the world. Kish leads other blind people on mountain biking tours and hikes in the wilderness, visualizing and describing the picturesque sights around him through echolocating. And there are people like Ingrid Carey who have a rare neurological condition called synesthesia, allowing them to actually feel colours. She tastes, hears and smells colours. Numbers and letters, sensations and emotions, days and months are all associated with colors for Carey. Number 2 for her is green and orange is her colour of pain. It is believed that the migratory birds have this neurological ability as well. The birds that look dull to us might have a plumage radiant of near ultra-violet, or a skin texture reflecting sound in a certain unique way associated to a certain radiant colour that the female of their species can get attracted to. That takes me to another fundamental question. The perception of pleasure and pain. Why are some things perceived by the brain as pleasure and some perceived otherwise? Is pleasure an in built incentive for a life form to aid survival, continuation and evolution? Common observation shows us that food and sex provide maximum pleasure for most people. Evolution doesn’t necessarily always promote or guarantee adaptation or survival. For instance, when nutrients run low, individual myxobacteria (slime bacteria) may come together to form a fruiting body to produce spores. Lab studies have shown that cheating myxobacteria that only produce spores and never help form the non-spore producing parts of the fruiting body can drive populations to extinction. Humans can choose not to reproduce and thus eliminate their genes from the gene pool. The notion that human brain is fittest for survival turns around with the emotional complexity that comes along with an evolved brain. One can argue that the human choice of not reproducing can still be aiding the survival and continuation of life on the planet, after all. This could also be one of the explanations of acts of charity where an individual puts social and collective interest over self interest. Why doesn’t evolution discourage suicide? I wonder if any animals apart from human beings commit suicide. Suicide should be defined as a premeditated anticipated act of self destruction. Dogs are known to starve themselves to death on separation from their loved ones. Scorpions are known to do anomalous action of biting itself to death in very high temperatures. Soldier sterile termites blow themselves up so the enemies get stuck in their goo. Stinger bees die of the injury from stinger amputation that happens after they sting. Are these animals aware of the ultimate effect of their actions? I think not. “There is only one true philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” That was Camus. It has inspired me to give a lot of thought to suicide, aging, death, evolution and pain. Back to my original question. Why are pink and sky blue such pleasant colours for children? Is it social conditioning or a rather “purer” physical attraction? How does a radiant plumage on the head of the male bird translate as better genetic condition and better opportunity of survival and reproduction in the brain of the female bird? In humans, the plumage is replaced by . I had once worked for an idea company. It was a company that sourced ideas from all over, patented them for the creator, pitched the ideas and profited from the commissions earned from realised ideas. My idea was software for cellphones. You fill up an exhaustive form asking you all sorts of questions about yourself when you buy the software. It’s a really long questionnaire and it would take you at least a couple of hours to fill it up. You are questioned about everything from your political inklings to your favourite authors to your tastes and ideas. This information is encoded and installed in your phone software, that is linked to the universal server. Now each time you cross somebody sharing your interests or ideas or having interests in allied disciplines, both your phones beep and the shared connections are highlighted on your phone. The software ensures that you don’t cross your potential “soulmate” at a mall or on a plane and lose the opportunity. It can act as a great ice breaker. “Oh, you like Borges? I love Marquez.” Or “Oh, you are a trolley driver? I am a philosopher. I have a problem for you.” Or “So, you are schizophrenic, eh? Sad. Have you always been a large rabbit?” What is with rabbits and schizophrenia? Look at Harvey, Alice in Wonderland… In Watership Down, rabbits can count up to four and anything more than four is too many for a rabbit. Is it true that rabbits fuck a lot?

Car honks are shrieks of frustration, it’s a demonstration of masculinity and speeding is a call for mating. Why is it that young people speed and the elderly drive slowly? The elderly don’t have much time left on their hands, so they should be speeding. Cops should have an age detector with their radars… they see a car crossing the speed limit, they should be able to go, “oh, but she is an old granny, she doesn’t have much time left now, does she?” Slowing down a granny is like giving an ambulance a speeding ticket. Zeno argues that motion unexists. He gives us the Achilles’ paradox. Achilles, ten times faster than the turtle challenges the turtle to a running race. And the turtle is like, “what’s the point dude, you are ten times faster than me… it’s obvious you are going to win, go play with an equal!” So Achilles makes him an offer he can’t refuse. He gives the turtle a head start of 100 meters in the 120 meters race. He starts running when the turtle is already at 100 meters. By the time he crosses the 100 meters, the turtle has gone ahead by 10 meters. When Achilles crosses those 10 meters, the turtle has gone further ahead by a meter. Achilles crosses the meter and the turtle is now ahead by 10 cms. Achilles 10 cms, turtle ahead by a cm, A crosses 1 cm, turtle ahead by a mm, A crosses the mm, the turtle is ahead by 0.1 mm, A crosses 0.1, T is ahead by 0.01… so on and so forth. Achilles shall never be able to overtake the turtle. Though by definition, it’s a trick paradox… Achilles should be happily overtaking the turtle at 111.11111 metres in the race… There is a modern variation of Zeno’s paradox… Thomson’s Lamp… Consider a lamp with a toggle switch. Flicking the switch once turns the lamp on. Another flick will turn the lamp off. Now suppose a being able to perform the following task: starting a timer, he turns the lamp on. At the end of one minute, he turns it off. At the end of another half minute, he turns it on again. At the end of another quarter of a minute, he turns it off. At the next eighth of a minute, he turns it on again, and he continues thus, flicking the switch each time after waiting exactly one-half the time he waited before flicking it previously. The cumulative sum of all these progressively smaller times is exactly two minutes. The following questions are then considered: Is the lamp on or off after exactly two minutes? Is the lamp switch on or off after exactly two minutes? Would it make any difference if the lamp had started out being on, instead of off? Or a more existential question like would it make any difference at all if you figured this out, if there wasn’t a switch to flick, if there wasn’t a lamp or if there wasn’t a you? It’ll be naïve to limit the theoretical paradox by a physical imposition like the speed of light or the time it takes for one to toggle the switch. One of the interesting problems of the infinite is at what point does finite become infinite. Galileo put infinity in a funny way. "Though most numbers are not squares, there are no more numbers than squares." At what point does the explicable become the absurd? The strict parameters of vagueness. The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians for centuries, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place. The ship was replaced part by part over the centuries. The logical question that arises now is whether it’s still the Theseus’ Ship or is it a new ship? John Locke (a 17th Century English writer) proposed a scenario regarding a favorite sock that develops a hole. He pondered whether the sock would still be the same after a patch was applied to the hole. If yes, then, would it still be the same sock after a second patch was applied? Indeed, would it still be the same sock many years later, even after all of the material of the original sock has been replaced with patches? There are many other variations. There is George Washinton’s axe. The blade of the axe has been replaced a few times and the handle has been replaced a few times as well. Is it still the same axe? A corollary could be… what happens if the replaced parts were used to build a second axe. Which, if either, is the original Washington’s axe? Tin Woodman is a lumberjack replaced part by part into an entirely mechanical being. His discarded limbs become a part of the composite man, Chopfyt. Jules Verne alludes to this paradox in Dr. Ox’s Experiment. In the van Tricasse's family, since 1340, each time one of the spouses died the other remarried with someone younger, who took the family name. Thus the family can be said to have been a single marriage lasting through centuries, rather than a series of generations. Girish Karnad’s Hayavadana adds another interesting dimension to this paradox. An athlete forms the third corner of a love triangle with his best friend, an intellectual and the intellectual’s plain wife. The intellectual sacrifices his head at a Mahakali temple, the athlete comes looking for him… freaks out on finding him dead, and chops his own head off in social fear.And then comes the woman… before she can chop any more heads and add to the mess, Goddess Kali comes to life and gives her a boon. She is now to place the amputated heads of the men back on their torsos. She keeps her eyes closed from fear and disgust and ends up replacing the wrong heads on the wrong bodies. So now there is one person with the athlete’s body and the intellectual’s head and the other with the athlete’s head on the intellectual’s body. Here, the writer considers this question: Which, if either, of the men, can claim fatherhood to the child in the woman’s womb?

(Musings on womb and cocoon and butterflies. Compound eyes. Moths. Transformation. Silence of the Lambs poster. Dali’s painting of the skull used in the poster. The skull itself is made of women. Optical illusions. The physics of illusion – using the patterns of perception and twisting them. Some great concepts of magic. Magical engineering. The Turk. Turing test. Our fascination with anomalies. Freaks. Dane Arbus.)

Miracles, rarities, dreams, freaks are fascinating, enthralling, riveting. Order brings a sense of security. Chaos is a show one would rather watch from a distant seat of causality. If a monkey was to smash the keys of a typewriter randomly, the chances of him ending up writing Hamlet are one in infinite. Hell, the chances of a super computer fed with all the words and rules of grammar producing even a page of Hamlet, are one in infinite. But it’s exactly the kind of thing one would love to witness. Throw a handful of grain randomly on a patch and you don’t need to be a math genius to know that the probability of the grains falling to arrange themselves in the shape of your face is one in zillions. The chance of the unique four letter DNA words that made the exact sonnet that is you? I wish all my ideas will arrange themselves and connect in a way that makes perfect sense, with a nice moral to take away – the way we arrange our memories and inferences to make sense of our present. If you were told that the magician pulling a rabbit out of the hat is not a trick, how would you believe something like that, and if you did, won’t you freak out? Why is it that we like to be told again and again that there is only one true love? I don’t know if there are any monkeys that wrote Hamlet or if there are any handful of grains that made Mona Lisas, but there are some funny absurd songs and some pretty interesting patterns out there. And there are those of us who are as excited about that unique one-in-a-million pattern that doesn’t make a recognisable design as we would be about the one that does.

(Some random ideas about patterns. The use of pattern and colour in culture. Patti Bellantoni's pop thesis "If it's purple somebody's going to die"... If it's pink somebody's going to be beaten up in the case of Rajasthan's Gulaabi Gang of women, dressed in pink, armed with rolling pins, beat up wife abusers... collective enlightenment and economy)

Yeah, so I was telling you about deficit financing. Apparently there is an international law that allows governments to print up extra currency to fill up deficits. It’s some kind of a complex economics – how will they maintain rates of exchange, and what if a government does it furtively? Etc. There was a time in the 90s when you needed a government licence to own a colour laser or colour digital printer. Not for your inkjet ones, but for the professional ones. The government was apparently quite paranoid about them. They feared that people will start printing money from their homes. Around the same time I had attended this exhibition at Jehangir. It was quite mediocre. It’s amazing how the most important gallery of the city exhibits the most mediocre of artists. Anyways, why did I bring up Jehangir? Yeah, the currency exhibition. So this artist had painted Indian currency to the minutest detail. From a foot away, it was impossible to tell that the notes were counterfeit. It was good craft, not art. The artist told me that he had cut special size brushes for the detailing. By the way, brushes made from sable and hog hair contribute majorly to the economics of slaughterhouses. Did you know that pharmacy is the prima-mover of slaughterhouses, meat is a secondary product? I hate it when people leave their meat on the plate. At least, finish your meal! Somebody died for it! Do you remember that scene in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe when they meet the Dish of the Day. It’s a dairy animal that is genetically engineered to want to be eaten. "I just don't want to eat an animal that's standing here inviting me to," said Arthur, "it's heartless." "Better than eating an animal that doesn't want to be eaten," said Zaphod. And then there was – "Something off the shoulder perhaps?" suggested the animal, "Braised in a white wine sauce?" "Er, your shoulder?" said Arthur in a horrified whisper. "But naturally my shoulder, sir," mooed the animal contentedly, "nobody else's is mine to offer." Such complex problems in ethic dealt with such imagination and humour. DNA was discovered a year after DNA was born and he died at the age of 41, a year short of 42. That’s the beauty of it. Dying at 41 is as inexplicable and as random as 42. A physicist friend was telling me the other day about a brainstorming session she was having with her professor and colleagues, and it’s interesting how the line between modern theoretical physics and philosophical abstraction is almost blurred. At one point the professor goes, “I guess there’s only one explanation – 42”. Even modern scientific thought can be as worryingly limiting as religious cosmology. The monotheism of big bang and singularity, for example. A more open thought, I feel, is the idea of multiple and simultaneous big bangs. I checked out the pilot episode of this sitcom called the Big Bang theory on the recommendation of a teenager. He finds the show hilarious. He reads Nietzsche, attends skiing camps inSwitzerland, listens to hard metal, writes poetry about freedom of thought, etc… One of those kids… It was such an unimaginative show! The characters are cardboard cutouts, and their jokes are as flat as dimensions of M-theory. Where do you stand on the string theory? Copying, duplication, imitation of the product is a punishable offence is replaced by "This product at a microscopic level might be made of strings. Manufacturer will prosecute to the maximum extent of the copyright law any attempt to make a supersymmetric version.” Have you heard this one? How many string theorists does it take to change the light bulb? Two – one to hold the bulb and the other to turn the universe around.

Half Blood Prince...

2009-07-13T00:14:00.000-07:00

Bruno Delbonnel shot Amelie, Paris je t'aime, A Very Long Engagement... Stuart Craig was the production designer on The Elephant Man, Gandhi, Chaplin, The English Patient... IMDB lists 484 arists under visual effects alone led by supervisors who have worked on the most important visual effects heavy films of the last two decades... The story itself is one of the most read pieces of contemporary pop literature... what does the director do exactly in a studio film? Half Blood Prince... The trailers look amazing!

What has amazed me and pained me all these years is how the most big budgeted films of Bollywood or the most acclaimed artistic films of our country cannot compare to the art and cinematic design of an average episode of one of their average TV shows...

Colour

2009-07-08T14:18:00.000-07:00

http://salavon.com/Top25/Top25.shtml

From the site:

"This video installation presents the abstraction and re-organization of the top 25 grossing films of all time (as of March 2001, worldwide box office, not adjusted for inflation). Every frame of each film is subjected to a custom process that determines a grid of four colors most representative of that frame. These simplified versions are re-synched with their unaltered soundtrack and arranged by sales rank left-to-right and top-to-bottom, yielding the animated grid and accompanying chaotic audio."

The Human Clock

2009-07-08T03:27:00.000-07:00

http://www.humanclock.com/

I was here at 15.52 today. The image refreshed itself as my computer clock grew a minute.

Short reviews

2009-07-06T00:22:00.000-07:00

Films recently seen:

Man Bites Dog A totally overrated film. With barely a few interesting ideas, the film is laziness on the part of the filmmaker, who refuses to dig any deeper into the character. There is nothing innovative in the film apart from the default innovation that the mockumentary genre offers. That said, one can understand the response the film generated in 1996. Even though, this is way after the cult mockumentaries This is Spinal Tap, Woody Allen's Zelig, and Kiarostami's film Close-up blending documentary footage with staged recreation, it's still one of the few films using the genre to follow an interesting fictitious character. Also brimming in the European pot around the same time was the Dogme 95 movement. Handheld cameras and improvisational acting were in. The director was only 26 when he made the film, and this is the only film he made before he died at 40.

Dead Man The moody poetic Kafkaesque Western by Jim Jarmusch has been growing on me since I saw it two days ago. Beautiful cinematography by Robby Müller who also later shot Dancer in the Dark and Breaking the Waves for Lars von Trier.

The Sea that Thinks A self reflexive, self conscious experiment in writing that at times manages to engage and stimulate, at others remains outright sophomoric. The optical illusions documented and alluded to are quite basic and highly popular. Though I'll always remember the film for the optical illusion of the opening scene. The the optical illusion of the house is brilliantly produced.

Cohen, Dylan and the time it takes to write a song...

2009-06-12T00:52:00.000-07:00

"He said, 'I like this song you wrote called Hallelujah.' In fact, he started doing it in concert. He said, 'How long did that take you to write?' And I said, 'Oh, the best part of two years.' He said, 'Two years?' Kinda shocked. And then we started talking about a song of his called I And I from Infidels. I said, 'How long did you take to write that.' He said, 'Ohh, 15 minutes.' I almost fell off my chair. Bob just laughed."

"You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah"

"Took an untrodden path once, where the swift don't win the race,
It goes to the worthy, who can divide the word of truth.
Took a stranger to teach me, to look into justice's beautiful face
And to see an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
I and I
In creation where one's nature neither honors nor forgives.
I and I
One says to the other, no man sees my face and lives."

और आज लिखा कुछ मानव की कविताओं जैसा...

2009-06-08T22:44:00.000-07:00

और एक सच, शब्द या शक़्स पड़ा रहा…

कबाड़ में पड़ें सारे ऐर्यलों जैसा, जिन्होंने बहोत दुनिया खुदसे गुज़रते देखि है, पर जिनका अपना कोई एहसास नहीं, अभिमत नहीं, अभिप्राय नहीं.

उस अभिमत जैसा, जिसके बनते ही उसकी समापन तिथि निश्चित कर देना उसके बनानेवाले का फ़र्ज़ है.

उस देय तिथि जैसा, जिसके भूल से छूट जाने पर रिलायंस का गूंडा आपके दरवाज़े दस्तक देकर आपको ज़लील करने की कोशिश करता है.

उस ज़लीलियत जैसा, जिस पर एक बार आपकी माँ तक कह दे, “पर बेटा, ग़लती तो तुम्हारी ही थी”… जो अगर आप अटके रहो तो नासूर बन जाए, और आप बहते रहो तो चुटकुला.

उस चुटकुले की तरह जो कटाक्ष है, व्यंगमय है, बहोत ही हास्यास्पद है, और जो आप बीता होने के बावजूद उसे खुल्लेआम सबको सुनाना कानूनन झुर्म है.

उस झुर्म की तरह जो आप न चाहते हुए भी कर देते हो, हांफ जाते हो कोर्ट के चक्करों में, और फिर अपने मनपसंद पुस्तकालय के मेक्डोनाल्डीकरण और अपने बच्चों की तालीम के दिज़्नियावर्तन से समझौता कर लेते हो.

उस समझौते की तरह जो पहले न चाहते हुए ही सही, पर बाद में आदत और आखिर आनंद बन जाता है.

उस आदत की तरह जो विन्डोज़ के नए version को पहले कुछ महीनो तक ठुकराने के बाद उसे अपना लेने पर हो जाती है... मायक्रोसोफ्ट वर्ड की बिना पूछे ही शब्द ठीक कर डालने की बुरी आदत की तरह, जिसकी आलोचना नहीं की जा सकती क्योंकि उस आदत को बदलने का विकल्प आपके पास है, छिपा ही सही.

उस विकल्प भ्रम की तरह जो आपको टीवी पर, शौपिंग मॉल में, या किसी Café में उपलब्ध होता है... और पूछने पर कि फलानी और धिकनी काफ़ी में क्या फ़र्क है, एक नवसिखिया भोला सा बेरा आपको बता देता है "कोई नहीं".

उस फ़र्क की तरह जो काले गोरों में, हुतू तुत्सी में, अरब इज़्राएलि में, अंग्रेज़ी संविधानिक एकाधिपत्य और भारतीय लोकतंत्र में है और नहीं.

उस होने और न होने जैसा जो प्रश्न में क्रांति का है, विचार में निर्माण का, और अनुभव में मृत्यु का.

उस मृत्यु जैसा जिसका भय मानव कल्पना में भगवान् को जन्म देता है.

उस जन्म जैसा जिसके आदि में प्यार भरा संभोग नहीं पर बलात्कार की आशंका है, और अंत में वातावरण में मिल जाना नहीं, प्रलय की चेतावनी है.

बहोत हो गया इसके जैसा उसके जैसा! कविता को इतना seriously कौन बेवकुफ़ लेता है!

You are not a person, you are a colony!

2009-06-05T14:19:00.000-07:00

There are more bacteria in a human body than cells. Very little is yet understood about what these billions of lives are doing exactly in the human body, except of course, living off it and sometimes, helping it live. Life itself has been seen as a state of a body to avoid completely merging into its environment.

These interested me:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090602161942.htm

http://www.physorg.com/news142181538.html

Handbags And Lingo

2009-06-04T15:42:00.000-07:00

In case you are wondering...

Handbags And Lingo
is an anagram of
Anand Gandhi's Blog

"So what becomes of you my love,
When they have finally stripped you of
The handbags and the gladrags
That your grandad had to sweat
So you could buy..."

Sound proof

2009-06-04T15:41:00.000-07:00

She married a man who forwards his mail
For good luck, and plays Voodoo
He’s queened the pawn while you’re still rooking

Vagueness gives a chance to move
But they have found a way to prove
That the world exists even when nobody’s looking

A motherless child taught me to
Live without the fear of loss through
The empty space, as you go Peter Brooking

I’ve lost many a sisters to distance
And I lost my thesis against a haiku
So I construe I shouldn’t have been snoozing

I’ve lost enlightenment to virtue
Well, who told you it was ever true
That somebody wins when somebody’s losing?