Yesterday I made my first music video. I had a song that I had a draft production of and I wanted to learn a new skill: Adobe Premiere Pro and video editing.
So I shot some footage at home over an hour and put together a video in a few hours. In all honesty, I enjoyed the process way more than I expected, and the final result is not too shabby.
Here’s the unlisted video on YouTube.
I picked up a bunch of books from the book vendors at Flora Fountain near CST in Mumbai. Literally, 33 books. Almost all were second-hand copies, many mass-market paperbacks.
I was on my way back from Jay’s place, and Jay might have told me that I shouldn’t overdo it. And I wasn’t meaning to. And I really think I haven’t.
In my honest estimate, the number is about 1/10th of what I would have bought had I given myself the chance to overdo it. That makes about 150 books as “doing” in right.
If you are wondering what I might have bought, here’s a photograph:
But then you’ll be left wondering because that’s definitely not 33. And that’s because there were others. Including this box set.
There are more, of course, but they have already found places on some of my bookshelves. And they include literary stuff like Ulysses by James Joyce and To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
Of course, that means that those that haven’t need more place. So who knows, maybe an Ikea bookshelf is in the offing?
My father awakened in the coffin of my heart. He had a seizure soon after, his first ever, even considering his painful end-of-life, battling metastatic brain tumors.
I had felt like how I would imagine it would be to be inside a bass drum when a classy drummer would make a deft ghost note in the middle of a song that is as groovy as it is deadly. A thump that was as gentle as a caress, one that foretells the coming of a force of immense magnitude.
The trigger was trivial, initiated by a woman whose being is hard to describe in words, apart from the fact that her careless, frivolous utterings unintentionally generate paroxysms inside me.
Mysticism and pesudoscience should similarly discomfort any rationally aligned man, regardless of his or her gender, but the bag of blood in my chest that punches its contents out like a metronome is where the soul that left the body of my father chose as a resting place a day before his body was incinerated.
Like a parasitic commensal, he lives in through me, with his imprinted gene copies scattered through my body, wanting to spread out into the world, an urge feverishly quelled by my tendencies to fornicate with those of my own gender, something that my father, now writhing in the agony of those foolish words, chose to bury under years and years in the service of god.
My father awakened in the coffin of my heart. He had a seizure soon after, his first ever, even considering his painful end-of-life, battling metastatic brain tumors.
I had felt like how I would imagine it would be to be inside a bass drum when a classy drummer would make a deft ghost note in the middle of a song that is as groovy as it is deadly. A thump that was as gentle as a caress, one that foretells the coming of a force of immense magnitude.
The trigger was trivial, initiated by a woman whose being is hard to describe in words, apart from the fact that her careless, frivolous utterings unintentionally generate paroxysms inside me.
Mysticism and pesudoscience should similarly discomfort any rationally aligned man, regardless of his or her gender, but the bag of blood in my chest that punches its contents out like a metronome is where the soul that left the body of my father chose as a resting place a day before his body was incinerated.
Like a parasitic commensal, he lives in through me, with his imprinted gene copies scattered through my body, wanting to spread out into the world, an urge feverishly quelled by my tendencies to fornicate with those of my own gender, something that my father, now writhing in the agony of those foolish words, chose to bury under years and years in the service of god.
Although my granny thought that being a cyanosed infantile god could be considered cute, I never wanted to be known as a butter-licking, underwear-stealing, womanizing cerulean who will talk circles around you in riddles while riding chariots. I rather sure that she would have asphyxiated me for the bluishness, but the only blue in me is that I grew up to be depressed.
When I arrived from school, she greeted me at the same place, sitting the same way, where she would diligently kill dozens of mosquitoes at dusk every evening. For a tiny frail woman with a hunched back, she loved killing and having blood on her hands. She made sweet milk chai for my evening snack until she thought it was a good idea for me to do it instead, and my gratitude toward her for this will be insufficient if I dedicated the whole of the next paragraph for it.
She birthed a man that I grew up to despise, even more so after some of the worst aspects of his bigotry spilled out in the form of books as we were packing up the house after his death. His passion for things that involved gods, music, and planetary alignment must have trickled down to me via the acidic code, with the trivial replacement of the first on the list with a hatred for it and my birth name.
I have been busy all evening with this song, which is turning out to be better than I thought it would be.
V1
The hurt is seeping out through my skin
But my face isn’t blue
(A) Misstep would lead me to the jaws of death
But the round isn’t over yet
Laid bare are the pages of storm and ice
(And) But my sweat is pale
Faced with an ask that’s more than I could give
It’s time to lay down my spearPC1
It’s you that’s letting yourself get beat up
It’s you who’s clearly at fault
It’s you that’s letting yourself give up
It’s you who’s clearly at seaC1
(It’s) Time to think of what it’s all worth
(It’s) Time to think of the pain and regret
(It’s) Time to think of all the things you’ve left behind
(It’s) Time to think of how many good breaths you’ve leftV2
The words are slipping out of my mouth
But it isn’t even moving
A confession would put a seal on my fate
But my life isn’t over yet
My eyes paint a tale of tragedies
(And) But my tears are dry
Left at a fork of waning certainties
It’s time to heed my fearsPC2
It’s you that’s letting yourself get hurt
It’s you who’s clearly to blame
It’s you that’s letting yourself go on
It’s you who’s clearly deceivedC2
(It’s) Time to think who you’re loyal to
(It’s) Time to think of the joy and sweat
(It’s) Time to think of all the things you’ve gained and lost
(It’s) Time to think of how many nights and sleeps you’ve leftOutro
What you’ve left
What you’ve lost
What you’ve felt
What you’re dealt
But will it ever see the light of day?
A resuscitated machine kept me up late last night. After multiple start-stops, with the fans doing their best to expel the heat of an aging processor, I got it booted up, only to realize that I have learned multiple times that Windows will fail you, no matter how much you want to love it.
I slept to three men talk about One Hundred Years of Solitude, which I’m getting more into, despite me already being gripped by Gabe’s writing style and the story in general. Waking up later than I would have liked, I was surprised that I felt better than I expected to, and over the course of a morning routine, over a cup of hot coffee, Ursula gave me company via The Left Hand of Darkness.
It’s almost the end of a hot April, and I have finished most of my monthly read-along reads. Leaving oneself in the company of these two greats on either side of a night’s sleep is not such a bad idea.
In the stifling, still heat of Mumbai, cosmetically favorable dressings offered ill company, especially while bicycling on sweltering tarmac just past nine. Yet, when I unfurled my peripherals at my work desk, I felt unexpectedly in control, and in an hour or so, while sipping another hot coffee, I had written a decent song called Dreamer.
The late morning saw a heated conversation with my supervisor about work-related affairs in the still, less-stifling heat of a non-air conditioned meeting room, which is quite embarrassing even in the stifling corporate environment laden with the air of cost-cutting and lay-offs. This was followed by a peaceful lunch, interrupted only by a conversation on creativity and learning.
A meeting followed, to no one’s surprise, in the radiating heat of a Mumbai sun, proud at being let in by fools not stringing three thoughts together, evidenced by them not choosing to lower the blinds until after an hour of the incongruent cacophony. Three other meetings followed, examining the ashes of the previous one, all of them baring different manifestations of insecurities and vulnerabilities.
It was soon followed by a genuine respite from the heat. Cool beer and savories over a story of a man chasing a dream, destined for success, almost in a disconcertingly self-assured way, while taking risks that mere mortals like me tamely skirt around.
Back in the office, waiting for my friend to wrap up another heated meeting, but this time it is about a software pipeline. Not to want to waste the time waiting for one end and another beginning, I try to learn the ropes of a skillset that I believe I, and indeed most who will live through the next two decades or so, will need more and more.
My heating Windows laptop, reinforcing my reinforced learnings from the previous night, prevents me from smoothly viewing myself talking about a hot topic, which adds to the existing cringe of self-review. I wrap up myself when the other wrap-up occurs near simultaneously, no coincidence intended, but there is yet another delay, which is terminated by me putting away the guitar on which I had written the song eight hours ago.
In the confines of an elevator that had one too many descenders, I was trying to get my friend to open up about his troubles. Of course, we don’t get anywhere because where is enough time? So we part ways.
As I cruised around the block around the office, I found myself back in the still, hot air around nine, but this time it is when the sun can’t belt on me. At the intersection, I realize that I had forgotten Gabe and Ursula in a drawer, and I circle back around the block.
Picking up the greats, I start by, and the heat’s gotten me good. By the time I reach home, the apartment screams of being suffocated, and there is finally a rectangle of plastic, glass, and semiconductors, which when pressed, turns on my air-conditioner.
Heat’s over. For the day. On to the next.
I once wrote a song. Maybe two years ago. It’s called Uncoil. Half of my songs are about mental health or turmoil, and this one is a bit more on the face about my therapy. It follows the usual verse-prechorus-chorus-bridge template. The first prechorus went like this.
Uncoil (excerpt)
“Swinging trees out my window
Swirly clouds in the pale blue sky
But all I see are the stains on the window pane”
On a cursory look, nothing special. But it is special today, for three things. About where I’m sitting to write this, what I’m writing it on, and how I felt while singing these lines last night around midnight.
I did write the song at the desk that I’m writing this. I’m sitting by the window through which I could see the sky and the trees, but it’s night now. There are some clouds but the city’s buildings are winking at me.
However, unlike when I wrote the song, I am writing this post on my old Windows PC, which is newly resuscitated.
Again nothing special, but I hadn’t thought of using the PC at this desk, which sort of gives it a new lease of life. I have been mostly working on Macs for the last few years, especially when it comes to writing and working on music. So it is a new lease of life, where the living room desk becomes a bit more versatile, while the bedroom desk becomes slightly less cluttered.
Finally, about how I felt. I thought this song had more life than what I had remembered it. Was it because of my newfound self-confidence in my own musical abilities. Is it just the new guitar? Or is it something that I can’t quite put my finger on?
We won’t know, will we, until we know?
It’s hard to forgive someone who is rude to you in public. It’s even harder to forgive someone who consistently allows others to behave in that manner.
It’s hard to be kind to someone who doesn’t treat you well. It’s even harder to be kind to someone who expects that others will treat them well if they continue to be kind.
It’s hard to have hope in someone who does not learn from their mistakes. It’s even harder to be kind to someone who doesn’t even try to learn from their mistakes.
The question is how many times I come up in these. I guess I’m there at least twice, but considering how things have gone in the past few days, I think I’m there even more.
What a day!
Making 24 pancakes after having not found flour for 15 minutes, and then meeting my friend’s wonderful kids in their airy, spacious Mumbai apartment, with the pancakes being received with little or no reception.
Spending about five hours in a police station trying to piece together the history and timeline of a phishing attack on Jay’s father’s bank accounts, ending up factory-resetting the phone and receiving glares and disgruntlement for having tried to help.
Exploring the best ways to prevent a similar attack on Jay’s phone, explaining the rationale, and then being met with anger and shouting while riding pillion, eventually being outraged at being treated like dirt, and finally finding myself on the way back home instead of being at dinner at his aunt’s.
Catching a train that is three minutes later than another similar one, assuming that it wouldn’t matter and then being stranded between stations for over fifteen minutes, making sure that the day could be more wretched than what it could have been.
What else could go wrong? There are two and a half hours left.
Engayging Life 