Friday, July 25, 2008

Small Mercies

QUOTE OF THE DAY


"I found my father's legs two years ago, and two weeks ago I found his head"

Avdo Suljic, 35, an unemployed Bosnian Muslim who lost 200 relatives at Srebrenica in 1995 - on what has eased his pain since the mass murders 13 years ago. He was responding to a question on whether Radovan Karadzic's capture had provided him solace. Before talking about what truly brings some peace - namely being able to lay his relatives' remains to rest, - he said "Karadzic is an old man. Nothing with his arrest has changed for me."

Karadzic was the leader of the Bosnian Serb army that laid siege to Srebrenica for three and a half years and massacred 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men over just 5 terrible days in July 1995. He was arrested this week after hiding in plain sight in Bosnia and Serbia for the last 13 years

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Pink, Punk, Rock, Pop

SONG OF THE WEEK

I'd heard this song played scores of times on the radio without knowing who the artist was - I assumed it was a one-hit singer. Whoever it was, she'd managed to convey deep angst through a soft-rock hard-pop melody that was as easy on the ears as harsh the sharp-edged lyrics were on the psyche. I wondered how much of the lyrics were autobiographical - and whether putting the pain to music had helped alleviate it at all. I discovered after several weeks of hearing it on the radio - that the song was called "Don't Let Me Get Me" and the singer was Pink (Yes the same artist who impressed me a few months back with her ability to turn an angry emasculating "You And Your Hand" into a monster club-hit).

I think the lyrics to Don't Let Me Get Me are beautiful - not beautiful in the manner of Corinne Bailey Rae's "Put Your Records On" which leaves you soothed, suffused with a summery glow with its dulcet tones, pretty words and prettier imagery. Dont Let Me Get isn't beautiful in that way at all. But in the willingness of the singer to express one's deepest, rawest emotions. I'd urge you dear reader, to google and read the full lyrics, but here are my favourite lines:

LA told me, "You'll be a pop star,
All you have to change is everything you are."
Tired of being compared to damn Britney Spears
She's so pretty, that just ain't me

Doctor, doctor won't you please prescribe me
somethin
A day in the life of someone else?
Cuz I'm a hazard to myself

Don't let me get me
I'm my own worst enemy
Its bad when you annoy yourself
So irritating
Don't wanna be my friend no more
I wanna be somebody else

The funny thing is, that while the lyrics are angst-ridden, the music that they've been set to isn't dark and at no point does Pink allow her voice to stray into the anger zone. Instead she's sung it for the most part in a light-hearted monotone, with only a faint plaintive inflection creeping in when she sings the chorus lines. There was oodles more anger in "You And Your Hand".

The discovery that she'd sung Dont Let Me Get Me, added to my growing admiration of Pink's skills as a lyricist and of her ability to straddle the alternative (Dear Mr. President), rock (You and your hand) and pop (Get The Party Started) worlds with seeming ease. She's often called a punk artist and she is one - but all of that punkishness seems to be expressed through her personality, get-up and most-of-all through her usually memorable lyrics. She writes and sings, not for Everyman but for Everypunk and still manages to connect with the likes of me. Of course that could mean that she has broad reach or it could mean that there's a punk inside of me that I haven't yet met. But until I colour my hair blazing-vertical-orange I'm going to go with the first option

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

You Know You're Addicted When...

A few weeks back I was reading a newspaper…or maybe it was a magazine…and came across, as one does so often these days, a reference to a young blogger who apparently was gaining a lot of readership for the things he was writing about and the interesting way in which he was writing about them. An Indian blogger based in the US.

Finding a fresh, new blog with its own unique mix of topics that the blogger’s chosen to write about, is, I now find, very similar to discovering an author that you’ve never read before. Except that a blog unlike most good books generally go on and on without end, and if you’re lucky will be updated, multiple times, on a daily basis. I made a note of the website address and later that evening I typed in the blog’s address and with a short pause designed to heighten the anticipation, hit enter.

The browser page rolled itself up, held its breath for a couple of seconds and then unfurled a new look…The virginal white expanse of the google page replaced by a page with two broad blue borders and a white center with words running across it in neat black type. I don’t quite remember all that I read and saw on the page, but I do distinctly remember liking the writing style, finding the choice of subjects eclectic and the overall aesthetics restful on the eye. Some of the posts were accompanied by photographs…and were all so clear, they looked like someone had taken a scrubbing brush to them…so clear that the edges seemed to have a faint glow around them.

One particular photo-post caught my attention. The title said simply, “My Brother”. It showed a curly haired guy sitting intently at a desk, in front of a computer. He wore specs and was smiling…something on the screen was evidently funny. It was a pleasant smile. The brother. There was another guy standing to his right, leaning in towards the screen, one hand on the edge of the desk, the other on the chair that the first guy was sitting on. Also smiling. While the post didn’t say so it seemed clear that the guy standing was the blogger himself. His features are vague in my mind.

Even weeks later the picture is fresh in my mind, though I’ve forgotten virtually everything else that I saw and read on that site. For two reasons, primarily. One, There seemed to be an easy camaraderie between the two brothers. It had a rather cosy feel to it. You wanted to get to know these guys…you kind of knew they’d make good friends. The second reason was the caption. It said: 48. Kill at 48. I saw the caption before I saw the picture because I had started reading the blog from the earlier posts and was scrolling up the site versus down. The caption sent a chill down my spine…and the lack of congruity with the picture itself was puzzling. Even more than that, it was disturbing. Suddenly I became aware that night had fallen outside…that I was now sitting in the dark leavened only by the glow from the laptop screen. I looked at the picture for a long time…trying to figure out whether the caption was a joke or a declaration of malicious intent…trying to get my rising dread to settle back down.

That’s when I woke up…with a start...and an aspirated "phew!". I’d been holding my breath in my sleep out of sheer tension. I was back in the log-cabin-like living room of the Jikoji Zen Temple and Retreat Center, at the bottom of a valley in the Santa Cruz mountains…having fallen asleep helped in equal measures by enervating heat, a surprisingly sumptuous lunch of marinated and baked tofu squares sprinkled with crunchy sunflower seeds.

I was on a two day silent retreat – having committed to not speaking during that period in addition to not reading, writing, watching TV, listening to music, surfing the web or doing anything that might distract me from my conversation with myself. Sleeping, however, was acceptable and I’d managed to do a lot of it that first day. And apparently the withdrawal symptoms from not having web-surfed for a full 24 hours had, unbeknownst to me, so ravaged my subconscious in that short time, that my superego had given into my id and manufactured a fantasy blog for me to read in a place where no Ethernet port had gone before.

Dusk was falling outside – just as it had in my dream and that told me that I had missed the mid-afternoon meditation session, on top of the mid-morning one – both due to the soporific nature of my internal conversations. It looked like I was already late for the final session of the day – a walking meditation that was supposed to take the group up a dirt-path to the top of a nearby ridge to watch the sun set. I scrambled up from the couch; wondering what I could do to redeem myself – my fellow retreat-ers couldn’t scold me without breaking their vow of silence but they were still allowed to glare. Seeing the sun was still hanging around on the horizon – I decided to try and catch up with the rest of the group- of course to truly redeem myself, I’d have to meditate my way up (versus just run up) to the ridge-top and hope the sun hadn’t set by then. The philosophical riddle (wikipedia’s description, not mine) – If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound – seemed particularly apt in this situation. Perhaps if I was quiet enough no one would notice that I hadn’t already been there when they arrived – and that would make me not-late.

So, I started up the hill at a determined trot, meditating furiously all the while.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

A Quote for the Ages

"Its like a pterodactyl out of a gay Jurassic Park"

- Tim Gunn, host of Project Runway on Episode 2, Season 5, on a pink dress, that wasn't fully shown, but which I'm guessing has a rather 'innovative' silhouette.

The poor designer is probably now wishing he'd taken that trip to the remote Costa Rican island that housed Crichton's creations and taken his chances with Velociraptors devouring him; instead of coming on Project Runway. Or maybe that Gunn had. :)

Apparently this is Gunn's last season...He's going to be sorely missed.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Plus Ca Change...



Lately I've been finding inspiration for a lot of my posts in art - well music and literature anyway. The only youtube video that I ever added to my favourites list is this cover version of the Beatles' Across the Universe by Rufus Wainwright. RW is apparently a fairly well known singer though I'd never heard of him until a blog pointed me to this video. I liked this even more than the original Beatles' version - I know - Sacrilege!! :)

As you can guess I love the haunting quality of the song and of the video - fits right into a certain mood of mine :) - but also love it for the laidback way in which the song has been sung - almost lazily accompanied with a big dollop of sensuality. I can just feel my muscles all begin to loosen up, the knots begin to dissolve, stress beging to seep away. The little girl in the video is also just adorable.,,no she's actually mesmerisingly pretty. I had a feeling of deja vu as I watched her...and then a quick google search told me why...she's Dakota Fanning who played Tom Cruise's daughter in the War of the Worlds in which aliens invade the earth and massacre tons of people in sight. (Some Iraqis probably think that's contemporary history, not a film - And just so we're clear, I'm referring to the initiators of the war here not the soldiers who're just doing their duty). On a different note, I also just realized that there's a certain symmetry in using Dakota Fanning in a video called Across the Universe, given one of her most prominent roles has been in an alien movie.

I wonder if this video somehow or in some way is inspired by the 1956 French movie by Albert Lamorisse’s “The Red Balloon,” about a young boy and the talismanic sphere that follows him through the gray streets of Paris like a dog, a lover, a ghost". That movie partly also inspired a 2007 film called "Flight of the Red Balloon"

Anyway, as I played the song on an impulse today, after months, I was a little surprised by a new reaction I had to the refrain,

"Nothing's going to change my world
Nothing's going to change my world
Nothing's going to change my world
Nothing's going to change my world"

It felt like the lyrics were referring to how I felt about the vote on the Warrantless Wiretapping bill passed today by the Democratic party-controlled Senate...A deep disappointment in the political process in general. The fact that this happened when the Democrats controlled both the houses of Congress seems to say we'd be foolish to expect any big changes even if they win the Presidency in November; a fact emphasized by the Barack "Change-you-can-believe-in" Obama's oh-so-conventional capitulation in voting in favour of the bill. In a delicious irony Hillary Clinton sided with the liberals (like me) who opposed her in the primary, and voted against the bill that destroys most protections against electronic spying by the government on residents and citizens of the US.

I worry that even if the Republicans lose, it will be their slogan and not Obama's that will win out in the end. They briefly talked about bringing "Change you Deserve" to the country before it was discovered that an anti-depressant has the same tag-line (In my view, this makes it totally inappropriate for the Republicans to use the slogan - though not because of copyright issues. If the medication in question was a "downer" rather than mood "upper" the slogan-theft would make perfect sense)!

My fear is that the Wiretapping bill is a signal that given the passive resistance that this country has put up to 8 years of a corrupt, violent and inequitous government, perhaps we don't deserve much of a change at all, and that is what we might get come November and beyond.