To sleep, perchance to sleep... YAAAWN.

I watched The Prestige today around 4.00pm and since then I've been in a state of inertia.
Emotional upheaval aside, the ramifications and the philosophical summing up aside... I cried my heart out. It wasn't quite what I was asking for, when I wanted The Green Mile etc... But this served the purpose.
Effective doppelganger.

Imagine what a great impact it had on me!!! I've been listening to Massive Attack since evening!
Black Milk, Mezzanine, Inertia Creeps et al... Whoo.

I just found out that this 22nd of April coincidentally happens to be Earth Day... Go green!
And Go (to) Chandigarh!!

We are all very curious. Yet we know so little about ourselves. The acts that others do that make us cringe in shock and mutter imprecations under our breath are the very facts that would come naturally to the most sane and civilized of us... Everyone is a monster. Its good we don't have a clue about what we can do. Most of our lives we walk right past that little unmarked door inside our heads. If, God forbid, we opened it... Who knows what would burst through?
And here comes a last question... Last, that is, before I power down my brain for tonight:-
If we suddenly unlock THE DOOR... Is what comes out what makes us who we are? Or is it what we choose to do with what comes out?

Tell you what,
I'll sleep on it.

As I lay awake in my bed last night, listening to music... I wondered if I could ever write a cohesive song. As a commercial thing. As a songwriter. I didn't think much about it before I slept, but it did occur to me that it would be easy if I put my mind into it. The song that prompted me to think this was Sing What Your Soul Sings, by Massive Attack.
I'm good at poetry. Rhymes... Verses... Whatnot.
They can just keep spouting forth on any subject as long as I have a sufficient mental incentive as to why I should be doing that... However, are songs all that different? I mean yeah 80% is the talent of the singer... but then the words can't be sub-par, can they?
Shakespeare lived in his own little world when he said 'What's in a name...'
A lot apparently... Imagine if the rose was named a stinkwort instead.
It would still smell sweet, yet I doubt it would be the most sought after flower on Valentine's Day!
(sic)
Anyway, then came the moral question about songwriting-- I'm a selfish and very self-engrossed individual... Would I get along with the poor guy who decides to sing what I wrote? Would the song-brainstorming sessions be free of bloodshed? I'd bash in anybody's head if he/she uttered anything less than a compliment about my lyrics... I mean, hey, I'm the guy writing the words... If you know better, go do it yourself...!
That kind of thing.
Anyway. I against I. Guess none would survive.

Move over Mos Def.

King Kong in Cannes on a date with Superman

Well I WAS thinking that the song 'Absurd' was... Well... For lack of a better word, ABSURD!

Once you read the lyrics, it's kinda hard to imagine it playing in a seedy strip joint... But then again, it's perfect for when it does. Kinda absurd. But a masterpiece all the same.
I'm not gonna proselytize anymore in THIS post, at least... So on to the good stuff:
I watched Proof.
Oh my god. What a great movie. And then I ended up watching Cloverfield.
Oh my god.
I am insane! What prompted me to keep the TV on after Proof, anyway?
Totally ended the mental high I'd got... Sometimes I'm just too stupid for words.
No... A quick correction, I'm NEVER too stupid for words. Not yet anyways.
I found an old diary today. Unused, except for the start page, which informed me that I bought it from Capital Book Depot in Chandigarh on mum's last birthday... Well I liked it so much that apparently I forgot all about when I came back home! Or maybe it was my stupid habit of treating my diaries as persons and strictly adhering to a code of monogamy with them.
Eugh... I know, I know.
But enough of that. I ended the tradition and turned Mormon with them. I now am the proud owner of three diaries. Actually I own more than that... But these three are the ones I'm currently ravaging... All paper shall be put to the fire and sword. I have long crossed the Rubicon with words...

Hail Caesar, Morturi Te Salutant.

P.S. In keeping with tradition of incorporating my post title with the contents... King Kong was a partial inspiration for Cloverfield... The directors wanted an ALL AMERICAN monster... Not something similar to Godzilla... But an American Monster such as King K. Rool... Uh... Kong.

Of lies and lamps!!!

Well that' s a title I'd never have thought of using!

I was typing out a test for mum's students...

A question was: What is defamation, libel and slander?

And I began to think. After a lot of thoughting, I realized I would probably answer this question with Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.

Then came the ethereal moment when I was reminded of Diogenes, hunting through the streets in the daytime with a lamp, looking for an honest man.
Poor guy. He'd be spinning furiously inside his barrel... Er... Grave... If he only knew how long ago he'd started looking and if he were alive today how fruitless his search would have been.
Everybody lies. Everybody lies without realizing it. Hey it's just another drop in the ocean, hey what's the difference, hey so what's a little white lie... Oh?... Racism!!! I object!
Anyway.
In one of my favorite books the guy gets executed for being too honest.
In one of my favorite books the guy gets executed for not knowing anything.

So I guess that puts paid to the sayings that Honesty is the best policy, and ignorance is bliss, respectively.

Cheers!

I just made you up to hurt myself.

Sometimes I think I can see right through myself.
You know, after watching the Machinist I was seriously tempted to test the experiment of sleep deprivation on myself...
But Christian Bale's bod was just too much of a negative incentive for me to go through with my scheme... Eugh... I'm no superman, but that guy would cease to exist if he got any thinner(sic).
So I stayed content with memories of just the one time I got to watch Jacob's Ladder... I wonder what kind of narrative style they call when the entire movie is going on inside a character's head?
No, no similarities... Don't even bring out your pitchforks you kind people... The two movies are poles apart. Just saying.
So here I am, braying electronically about such hi-flying issues whereas I should go for a Bohemian outlook... But I guess that would seem too needy.
Or desperate, for that matter.

But its all right, to each his own, and to me... EVERYTHING!!!
Man I love being mean. One so deserves it sometime.

OH! A P.S.

Continuing the previous post's mention of NIN... The protagonist in The Machinist is named Reznik... WOOO.

Fly away now, thou meddlesome bird of doom!

You know... I was listening to Only by NIN and I was forced to think.
The line,
Less concerned about fitting into the world,
Your world, that is, 'cos it doesn't really matter anymore...
is quite all right, at first... Then if you start peeling away at it you're gonna end up ruining your grooving session and end up with a book instead!

Yeah, my experience exactly.

Anyway... Blogger's got a scheduled outage sometime soon and I don't want my posts to be collateral damage.
I was reading one of Huxley's works and he was writing something about The Whole Truth.
He argued that The Whole Truth does not necessarily seek to personify the characters in a narrative as heroes or supermen... It is the whole truth that (sic) caused Homer's Odysseus to expertly cook a meal and eat it with his sailing fellows, then after the meal they remembered their six companions that had been snatched from the ship and devoured... And they began to weep and howl... And thus their tears brought upon them soft sleep.

Well I'm sure I'm the kinda writer who'd dedicate an entire CHAPTER to just the lamentation of those poor guys and how the sailing of the ship, the subsequent landing and meal, etc etc was put in jeopardy because of the loss of those six men... However, since Homer is embellishing his narrative with only The Whole Truth, the events after their loss are not just superficial, but practical... Men know that even after having to witness such a horrific end of their comrades, they still have to eat... To sleep... To rest...

Then came the question of five relatively modern literary artists... Lawrence, Gide, Kafka, Hemingway and Proust... Five writers as different from each other as the various hues in the primary color wheel... Each with his own sensibilities, convictions, way of putting things across (sic) and so on.

Yet they all utilize The Whole Truth. That is what binds them together. And that is what makes their work instantly click with our own mind because, The Whole Truth has a nasty habit of making itself felt in our OWN mentality... because we can infer that this is definitely true, or would be true, in such and such a situation... For example... If I were one of the fortunate crew sailing with Odysseus... I would be damned hungry, regardless of my partners dying or not.

Leave the Truth to people who think they know it best.

And Ekta Kapoor of course (HEE HEE HEE)

Snoopy would definitely beat me hands down in this.

It was a dark and stormy night...
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...
Blew the wind...
Exposing the fragile layers of his mind to the riffling fingers of his furtive subconscious.
He woke with a start.
He started to rise.
He rose to his feet.
His feet were cold and felt prickly.
Needles were coursing through his veins... He wanted to peel his skin off as if he were afraid something else had crawled in there with him that night.

Eyes staring wide rotated in their sockets and focused on the drapes.

"Damned weather... Screw this @!$#*^*!! window...!"

He went back to sleep.

(Hey thats ME!!!)

LOOK MA, I'M ON A BLOG!!

Nelly Furtado, amongst other things...

Blogs are the BEST.
Because you don't get digital tomatoes slung at you... Not yet anyways, would trust the liberal minded people to come up with something like that sometime or the other...
Ugh.

Anyway.

If I kinda rephrase Nelly Furtado... I'm Gonna Say What I Want... What Are YOU Gonna Do? So Powerless...

Cheeky, eh?

I LOVE THIS!