la la la la

...all she said was "jalvayuvihar" and it was love at first sight. :) * * * *

"The toughest thing when running a design studio is not to grow." Tibor Kalman

i want to get married. i have strands of white hair in my beard. i have an irritating pain in my left shoulder. i have three fingers missing on my right hand and two missing on my left hand. i have a heart thats sinking in a well. i have sunshine on a teaspoon. i have my future in a sink. i want to get married, i think!

Doesn't matter anymore

Its green. There have been numerous incidents when it has been greener. But it doesn't matter anymore. The water in the cup has dried. There are four little lines waiting to be inhaled. There is a knife and a son. There are fountains waiting to shower. There is a sense of desparation waiting to be exhaled. There is one big rock and there are three black suits. There is impossibility in a box. There is a funeral on a rope. There is a lot but theres not much hope.

I looked down and I saw "Mean of Grid, C & D" written on the pavement. :)

Dancer in the dark

I used to frequent a filmclub in Mumbai. It was by chance my friend found out about this place. We went to this pub called GHETTO's one Saturday night. We got pissed drunk and he had forgotten his jacket there so when he returned on Monday evening to the joint to get his stuff, he stumbled upon a bunch of crosseyed folk watching parallel cinema. So next Monday, we went back and voila, it was Makmalbaf's "Kandahar". Got to say that the scene of the "plastic legs" falling from the sky and cripples running frantically to get one for themselves is one of my all-time favorites. Ok, enough of that, getting back to the point, there used to be this tall dark girl who used to come there. She had a frighteningly beautiful physique. In this dingy little joint, there is very little light so we cannot really see peoples faces. *Hint hint - bump ahead*. Once the film is over, they play some music and everyone (more or less) gets hold of a beer. Now, now..heres the interesting part. This girl always has an urge to let go when the music comes on. She goes to the corner of the pub and dances all by herself. My friend and me were always too intrigued. But she was also irritating at times because she would come and sit in front of us during the screening and block our view. How cool is that, miss divine? One day, I asked Tom (the old chap who runs the club) who this person was. I always noticed (when there was more light) that her face was a bit busted probably due to an accident or a joyless mcp. Guess what Tom told me. He said "oh, that's Anu, she has had a terrible accident, poor thing." Who is Anu? Anu Agarwal. Remember her? Aashiqui, Thiruda Thiruda-fame? I was shocked. Her face was completely beaten up. She had a lazy eye and her hands had large bruises and stitchmarks. I even had an x-genome with her one night and asked her about Mani Rathnam and other things pleasant. Well, the next morning the sun rose and later in the evening the sun set. Life goes on, doesnt it?

Flavours

There was a red light coughin' up a room of blood. And there were forecast seven inches of snow. And there were two tunes playing in my head at once. Arguing guitar and drums. There was a lover standing by her bed. With a cigarette burning on her hand. And there were moonbeams playing on her porcelain flesh. A capi ero alousca. Company cars and shoes were never meant to play the blues. You were the only fool I ever wanted to make love to. Even within my youth I denied I wanted to. You were the only fool I ever wanted to make love to. There was a red Mayan parrot pulling chicken legs. And there were weak spots only she could detect. And as I rolled over to block the last ray of sun. In emergency all over the show. There was a blue light the other side of the globe. And there were four cats stretching out their claws. And there were two lovers separated by the telephone. Company cars and shoes were never meant to play the blues. You were the only fool I ever wanted to make love to. Even within my youth I denied I wanted to. 'Cause you were the only fool I ever wanted to make love to. Your flavors are getting to.

-g

More poetry...

Sheep in Fog

The hills steep off into whiteness.
People or stars
Regard me sadly, I have disappointed them.

The train leaves a line of breath.
O slow
Horse the color of rust

Hooves, dolorous bells--
All morning the
Morning has been blackening.

A flower left out.
My bones hold the stillness, the far
Fields melt my heart.
To let me through to heaven
Starless and fatherless, a dark water.

Nine Lines, August 9

The gold of evening is closing,
drawing in, tightening.
The light is losing. It is
a little frightening
how fast August goes.
Others have noticed this.
The cat on his concealed switchblade toes
comes by, and what he says
is silent, but enlightening.

- Ursula LeGuin
(thanks JP)

B, W and G

Went to Ikea yesterday. Oh, these scandinavian superstars. Bought some simple things - ie a shower curtain, some bathroom mats and a nice little lamp. Anyway, coming down to the more interesting stuff, I couldn't resist going into Virgin to check out some music. They had some very pretty Nakamichi CD-players. Affordable, too. :) I ended up buying "SELMASONGS" (Bjork), "PINKERTON" (Weezer) and "ABANDONED SHOPPING CART HOTLINE" (Gomez). "Dancer in the dark" is one of my favorite films and I was really dying to get hold of the soundtrack. I was disappointed because the songs are not like they were in the film. I miss the part in "Scatterheart" where the boy sings "you just did what you had to do". :( A pity. The Gomez album is one huge experiment. I'm liking it. And Weezer is an old favorite. Just bought it once again cos I lost my copy. So, thats that. Go to sleep, now.

Eternal Sunshine of Muhammad Ali's mind

So I finally saw "Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" and it truly blew me away. Someone should insert wires into Kaufmans head. Great performances from Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet. Its interesting to see Kaufmans take on the brain, part 3 (being john malkovich and adaptation being parts 1 and 2). Go watch it if you havent already.

I had a very strange dream last night of Muhammad Ali. I have met the guy when I was in school and I even have a photo of him and my brother acting like they were boxing. In the dream, I see him walking into the lounge of a hotel and strangely, he recognises me and comes and says hello and also allows me full access to his palatial residence. Bijoy (my brother) and me get to see one of the most unbelievable houses ever. Its hard to describe, but when we enter the living room, there is an option to convert that whole scenario into a pool and how does that happen? Well, the living room walls and floors fade out and the swimming pool fades in. Too much Kaufman? I think so too.

New Love

I am in love once again. Her name starts with "G". :) What a wonderful feeling. x x x

Over

Its finally come to a close. The curtains have been drawn. But there is no applause. All that's left is fingers pointing towards me. Shame, in all its living glory. Like a desaturated family photograph. I am the one in the middle. Out of focus, head in hands, repenting every minute of the epic destruction. All fall down. No more petals in my hands, no more sunshine in my eyes. All thats left is tears and a few broken pieces of glass.

Look here, Kunigunda (Schedule 2)

So, went out to the creek park and shot some more footage. Mark looks absolutely fantastic on camera. Pity the beard has to go. But we wrapped up the bearded Mark's portion of the film. It has to be cut carefully. Where are my scissors and gloves, Eugene? The next step is rehearsal sessions for the main portion of the film. Hope all goes well.

...a world without legs

Its a crazy little labyrinth. The three points of the triangle are turning into red squares. Pills have been popped, the knives have been taken out of the drawers and the sun sets slow onto our wide-scattered brains. The blood has filled the fields. The walky-talkies are constantly on call. One point connects to another. The third one lies motionless. Oh, the offspring, like a world without legs.

Go home, pussycat

A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man's brow. - Charles H. Brower (1904-1984), Advertising Age, 10 August 1959

Where's my coffee and cake?

An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

Written in 1998, the Incomplete Manifesto is an articulation of statements that exemplify Bruce Mau's beliefs, motivations and strategies. It also articulates how the BMD studio works.
1. Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.2. Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.3. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.5. Go deep. The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.6. Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.7. Study. A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.8. Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.9. Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.10. Everyone is a leader. Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.11. Harvest ideas. Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.12. Keep moving. The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.13. Slow down. Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.14. Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.15. Ask stupid questions. Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.16. Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.17. ——————————. Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.18. Stay up late. Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.19. Work the metaphor. Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.20. Be careful to take risks. Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.21. Repeat yourself. If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.22. Make your own tools. Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.23. Stand on someone’s shoulders. You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.24. Avoid software. The problem with software is that everyone has it.25. Don’t clean your desk. You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.26. Don’t enter awards competitions. Just don’t. It’s not good for you.27. Read only left-hand pages. Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our “noodle.”28. Make new words. Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.29. Think with your mind. Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.30. Organization = Liberty. Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between “creatives” and “suits” is what Leonard Cohen calls a 'charming artifact of the past.'31. Don’t borrow money. Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.32. Listen carefully. Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.33. Take field trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.34. Make mistakes faster. This isn’t my idea — I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.35. Imitate. Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.36. Scat. When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else … but not words.37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.38. Explore the other edge. Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces — what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference — the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.40. Avoid fields. Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.41. Laugh. People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.42. Remember. Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.43. Power to the people. Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.

Symbols vs. Metaphors

Some frequently asked questions in connection with Tarkovsky's movies are, "Does he use symbols?" and "what does it mean, or symbolize?" We will let him answer these questions himself. As you'll find out, he wasn't particularly fond of the concept of symbols. The quotes below are from the excellent work The Tolstoy Complex, edited by Dr. Seweryn Kuśmierczyk at the Polish Literature Department of Warsaw University. This book, currently only available in Polish, is a thematically arranged compilation of interviews taken from magazines from all over the world. The excerpts are reproduced here with the kind permission of the editor.

We can express our feelings regarding the world around us either by poetic or by descriptive means. I prefer to express myself metaphorically. Let me stress: metaphorically, not symbolically. A symbol contains within itself a definite meaning, certain intellectual formula, while metaphor is an image. An image possessing the same distinguishing features as the world it represents. An image — as opposed to a symbol — is indefinite in meaning. One cannot speak of the infinite world by applying tools that are definite and finite. We can analyse the formula that constitutes a symbol, while metaphor is a being-within-itself, it is a monomial. It falls apart at any attempt of touching it.

Our life from beginning to end is a metaphor. All that surrounds us is a metaphor.

Nostalgia's Knife

Nostalgia is a slow killer. It knifes into my back. My brain evacuates. People come closer to observe. My head holds only the past. The number 303 returns to dig my grave. Finally, I am all set. To enter the big comedown. Its clear. The vacuum is fascinating. The end is nigh.

Look here, Kunigunda (Schedule 1)

Hello. Been unable to post recently. Mayhem and soap, more or less. But managed to get started on the film. So, for those of you who dont know, I am shooting a short film, scripted, cinematographed and directed by me. Started shooting today with Mark Rossiter, the hero. He has a 4-month beard (more like a forest). We shot for about 4 hours or so. Lots of fun. We are shooting the climax. Once we finish with the climax (I presume we would need 2 more schedules for the climax, although its only about 2 minutes in the final film), he would shave his beard off and then we go to shoot the rest of the film which has about 3 more characters. So I am hoping I get lots and lots of footage enough to make a rope to hang my head in. :)

It's on. :)