Death of a salesman

Tragedy is a voilent force. It is profound. It doesn't put you through emotionally orgasmic fits like thriller or comedy does. It is far more subliminal and potent. Dramatic tragedy is almost celebratory. You cannot subdue your temptation to erupt in applaud and awe.

Truly tragic stories are highly psycho-analylitical, where people end up being what they never wanted to be, but couldn't help it. Tragedy may not have the verbal or situational acrobatics as other forms of theatre. They grow slowly, draw you in and if played out well you never get bored out of them. Even the best comedies suffer from the slack even if faintest. But tragedies have an upward narrative trajectory.

Death of a salesman, by Arthur Miller, is a classic tragedy. Truly modern in fervor yet so classical and universal. The sense of brutal conflict and sheer hopelessness of life can bring an entire family to a breaking point. There is no way out, not even death, for a truly tragic human. The hopes parents pin on their children, the unfounded hatred which children develop for their parents and the utter stalemate out of it. People don't change. They are too powerless to change anything, anything around them. People should never venture out changing the world. You are too humble for that. Human heart is too noble to be tricked into some emotional jitterbug. It may be only faintly influenced but nothing more.

To be Contd.....

Films: more than just stories

Shocking revelation! I felt today that the art of good reading good may not be relevant even essential to understand visual aesthetics. You may be a truly juvenile reader and yet be a visual genius. On the hindsight, it seems obvious. It's so stupid of me to have such an stilted notion about the film art. I might be talking my head out, but it is genuinely unintelligent for me think that way all along.

I associated all good art to stem from developing an intellect. I mean how could one serve the higher purpose of creativity if one doesn't realize his own power, his intellectual prowess to mock at the ordinariness of people around him.

But this new-found knowledge is vastly devastating. It puts into perspective a lot of unnecessary questions I had about the film art and film language. My beliefs are changing. Reading and writing have their own virtues but filmmaking may not entirely lean on these capabilities or may be even fully dissociated from that. An honest introspection illuminates the cold fact that you may get nowhere in film art if you put all your money on literature. Film is so abundantly influenced by other art forms like visuals, sound, music that one could invest oneself fully in these, forget about literature and yet emerge a potent film force. It's just the way it is.

What is the most prudent question one must answer oneself before throwing oneself into films? Whether you want to be a passive lover or an active one. There is plenty of room for passive lovers even experts. It's quite another thing to be an active one. And if you want to excel in the process by satisfying your artistic thrust, then one must choose the art form closest to ones abilities and work their way into the films riding on that.

Films are a moving force of the society. A film moment, once passed, cannot be experienced the same way ever. So what you are living is one of its own kind of moment. And one historian rightly puts, film is not an art form of 20th century, it is the art form of the century. I should not be accused of stealing somebody else's thunder here because the thought is so universally felt across. It would be like blaming you to breath the same air as Frank Sinatra.

I personally do not believe one could do everything by themselves in a certain amount of time in which a film must complete itself. You will always be evolving continuously. A film must complete in a certain time and always belong there.

Wandering the streets of Boston

A certain divinely beautiful moment presented itself when I looked out the window and found that it had ended raining at last after a relentless two days. The streets looked fresh and inviting. It was as if the nature had wiped everything clean in the wake of God’s unplanned visit that fine evening. Not particularly inspired by the chill outside, I ventured out with no clear agenda but to wander around and find a cozy spot in some solitary corner to pen a few lines or some interesting bit of light falling at an interesting angle on some interesting object to dabble-snap with my camera.

The sky looked blue cutting a sharp contrast to the scores and scores and scores of brick colored facades lining the streets on both sides. The air smelled fresh youth and with every step I was inching close to the Charles River which winds pretty close the hotel I am staying in. You couldn’t wait to see the sight of a River churning animatedly after 2 days of constant rain and although I knew it wouldn’t make much difference to the size of a River which is about to embrace the Atlantic a few miles down the line, the thought still excited me.

The Bridge on the Charles River. Immensity faces you. Immensity of space, of sky, of deep pink sunset, of the sun about the take a dip into the ocean. Air is too heavy with the smell of the River who is equally bubbly as me. I take out my camera, click a few snaps. Looks good. The pavements are washed clean and not a speck of dust rests anywhere. People are already out the door with their bikes, kids, pets or just by themselves. I decide to go off to the promenade which lines the river for a few miles ahead into the Boston city. You could see the entire sky lining from out here. This is where the artificial meets the natural. The violent river thumps into the concrete lining with an ageless rhythm, shimmers of setting sun beam into the glossy and tall sky lining.

Look Ahoy! People are already out into the River in their kayaks. Further ahead, I see small boats sailing their way back into the harbor-front where they will dust off their evening. With a few cans of beer down them in the nearby local bar they will have forgotten the toil of the day already. I wish I could finish my days like that. On a side note, these boats could be a notoriously difficult ride on harsh sunny days and could seriously impair your vision at an early age if you don’t use enough protective gear.

The marigold-lined promenade is now bare except a few passer-by joggers wired with their iPhones. I pass by Boston yacht club where a few elderly couple are relaxing with a book spread on their lap and a fat wine glass sitting beside them. Some small yachts are rocking and dancing to the tune of thumping waves. A distant roar of motorbike engine cuts through the silence. They are all probably heading towards the Boston commons area where they all have a bash at each other every now and then and so they might cheer at the prospect of being first amongst equals with other serious bikers rounding the park. It’s so uncanny that the roar of biker’s engine so reflects the rider’s age. I have seen very very few matured riders roaring their engines to show off their masculinity. To some serious bikers it might almost sound infantile to rev-up unnecessarily.

On a rather personal note, such casual walks by the rivers could sometime get really lonely and you could walk miles after miles with not a thought crossing your mind. I have personally never forced my self into a thought and it’s a special feeling when your mind gets a divine push or cosmic kick out of no where. I guess it was one of those moments.

Guilt of the pleasure of bitchy talk

Shut ‘em kids up

Following thoughts might hurt the sensibilities of all the parents who love their kids and whose love emanates from some unknown new found euphoria which brainwashes them to ignore the nuisance kids cause to general public in public places. I might even sound childish or immature in my observations but that’s OK because that is precisely what I call myself too.

We have heard a lot about people marginalizing themselves into confinements of self incarcerations. They are not waiting for redemptions to happen in their lives. They are just climbing stairs after stairs without checking out that there might be an elevator somewhere, happily living away their closeted existences, so to say. First marriage, then kids, then kids of kids, changing diapers, potato chips, wailing kids, all the symbols marking their ordinary, petty lives. I have not the right to be judgmental about others, but its hard to remain un-opinionated in these matters. Opinions make a man after all.

Every time you come by such people caught in the crossfire of “here or there” you almost feel that its how humans usually behave when they come in contact with a richer society, whatever that means to them. You are born in an ordinary birth, live in an ordinary society, get an ordinary education, an ordinary higher education, an ordinary further higher education, finally an ordinary job and then.

And then come the years and years and years of self denial that this is life. This is what the fuss is about. What else is there to it anyway?

Modern third world generations have an interesting twist in the story. They get their ordinary jobs abroad, which can fetch some royal living. This is a far more dangerous situation as it lends fillip to the idea of striving for that ordinary life. On one hand you have that basically unexciting life tied around 5 days a week and the dreadful 9 to 5. And believe me it is very hard to free oneself from the tyranny of 9 to 5; impossibly hard for people with families, kids and responsibilities. You can’t suddenly zone yourself out of it. Can you? In fact many of us don’t really want to. Especially the ones who get married and start asking right after “Well I got that one out of my system. What now?” and end up with kids as only possible answers. This is such a narcotic life that you are not only fully content with your jaded lives but rather start boasting about it. What if it’s peppered with wailing kids, husbands at times bashing their wives, in-laws cursing you for not bearing a boy and your parents who love to the see your back marrying you off as soon as they legally can.

And a few moments later another bitchy thought creeps in…

This idea has somehow stuck in me. I can’t seem to move on, I simply can’t. And am I the only one to hate wailing kids so much? I guess not. Kids on a flight, for instance. I bet there are quite a few of us who don’t like ‘em there. They are too unceremonious.

Second thing I hate most is the Bollywood and its corny movies. Out comes that shit time after time after time and it leaves you curbed down. It’s as if you are going under, and this constant mediocrity pervades you everywhere. The streets you walk, the elevators, bus stations, shopping malls, trains, and office. Oh yeah, office space breeds mediocrity, even thrives on it. To have such a low life treatment and lack of space to have my leaves approved by a supervisor. And don’t forget the relentless 9 to 5. The clueless, dull and boring weekends those begin too late on Saturday afternoons and end too early on Sunday mornings. Bi-yearly getaways to some sunny location where you don’t know how best to enjoy except getting bored on beaches, with a bottle of beer which you don’t enjoy after a few sips and follow that with some shitty looking Indian tasting Thai entrée with mounds of capsicum dominating the age old chicken-capsicum war in Chinese cuisine of cheap Indian restaurants.

Musings

You have to be an Island at first to be a part of the big land later. If you start considering yourself as essentially being a part of the mainland then you won’t be able to etch out an identity for yourself. This is an identity crisis of the worst kind as apparently it doesn’t seem to be a crisis at all. What can really be wrong in being a part of the whole? On the outside, nothing; but on the inside, everything.

A direct outcome of this realization is that you have to learn to believe in the ephemeral existence of things around you before trying to monumentalize them. Let me elaborate on this further, suppose you have a personal experience which can make a pretty interesting story, you have to first train yourself to fully flesh it out as it is. At this stage, do not bother about how appealing it might sound to others. It may or it may not. In order to fully realize that personal experience into a story, you have to spit out whatever you have around that; free-associate. Just get is out of your system, you will feel unburdened. You are now convinced that you have it in you to put something out of your sheer experience into a sensible narrative that appeals to at least one person in your knowledge. That is you.

Several story ideas don’t even see the light of the day, despite their high appeal value. They pass out through that initial self-censorship phase. Those that make it to the next level have a slight chance to making it even bigger. Therefore it is essential to spit it out, and see where it takes you. Remember, the best of the stories were merely “an idea” before they became timeless classics.

In the process of writing these ideas, sometimes you need a certain degree of detachment. You don’t want to color the impressions of your ideas by something that has already been present in a much matured form to you. One of the challenges of modern times is that you are living in an age of overwhelming visual experiences where peoples’ (including yours) aesthetic and cinematic senses have heightened manifold over the past few years. Any nascent idea dies out a quick death due to a lack of visual thinness. Good thing here is that your gut feeling still prevails. If your instinct says it can then it will. But sensitizing one’s instinct is like rolling the dice and watch the luck play out. Instincts are moody whores. Any moment could be as wrong as it is right.

By severing all the connections and curbing all the cravings to go back to civilization, you embark on that inner journey which is full of unseen passages and unturned twists. Sometimes to reach that deep inside, you need to dissociate from others and just be unto yourself. Like a remote, lonesome island. Easier said than done.

History of cinema

History of cinema and a bloody spur, two most unique experiences now enshrined in our past for ever. Cinema’s power touched me in a certain uncanny way when I watched Godard’s history of cinema-I, first of the series of 10 films made for French TV after the world war II.

I can’t imagine, any other time when cinema’s art aspect was more palpable than it was during the 50 min screening of history. It was bold and certain; creative and powerful. It didn’t have much of a narrative. In fact it didn’t have any narrative. It had cinematic presence of the most potent kind. One that doesn’t lean on narrative, one that can carry on the weight of pure imagery and sound. It’s one thing to have passing ideas in your head, its another to make a movie out of it. Its one thing to have miles and miles of film stock of the 100 or so years of cinema history and another to comb through it to come up with any kind of sensible narrative. And besides its cinema we are talking about where somebody’s cinematic vision might not “make sense” yet be powerful enough to move you.

What else would you show in history of cinema? What else is there to it if not a concoction of imagery and sound? Take yourself 60 years back to a continent essentially ravaged by the modern warfare of unforeseen proportions and imagine what it would do to a society. We have witnessed wars in recent times in Afghanistan and Iraq. Godard’s words, “Forgetting extermination is the part of extermination.”

Godard was not exactly celebratory, eulogizing or blood thirsty in his conclusions or analysis. He was merely showing us cinema as it were, how it leaves its footprints in time, how it objectively lays bare the truth, how camera cannot cheat. His conclusion, “there is too much known about theater, there is too much unknown about cinematograph”. And the music, how it evolves and permeates deep within the narrative and imagery in an ice-water relationship. The images start to bleed emotions when music plays behind.

Godard sticks to the truth aspect with astute tenacity. You can’t judge whether he is being expository, pedantic or merely chronicler. We can’t attach too much meaning to anything simply because it existed in the past. Out of our overzealous nostalgia we glorify all our past. Past was simply is chunk of time. And just like present it had it own version of deglamorised realities. This is more visible in cinema than anything else. It was evolving, remember?

The film offered a chance to visit past and experience cinema and music the “way it was” and not the way it is made to out to be. It was an incredible experience for its creators, performers, lovers and moviegoers and to quote Godard again, “Histories of cinema, histories of blood, histories of night”.

Silent thunder

One of the challenges of finding good screenplays online is that most of what you see around is actually movies transcribed into written document than the other way round.

I am watching a TV show on super humans where I just saw a guy cut through a bullet using a sword as it flies past him; an incredible feat.

Time after time after time after time, I have trapped myself into the similar situation of self-doubt, inner battles, and warring worlds within me that I fail to be sickened by it any more. I am too sensitive to ignore it. My latent talents have begun to show to the surface and its time for me to shift gears. Be more confident and move forward with a certain assertion to conquer the situation.

I am trying to ramble away my certain anxieties and hiccups. If all goes well I might as well come up with some exciting piece of writing and more importantly actually write something. What a strange state of being, you despise the idea of writing yourself to boredom yet are charmed by it. I guess it’s not unusual.

While riding the elevator today I felt a bizarre loneliness; the kind of ice-cold loneliness that pisses on you. The silent hum of the moving stair shafts, the mundane robotic announcer got into my skin and suddenly I felt imprisoned by my circumstances. I became a little unsure momentarily. I looked around myself but failed to soak nothing but lonely air. The white light of the ambience seems too dull to pour shining into your darkened room. I don’t know whether you have ever been in such a lonely situation. You don’t know what to with it, whether to regard its virtue or be pissed by it or be sucked by it or all of these.

A strong urge to blurt my anger out at someone grew suddenly. If only I had somebody there whom I could take for granted in that moment. For once I didn’t want any niceties. For most part you crave more and more for loose behavior, any loose behavior, and begin to hate the order around you. I guess that’s nature’s way of shaking you out of your comfortable couch. Nature hardly bothers about manicures and embellishments.

The supreme contentment of having someone you can take for granted, treat loosely, without too much care is the most necessary freedom. And it’s a great realization during such utter self-desolation that such a person actually exists! Just when you thought that they don’t come anymore, your mind tumbles into her memories. You feel the power of human bond.

Forefront of an invention

One of those days when my blood has garnered ample rush to force me down on my laptop actually writing about nothing but myself. There have been many important discoveries, life changing experiences in past few days, setting the tone for my own “private revolutions”. Self-expression in words is such an evolved art that no matter how good you are someone has beaten you already. But first, a few lessons about virtues of patience.

I believed in great ideas, ideas glowing like the flash of a thousand suns. Ideas, which jump off the page and stick somewhere in reader’s consciousness. But such ideas would never occur to me. Why?
Am I not imaginative enough? May be not scholarly enough? The answer is rather simple. Not patient enough. It can’t be overemphasized. One of key motives of keeping one alive and poised is to be able to wait for the right moment. It may come or it may not. You might be delayed for several hours. But when it finally does come, you know it’s worth the wait. So why do they call it a block when it’s as natural as a flowing river. Well I guess those who called this block may only be thinking about the block of productivity during those lapses.

Great ideas from great people are highly inspiring. They act like a fuel for your writer’s soul. You got to keep the engine running. The body needs to be oiled regularly and that requires constant work. You work while working and you work while resting. The nature is at work all the time around you. You are a part of nature; hence work comes naturally to you. By work, I mean keep your mind busy and active all the time, because if that machine cranks up, you haven’t got any business being a writer. Just accept your fate. You wanted to be a writer, a writer you will be. But not without its tribulations; long cheerless hours where every tiny metaphor takes ages to scoop up only to be discarded at a later point in time if not by you then by your readers, if not by your readers then by your critics.

Sometimes I ask myself, who and what am I writing for. These are important questions, with no satisfied answers. I only tell myself that you have to write because you have to write. And like all endeavors of artistic pursuit, you will take your own time and energy to reach that state of seamless flow of energy from your brain to the blank screen in front. And no matter how good it feels to write the first time, it will always feel less good, even mediocre the second time. I don’t pay too much attention to “who am I write for” question simply because I feel too trivialized by my own trivial existence. I know it might sound like too much of an existential crisis for an aspiring writer. After all writers are supposed to be Gods and Gods don’t have existential crisis.

Gopi's boss s(t)ings!!!

Gopi's meeting with an American colleague...

when Gopi meets a little monster...

The day after my best day

Just finished No Condom No Sex and what a relief that has been. Films always tend to grow on you towards the end. That’s the worst possible phase to loose out because that when you are doing what most essentially has to be done; finish in style.

Editing was a bit tiring towards the end, because of the complexities of the software that we used. Although it was far simpler than some of the other tools available in the market but the creative process drains you and you are left with nothing but a tired feeling of accomplishment. In fact you don’t feel that accomplishment either as you have gone through so much toil any amount of success in return seems to be dwarfed by the efforts put in. However, you still cannot take disappointments at this stage. This is strange. Success doesn’t make to ecstatic, but failures dip you down.

Before my next project I will take up certain writing assignments. Writing oxygenates me. I think I have used that word “oxygenate” many other times too. I like it, one of those rare words who are able to measure up to the emotion behind. Writing is mainly a challenge as my mind wanders into too many plots at the same time. This morning I actually wrote 3 different stories simultaneously. Absurd? I don’t know. I might want to develop a style of my own soon or I will fall into the danger of loosing sight soon. Some of those plots die their natural death. But once started, a plot doesn’t leave you that easily, even if it dies. It lives in your memory and come back stronger later.

So, one good news is that now days I don’t have to deal with writer’s block. I am kind of superstitious; I don’t want to talk about it lest it may hit me again. But what I suffered from was not exactly writer’s block. It was amateur’s block. But I am now suffering from a new block which is more profound than the earlier one. My obsessions to avoid clichés are bothering me. No matter what writing I do, I always come out dissatisfied. It raises big questions. Questions that have unpleasant answers. Where ever I see any interesting writing I look for that element of originality that outshines the rest of the piece. I feel I lack the spunk. I become glum and restless. The battle goes on, until one moment comes where I see that phrase, in my grasp. Then I move on.

Brush Strokes

I have been having various emotional experiences yet not been able to put them into words. Sometimes I wonder what is more oxygenating to me; reading or writing. I read mostly to reach to those hidden emotions where once reached, I don’t want to come back to reality at all. The fiction becomes a bridge to travel to the reality within me. I see reality but only perceive it when fiction intoxicates me.

About writing
For me, writing is rarer yet more permanent. When you lift the pen, you don’t merely put thoughts on paper, you churn yourself, for all the emotional imbalances. Inevitably, words only come out when you want to create a balance out of an unbalanced situation within you. When I write I feel more close to my inhibitions, more concerned about my fears.

Poetry
Writing poetry is another difficult experience to bear. Like someone said, “as a writer you have a whip which could only be used for self-flagellation”. But the fruits are so enriching that you want to go through the pain and fire to see the end.
A full-blooded poem is a journey to a road less travelled (to use the cliché). Once you embark on that inner journey within, the road gets wider and you get lonelier. The absolute solitude of those moments of thoughts sets a rhythm in you which few people experience. Those who claim to have had a ride on this inner rhythm are gifted.

Why say it out?
Why a few things cannot be left unsaid? Why does human heart seek satisfaction by opening out an emotional secret? I see that many story tellers create situations and circumstances where people move towards that center point of utter revelation. And worse when others around them seem to be questionably interested as if the whole set up was meant only for that one moment when the character will speak her heart out. When the emotion was inside the character somehow the audiences were carrying the burden too and when it is blurted out, the audiences feel unburdened. This drains them out and emptiness follows. You almost feel cheated. Things should be left unsaid when there is no particular motive to reveal them. If it is not a narrative necessity, don’t speak out.

Fly in the eye

A striking moment occurred to me yesterday when I was watching something beautiful and imaginative on the screen. The image does not escape me yet. It has lingered on ever since. It was the image of the eyes of a dying horse and of the tiny flies hovering over it. Death was waiting to embrace the animal and flies to eclipse the eyes, but he was still breathing on. His eyes were dozing off never to open again.

There were other some very touching moment through the 2 hour long film called “Waltz With Bashir”. I am sure many of you have seen this film and agree to what I am about to say. This film takes you through the broken images of the lost memory of a war soldier in Israel. Although the film revolves around this character but the theme is essentially war. What is most striking about the film is the freshness of the story and psychological element around it. It depicts brutality of the war yet avoids direct narrative. Hence the overall effect is quite sublime and profound.

This is animation at its best. You cannot make out the fine line between the real and the surreal and the film travels between these two genres very effortlessly. You hardly notice the shift. Sometimes you are transported to the war scene with guns and flares, and interspersed between these are dreamlike experiences owing the complex nature of human mind and how it reacts to warlike situations. There are also some very interesting almost scientific insights into the minds of humans especially during trauma and war.

The film is very brisk in the narrative but never hurries on to you. It pauses to ponder when it should doesn’t drag on when it shouldn’t. The film gets over in under 100 minutes and ends up telling a whole lot of things about life, war, people and crime, mostly through those striking images. It is an irony that whatever you can achieve with animation can hardly ever been imagined other genres yet there are very few experiments in animation in most of the big film industries. Agreed that you see a lot of animation work but most of it carries a stereotype of big entertainment value rather than serious and solemn cinema. If the success of the cinema is measured by how much it moves you and whether is it able to give you something which is unique in nature and very distinctive observation about life then this film has be of a great value to the world of cinema and viewers.