Sounds of the soul

When something exceptionally significant happens in one's life, it is said on occasion that his or her planets or stars are in perfect alignment with each other. Similar I think is my relationship with writing.

A lot of my work comes from a pent-up surge that keeps building within me over time and once my thoughts have been incubated sufficiently in my mind, they decide they need to breathe the air outside it and that is when my fingers come into furious contact with the keyboard.

But a lot of other times, I experience these little epiphanic brainwaves which I realize I must record or else they just melt away into the ether just as soon as they come to life in my mind. 

I consider the planets of my writing aligned when I have the right thought come out and I have just the right music to accompany it. 

Music and language go hand in hand for me. Without one, the other does not seem to have an identity. Music is but a beautiful symphony of  just the right combinations of chords and notes that which when aligned in the right ways can produce nothing but magic.

This divine coupling of the right harmonius symphony with the pearls of language can only evoke what is beautiful. 

Writing in itself is a lovely experience. Through it, one can enliven death itself, it can also help one find oneself through the art of introspection. 

In my belief, writing can be of two kinds. The first is factual reporting - writing about plain facts and ensuring that sentences and facts are arranged responsibly and meaningfully just so that they can convey something physical. 

In contrast, there is writing that happens as a result of deep introspection and complex thought processes. Personally, the former process is a lot easier but from my perspective, it takes a lot of the joy out of writing because although one might apply oneself to the task, there is a noticeable void in such work which can only be filled with the introduction of a soul. The latter however is responsible for the creation of genres such as fiction and creative nonfiction. 

Until much recently, I was still quite cloudy on the concept of thinking. People usually associate thinking with the brain or the mind. But, only recently, I learned that the mind is in fact the soul and the soul is who a person really is. The body is 'what' someone is and the soul is 'who' someone is. 

I'm a spiritual person by nature and being spiritual does not necessarily mean being affiliated with any particular faith. I was born into a Hindu family, and therefore, my outlook is very Hindu, very humanitarian, very spiritual. Hinduism does not mean complex rituals or worshipping multiple deities of clay and stone. It just means having faith in what is good and that is what I equate with being spiritual. I'm also not trying to advocate my faith, because faith is a very personal thing and one's mind is the sole thing that no one can physically manipulate (leaving out the part about other forms of mental manipulation - propaganda creation etc., well those are topics for a rainy day and a nice beverage). I also equate spirituality with finding myself, in getting in touch with the good within me, with getting attuned to who I really am. 

Writing provides me that connection, it is my vehicle on this quest. It helps me introspect and introspection helps me write, so in essence, they are inter-related, two sides of the same coin (however, cliched that might sound). I could not imagine this universe without music or words.

In all that darkness of the space outside our planet, I can only unsuccessfully try to imagine what it must feel like to be surrounded by nothing but silence. 

Being a child of the '90s, I find it hard to understand the concept of silence, and it doesn't helpto be alive in an age where there is an over-abundance of sounds, or rather noise,  of all sorts - either croaking frogs, or gushing water, or someone rapping their knuckles on the table, or human voices; even in the dead of the night, the crickets on their nightly chatter, the whining cats, the occasional speeding car on the road, the sound of someone snoring or breathing. There are sounds everywhere.

Writing to me is a very spiritual process. It is my form of worship - to myself. I owe it to myself to write what I think, I spew out my thoughts for anyone who would be remotely interested in reading a few lines. Who knows, mayhaps sometime I might be able to hear from someone who relates to my rants. Perhaps in the process of my effort to transcribe what writing means to me, I might have done the same for someone else just as I know many individuals have done for me through their writing. 

As much as it is a lovely feeling to be appreciated for being unique, it is re-assuringly comforting on some level to know that there is at least one other person in this cosmos who can relate to what I think and vice versa. Hey, at least we aren't alone! 

Talking to the raindrops...

A little something I wrote earlier this year:

Pure pearls of water,

      how elegantly

      you roll down

      that transparent pane. 

When you visit,

      do you

      have a story to tell me,

or,

      is  it  hope

      that you  have to share? 

Each of you

thatKisses

t h e    p a r c h e d    e a r t h,

do you feel secure in a warm bundle of fulfillment

or is that something you do because gravity leaves you no other options? 

We stare at each other.

I feel an instant connection with you.

You remind me

of

all the worlds

that I have lived in

and even

of those in which I haven’t. 

You

propose a friendship

between us,

refusal is not my response. 

We share a beautiful language,

for which words and speech are trampled upon,

imagine their insignificance. 

The landscape of our communication

is just as lovely

as the flowers of unspoken words that we cultivate on it. 

You are liquid magic.

You overwhelm me.

Each of you that yet rest on my big glass window

are part of my very own collection of diamonds and stars.

I look at you

and we converse

in our very own language

and you

always have only

wonder and amazement to offer,

in abundance,

with a wink and a smile. 

In Just a Moment..

I learned a few days ago that a friend I had met a few months ago had passed on last week. I'm going to refer to the person as 'Kay'. 

Considering that I met Kay just once and we talked for less than an hour, it would be strange for me to feel any sense of loss at this news. However, it not only shocked me but it also gave me some perspective on life and death and the very instant that I read about the person's death, the cliched phrase 'live like there's no tomorrow' made a ton of sense to me. Perhaps, it is alright to not know someone too well and not feel too mournful in such a situation, but the fact that someone so cheerful meets with an untimely end compels me to wonder what it is all about. 

In the time that Kay and I talked, I got the impression that Kay was as real as real gets, there was not a single hint of superficiality in Kay's words which only reflected Kay's incredible enthusiasm and Jack Kerouac-esque zest for life and travel. I could relate so much to that since I'm quite mystified by both of these myself. I never really had a penchant for plays and theatre, I love watching them yes, God knows I love musicals, Cats and Aida did were truly enchanting and if I had the opportunity, I would watch one regularly...but I never had much of an interest in reading plays. 

The only time that I took an interest in reading or writing a play was when I was around 13 or 14 years old and I was bored, and I felt the urge to type something out, so around 9 pm one evening, I wrote a small dialogue between young King Tutankhamen and young Julius Caesar. I don't remember what exactly I wrote but I vaguely remember the size of the dialogue and what it was  approximately about - it began with both the characters who are children playing together and then one of them did something to irk the other and it just took off as a childish verbal fight from there. I printed it off and showed it to my father as well. I felt like a new person, like I had accomplished something great. I read it and I re-read it a couple of times and I liked it, I had my own approval and I was inspired to write more such dialogues and I hoped I would be able to extend my new-found talent into the area of writing full-fledged plays. 

And why did I just switch my track to writing about plays? That's because I learned about Samuel Beckett from Kay and it inspired me to try and expand my literary interests to include theatre. Kay was a student of theatre when Kay was in school, but one of Kay's teachers did not appreciate it when Kay decided to write a play that was his own take on Beckett, in fact the teacher failed Kay just because of Kay's display of originality. If I had a teacher like that I think I would rather get a C or a D rather than be in the teacher's good books which I'm sure would mean conformity to tradition. Tradition is good but not always and in all situations. Innovation is to be appreciated. If everyone had to resort to conventional practices for everything, then we would certainly not be where we are today - I would not be typing this out and you would not be reading these words. Who knows, we would have probably remained apes struggling in search of food every single day, or maybe we would have just been extincy as a species. Innovation has pre-historic roots, for sure.

Well, I don't know where my sheet of dialogue between Junior King Tut and Junior Caesar is, but looking back at that one instance ties up my past with my recent past and even my future. But, after that one dialogue, I never really read nor did I write anything remotely related to a theatrical dialogue.

  

But I watched a Youtube clip of 'Waiting for Godot' by Beckett and it made me want to get hold of the play and read it. I would like to read all his plays if I find them, the depth of the philosophy in 'Waiting for Godot' is an element I would like to explore.  

 

Perhaps one hour is not enough to know a whole deal about any one person, each person is a complex bundle of characteristics and thought processes after all; but without being judgmental, I think it is possible to get a general idea about the person in the least, if not anything else. You can easily sense the person's vibes and can at least tell whether you like them or not. But, then again, you could be wrong: a lot of people take a lot of time to open up, mostly the reserved kind. I know that for a fact since I tend to be quite reserved, but once I warm up to someone, I find it really easy to talk to them. I've met a lot of lovely people, I've had my share of unpleasant experiences with people as well, but I guess everyone that I've met has changed me and my life by way of conversation and sometimes by their behaviour, sometimes even by their mere presence in my life, albeit a temporary one. Talking to another person gives me so much perspective on a lot of matters. I have also realized the importance of varying perspectives, since without such a variety of these, the concept of brainstorming would have remained non-existent. At times, in order to re-inforce one's own perspective on something, it is important to understand a different perspective on the same matter at hand.

Oftentimes, the people who appear to be really pleasant when you are first introduced to them turn out to be anything but. However, in my experience, I think even a short conversation with certain people is enough to change one's life. But what I don't appreciate is when someone tries to give you a piece of his/her "advice" when it is completely unwarranted and that too, just in the first meeting. How presumptuous! The person who offers you his/her "advice" seems to lie under the impression that there is something wrong with you and they immediately offer you their pearls of wisdom. No thanks, but I don't think there's anything wrong here and I never called for Mr. Fix-It! 

It's sad and strange to think of Kay as gone. May Kay's cheerful and positive soul R.I.P.!

My New Blog

I have another blog on Wordpress, I will be alternating between both my blogs simply because I have had this one for more than 3 years now and I think I can't allow this one to lie inactive just for sentimental reasons. 

This will reach you to my new blog! :)

~*Renaissance*~

My friend, Aparna, recently created a blog of her own and after being nudged by some inspiration, I have finally decided to get back to check up on my own and revive it. 

I have been doing quite a bit of reading this year as I had intended to at the start of it. Of all my resolutions at the start of this year, the one I have been actually following up on has been reading. I realized that I used to be quite an avid reader when I was younger but somewhere along the road, I lost out on a lot of time I realize I could have used for this purpose. 

I have managed to get back into this habit this year and I'm trying hard to stick to it. The books that I have read this year include Crash, The Last Unicorn,  The Emperor's Children, By the River Piedra I Sat and Wept, We, Song of Kali, The Man In the High Castle and a few other names I cannot really recall this moment. And to speak of temporary amnesia this early in the morning considering the fact that I didn't sleep last night. Yes, I wrapped up 'By the River Piedra..'  last afternoon and I completed 4 chapters of 'The Calcutta Chromosome' by Amitav Ghosh, it seems like an intriguing read so far. I was also reading 'The Secret' which seems quite interesting.  

Some other books on my reading list for this year are Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie), Propaganda and the Public Mind (Chomsky), Timequake (Kurt Vonnegut), some Calvino, Umberto Eco, Ursula K. Le Guin (I'm dying to get my hands on her new release 'Lavinia'!!) and other titles. 

One thing I realized is that there's way too much propaganda and such stuff that's lying around for everyone to pick up on, and not everyone can really tell when the truth is being told and when fabrications are made, or whether any amount of truth actually remains. I realized then that I must not believe everything I read, I need to be a lot more discriminating against fabrications and I must believe only what seems closest to the actual facts. But how does one do that when the truth is deliberately blurred for us by all forms of media and the ideologies they represent? Well, the media is far from reporting anything even remotely related to the facts, so I guess we have to listen to everyone, read what everyone has to say and make our conclusive truths. In this age, I think we all have our own truths. Truth is subjective - believe what you must and understand that you may never be enlightened on the actuality.

Circumstances will change, hopefully. Fingers crossed!