Song: 1985
Artist: Haken
Mind aid
Art
Jaws
This post is dedicated to Angelina Jolie’s jawline. There are terminators, then there’s Angelina Jolie’s jawline, a work of art. It’s like it was sculpted by Michelangelo and brought to life by Skynet. This genetics thing is pretty cool.
Ice croc rock
A piece of ice that looks like a crocodile on the prowl.
I really need to get out of the house.
And now, a song to go with it.
Achievement unlocked
I went to watch a talk on ‘Fields’, where they talked about the Earth as a ‘construct’.
I feel like a real blogger now. I went to an event, and I talked about it on the internet.
Push it to the max
Loneliness has started to creep in. So I welcomed it like an old friend, and then took it to the park, because if there’s one way to beat loneliness, it’s to drown it in a sea of people. Lucky for me, it was one of the weirdest parks I’ve ever been to. Prepare for pictures that no one asked for.
Random cottage in the middle of the park, that doesn’t let people in, hence the fresh look.
Unlucky visitor who got turned to stone by park authorities when she tried to leave the park. #parkfears
Some of the visitors were captured by park authorities before they could leave the park. They are now forced to smile at new visitors.
“They gouged my eyes out and turned me into stone, but they gave me a cap. I kinda like it here now. It’s better than my desk job at Cisco”.
Kiss fans still rocking the tongue trick
Some of the visitors who were captured tried to revolt against park authorities. They went full-on war mode.
Oh, then there was Egypt
Weird Art
You see, the thing about art exhibits is, sometimes you need to be at a ‘higher state-of-mind’ to be able to appreciate it. Like many people, I don’t get it. But I’m not a quitter. So what I do is, I get a little drunk and then stare at it for 4 to 5 minutes. Then I ask a sober person to do the same thing, but sober. Then we sit down and tell each other what we saw. This exchange of view points is essential for…
I really need to get a life.
How not to copy your influencer
Its simple. Like this:
Michael Jackson
Influences: Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, James Brown, etc.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson( ‘copying’ does not apply here but other aspects of influencing does)
Influences: Carl Sagan, Isaac Newton, etc.
Iron Maiden
Influences: Thin Lizzy, Black Sabbath, Yes, Led Zeppelin, etc.
Robin Williams
Influences: Richard Pryor, Jonathan Winters, etc.
Skrillex
Influences: Marilyn Manson, I don’t really care
Graham Linehan (Creator of The It Crowd)
Influences: Don’t really know. Just slipped in.
Antonio Vivaldi
Influences: I’m pretty sure he had influencers. You got my point.
What all of these people have in common is that they took specific ideas from their influencers, moulded it into their own, mixed it with their own fresh ideas and then built upon it. In other words, they picked up where their influencers left off. I think, if you are creative enough, all this will happen subconsciously. They did not try to ‘imitate’ their influencers. They did not purposefully alter their content to avoid similarities with their influencers. They did not actively try to borrow ideas and manipulate them so that people won’t notice it. The ideas for which these people are known for, were birthed within them. They only needed influencers to fuel their inner passion.
I hate it when we lose great artists. I really do. It’s because we don’t know what amazing things they would have done. A creative mind doesn’t just stop manufacturing ideas. It’s the body that fails. Not the mind. I’m a 90s kid. The type of music that I like is dying out slowly. I don’t have anything against modern day music. I enjoy it. But there’s this deep nostalgia. I can’t let it go. That’s why I love it when new, awesome artists have the balls to pickup from where great artists left off.
Greta Van Fleet
Influences: Led Zeppelin
Airbourne, Jettblack, The Treatment
Influences: AC/DC (in my opinion)
Museum of metal wonders
I went to an Archiological Museum. Did I spell that right? Archeology-cal? Archaeoloji. Ar…Ar… Anglican. Anyway… this museum had some unusual stuff in it. I reached the museum quite late. It was about to close. So, a security guard was assigned to guide/nag me through the entire museum. As you all know, I take my museum visits very seriously. So I explicitly stated that the guard maintain a distance of exactly three metres away from me at all times. Why ‘three’ you ask? Well, that’s none of your business. As soon as the receptionist understood that I had difficulty speaking Bengali, she began to shoot questions in English. “Are you South Indian? Where do you stay here? What did you have for dinner yesterday? What’s your blood type?”. You know…the usual stuff. I mean, she was very attractive. That’s probably why I panicked. After a short, uncomfortable conversation, I began the tour with my personal bodyguard.
There were extremely old paintings and pottery(7-14 century). Just as I was about to finish viewing the ground floor, motherfucker(guard) started to blow a damn whistle(probably to ask me to leave). Another guard heard this whistle and started to blow his own whistle. Within a few seconds, the whole fucking museum was whistling. I could see birds fly away from the roof. Motherfuckers were disturbing the wildlife.
As soon I got to the first floor, I knew it was a different scene. You see, there were these sculptures made of metal, kept in glass housings. They were sculpted in the 9th century. I hadn’t seen anything like it before. Figures sculpted with unimaginable level of detail and yet so tiny and realistic. That was not the impressive part. The figures were not of people or animals, rather it looked like something that was taken straight out of a Stephen King movie. There was a figure with an elephant’s head and a slim guy’s body(It had nothing to do with religion). It was holding a walking stick. It had a hunchback. It looked like it was dying. Then there were snakes, dragons and warriors that looked like trees, stuff that I have never seen or could have imagined. I was awestruck.
How could somebody think of that? How wild does ones imagination have to be to make something like that? Where did he get the idea from? Did an alien put it in his mind? Did he dream of it in his sleep? Did his day-to-day life affect the design of the sculpture in any way? Did his family approve of him spending so much time making figures that made no sense to common people? What was going on in his mind when he made it? How was he able to put an ‘idea’ into a sculpture? Does the sculpture mean something? So many questions.
I don’t have any pictures of the metal wonders because pictures were prohibited inside the museum. And I can respect that. All I have is a picture of a tree, from the museum’s garden.
The metal wonders will always live inside my head. I do not need pictures of them.
On an unrelated note, I got a keyboard. Today is Day 4 with new keyboard.
Side note: I do not know how to play the keyboard.
Literature, art and all that jazz
I went to a writers-meet yesterday. I don’t know if ‘writer’s meet’ is the right word. It might be something else. By went, I mean I attended a solid two hours of a two-day event. It was called People’s literary festival 2018. It was about going against conventional ‘literary festivals’ that they say are a sham. If my younger-self saw me attending this event, he would probably reassess his situation and change whatever the fuck he was doing with his life. But you know, life is a collection of experiences and we learn from each of them. I had no intention of going to this event. But I did go and by the end of it, it felt pretty good(even though I weirded out a couple of people). I went because a friend invited me. Why else would I go? I don’t intrude into uninvited events(would be hell of a lot fun though, especially if I wiggle my way into ending up on stage, speaking to the audience about Robert Zemeckis movies. Note to self: add idea to bucket list). The main reasons why I decided to go are:
- I had nothing to do that weekend
- I was feeling lonely and depressed
So I figured the best way to fight the depression was to surround myself with nerds.
Now, a little bit about myself:
I don’t read
I don’t write
I have nothing to do with literature
I am a big fan of learning and idea-exchange
I like to meet new people. Wait… that’s a stretch. Lets just say I like to meet people who think differently. Even if their beliefs or ideas go completely against mine. I like to hear the same story told from different perspectives. I like to hear opinions on things. So when the panel started to speak on censorship in their work and daily lives, I was intrigued to hear different views. Some of them spoke about how artists receive death threats on a regular basis to a point where it doesn’t seem to matter anymore. It has become the new normal. I think that’s fucked up.
I noticed someone sitting in the second row(probably the event organizer) getting a little anxious when one of the panelists wouldn’t stop speaking. I saw her waving to someone on stage but they couldn’t understand what she was saying. So I helped out. I raised my arms, pointed to my watch and showed hand gestures that meant,” zip it lady. Wrap it up”.
On an unrelated note, Is there an unwritten law that says, as you go higher up in intellect, the girls need to cut their hair short and guys need to grow long hair? Don’t get me wrong. Me like short haired girls too(especially after attending this event). Who gives a shit about length of hair anyway.
Visit to the eye doctor
Had to go see the eye doctor today because I sprayed lead in my eye. Life is a mystery, guys. It just keeps getting stranger and stranger. Incase you didn’t know, I am a total social recluse who is working on improving myself. So every opportunity I get to socialise, I force myself to go for it. So I did the most logical thing and hit on two junior doctors at the hospital. Lets just say I got ‘special’ attention because of that. The doctor was really nice. After staring into my soul for a few minutes, she concluded that I had an infection.
Now that I have disgraced myself, lets move on to the fun part of the story, the part where I make friends. After seeing the doctor I decided to explore that part of the city(this whole incident took place at Salt Lake, Kolkata). Now, I don’t often make friends during my travels because, you know, people are terrifying. But this time, I met some jovial characters that I couldn’t resist making friends with. They were so chill that they didn’t mind me taking pictures of them. In fact, they were happy to hear that I would be writing about them on my blog. Without further ado, here they are.
The “whoa there slow down” lion
The Grasshoppers
The “whoa there slow down” lion is the golden guardian of the roads. He is a funny guy who shouts funny things like, “If you are in a hurry, drive slower”, “your children would rather see you come home late than see you arrive in a casket”, “sex can wait, spinal cord surgeries cannot”. He was sad to say that out of all the defaulters, Lions club members were the worst. We took a selfie too but I can’t show that here due to legal reasons. Onto the next gang, the merry Grasshoppers. The Grasshoppers are a funk/jazz fusion band. They were on tour. It surprised me to see that they didn’t have a drummer. No offence, they sounded great without one. They explained how the drummer had problems with drug abuse. They said he was particularly fond of something called “grass”, which was pretty ironic because all of them seemed to be made out of … you know… grass.
I need help.
Random Thought Beam 