Mixed Jazz

Jazz is an absolute thought-swirler. I’d written pick-up agent, but that’s not really it. It just gets your machinery going, gets the cogs moving. The best way to go is to mix your jazz a lot. Too much Coltrane and your head hurts from trying to figure out progressions. Too much Shirley Bassey and you end up being too grinny to get anything good done. And too much Dave Brubeck and you just plainly fall asleep.

Certain revelations just make the whole day worth it.

Graphics

Call me an amateur engineering student, but I absolutely LOVE graphic designers' work! I've seen a few blogs and portfolios over the last few months and few people come close to the levels of creativity those folk inspire. Everything is just so aesthetically correct, precisely in the space it's supposed to be in and just right.

Maybe it's the fact that engineering's forced me to shove my creativity in a little cupboard under an irrelevant staircase in my head (The fact that there's an upcoming Harry Potter movie is clearly affecting my allusions) but I really believe these guys get to really push the limits of thinking, instead of pushing the limits of sheer brain volume. Let's not even go to those dirty tracks of talking about modifications in engineering curricula, but I'm just saying, it ain't fair.

Damn all of you. And damn you too, Bing. You know precisely why.

PS - I must remember to keep a notebook.

It starts

Inauguration. They had to play the Love Story/Viva La Vida mashup SOMEWHERE. Just didn't expect it to be at the end of the mime. The effect when those swooning violin notes of Viva la Vida hit, however, was just as expected. The song was made, it seems, for this occasion. When all that Waves was would boil down to this edition.

The world isn't ending anytime soon, no, but the world as I know it, is. It had to be something fitting.

And this was just the icing on the cake. The real deal was the music society guys, with Aseem, Sigtia, Anmol, Chinmay and Navjyot performing a medley to be remembered for years after.

The next few days will be disillusioning, to say the least.

Culmination

It all began in the first week of college when we just heard of it. It was nothing more than a mere legend, something that'd happened in the past and was far, far away. Then Big Break 2007 happened, and that life-changing video happened. The video that decided what I'd give a major part of my college life to. Slowly things picked up, with the erstwhile Sponz club inductions, getting to know senior folk and finally deciding to take the plunge in the festival. Ever since, everything became too speedy to notice as discrete events. They're all a proverbial blur.

Cut to today. Day Zero of Waves 2010 - Viva La Vida. The culmination of the efforts of students across seven batches, brought to you by people filled upto the ears with enthusiasm.

The more verbose I make this, the less important it will be for me.

Maybe I'll finally be able to feel nostalgic without guilt.

Of bulls

"Expecting life to treat you well just because you're a good person is like expecting a bull not to charge at you just because you're vegetarian."

-Unknown

Tangled Up In Blue, I owe you one for this.

Inclined to believe

John Mayer on a rainy midnight with a Journalism exam on the next day with an inkling of a cold and a hope that the inkling stays as what it is now - an inkling.

Someone wise recently said, "When you're unsettled and disturbed, it often takes a sudden burst of chaos to knock you right in place." Wise words indeed. The calm before the storm is overrated, it's the age of the calm after the storm. After the dust settles and all that.

Some moments are so beautifully ordinary in their essence, one must write about them. A chance of diving into the abyss. Being caught by the scruff of your neck and saved by intangible constants of life. Average on the surface, a tad too average on closer scrutiny.

Vague posts that make very less sense to all but yourself. The best part is, that they make a different kind of sense to everyone else. Realizations dawning everywhere, happier world.

Am I living it right?

Am I living it right?

Am I living it right?

Why, why Georgia, why?

Stepping Stones

There was once a young boy, adventurous and steadfast. He had a simplistic life, with ups and downs, albeit more than the average kid of his age, but remarkably average nonetheless.

And suddenly, there was only failure, failure all 'round. Nothing really seemed to work out, nothing fell into place. No endeavour successful, no achievement added to the roster. He couldn't see clearly, it was all haze and confusion.

But he'd heard failures are stepping stones to success. He'd heard it all gets better and at the end of a long and eventful life, it only matters what your journey has been. Life was the exact opposite of a state function, he was told. It all falls into place, it all becomes okay, as long as you've garnered happiness along the way! That was how things work, he'd heard!

Sadly, it wasn't.

The finer things

(Note: This was written in the library while around a 100 people were studying around me. It's more of a spillage of thoughts, not a carefully crafted article)

I recently happened to read a rather intriguing article in the editorial page of the Economic Times. Does the name Joshua Bell ring a bell? (heh) He's a grammy-winning violinist who once decided to conduct a social experiment on being prodded by a Washington Post columnist. He donned a t-shirt, a baseball cap, a pair of rugged jeans and played his best compositions outside a Washington metro station, as one of those buskers by on the pavement. Out of over a thousand people who passed by, apparently, only seven stopped to listen, and, amazingly, one recognized him. There's stats on how much cash he collected from the people who stopped to listen (apparently the guy who recognized him payed him $20, i don't know how that's a sign of respect and all) but let's not go there.

Of course, the columnist who came up with this idea and later wrote about it got quite a few accolades for it, including the 2008 Pulitzer prize. (Oh, he won another Pulitzer in 2010. For an article on something along the lines parents killing their children by leaving them in cars. Don't ask) The point of this entire charade was to prove that people have "no time to stand and stare". That they pay substantial amounts, $100 for a half-decent seat, to listen to the same guy at his shows, but they really wouldn't stop for him at the metro station.

The idea stands. Strong and steady. We've all got quite a busy schedule. People don't have time today, there is always something or the other on their minds keeping them tensed and taut. What the columnist wanted to convey was that human relations aren't the key anymore, it's all about alienating yourself from human contact, being alone and calling it competition.

But you've gotta admit there's a better way of proving it. This experiment proves nothing except the author's talent of making 45 minutes sound like an epic.

I discussed this issue with a friend over tea. I honestly didn't see the big deal. Agreed, it's a racy life, nobody has the time to appreciate beauty even when it's staring you in the face. And as for recognizing the guy at the metro station - Thin about it, if Ustad Amjad Ali Khan or some other Indian virtuoso were to be standing in a below-average attire at CST station at 10 AM, how many people would recognize him?

What did come out of it, though, was a realization that there's people who're working on it. Working on trying to show the world how out-of-hands the pace of the world in general has gone. I know I'll get questioning looks and advice that it's a dog-eat-dog world, and survival of the fittest and all that, but I still firmly believe that the finer things of life are seldom appreciated.

But what change do I expect? What are these social experiments going to achieve? There is no way the amount of competition, the insanely workaholic habits of people in general are going to change. I guess all that matters is if one realizes what happiness is for oneself.

Whatever be the case, one thing's for sure. Joshua Bell in a metro station is not the way you prove this.

Full Monty

Giving in to a whim I had, I recently decided to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail again. The last time was more than two years ago, as a fresher in college, kicked about the LAN and what not. You could describe my reaction to the movie as "amused" or even "mostly grinning punctuated by occasional laughter."

This time around, though, such blasphemy I did not commit. At the end of an hour and a half of trying not to fall off the chair, not only did my sides ache, I think there's some permanent damage on the sidelines. No episode of any show, no movie has ever got me in splits such as the Pythons did and it would be the lease I could do to just plainly dedicate a post to those geniuses of humour.

And on the walk back to hostel from the night canteen, I discussed this exact issue with Prashant. Our senses of humour have transformed over the last few years, and HOW! From being almost contrasting, to forming this one fuzzy mesh of jokes and one-liners that are completely predictable and more often than not, funny only to us. The bad part is, I can never get around to writing about this. I've tried to put fingers to keyboard and recreate scenarios, but somehow, never happens.

Yeah, that's about it. I don't think I have a point. Thought in transition. Admittedly, all of the above could've been put much better. That for another day.

Shut the hell up, Johnny. Play some other time.

There's something overtly satisfying about switching off the music in the room, turning the lights off and listening to the pattering of the rain outside. On days when you've predicted the rain seeing the weather in the morning, the sound of drops falling onto the hostel lawn is one of the best sounds you could hear on days like these! And it's rain with the entire works, lightning, thunder, gale and all. 

One of the first thought that strikes me whenever it unexpectedly pours, is that the rains are one of the strongest catalysts to nostalgia and brewing up long-lost memories. Our very own Muggle-world pensieve. (Yes, I make Harry Potter references. Literature elitists, die!) 

Somehow, right now I wish I had Bing's knack for writing fantasy literature. It's the ideal thing to write when there's no particular thoughts that you have, and plus there's just so much more potential to write when the weather's so perfect.

And tonight, I absolutely have no sense of anxiety about tomorrow''s early morning tutorial. Like it's all over, like there's no semester with it's inherent impending doom, like I can spend the rest of my time reading and writing and figuring out the intricacies of music in life. 

Just one last thing. I guess Sinatra wrote "Singing in the rain" because he had loads of space to dry his clothes.

I'm getting really rusty.