Sunday, February 27, 2005
Blink a thousand words
I don't always find time to update my blog. And many a times I am short of time to even reflect upon my day, and I feel guilty for not having contributed something to my blog, as that is my voice, my expression, my proof of having been here. I was thinking about this today, and a gentle and reassuring thought struck me. The thought was that every picture is worth a thousand words, and I began to feel comfortable that though I may not have enough time to write onto my blog, but I do collect a lot of pictures and uploading one of them on a busy day would not really take too much time. And guess what, a picture would express me as good as a thousand words or even more.
We people have the gift of speech, but in effect it is a curse in disguise. We have lost the feeling for the visual, audio, sensory elements of communication. We now only understand words, not the tone as much, the glare but not the glance as much. We could have mastered the art of communication, but we instead have now mastered the art of conversation. I am happy that I still do have an eye for beauty, so to say and I still do collect anything that looks beautiful and I love to share it. I express more effectively that way.
Click here to read "Macbeth - The entire play"
I have always been an ardent fan of Shakespeare for his power of painting elaborate pictures with seemingly normal words. Words that you and I know, but fail to know the power of. He may have imagined the scene when he wrote on paper, and so many painters have come thereafter and painted on those words. The outcomes are always different but the effect is always the same. When you look at the paintings shown here, try and look at the individual elements of the paintings and you will realise that each word that shakespeare wrote has expressed something that the painter had to incorporate. These paintings can almost set the mood for the whole play to follow. Rest your glance on the poster of Macbeth for sometime and you can sense the evil in the air, and look at the poster of "As you like it" and you will be filled with a sense of adoloscent confusion amidst a voraciously colourful world. That is what I meant when I said that "A picture is worth a thousand words."
We should take time and look around us carefully, we should listen to sounds that await discovery, feel the breeze in its expressive touch, take time to understand ourselves and everything around us. Communicate, don't converse. Don't try to speak a thousand words to express your heart, just become a picture so that, the person you want to communicate to, can blink in a thousand words, as they were said, with no loss of emotions, feelings, meaning or time. We can't write or speak like Shakespeare and words, in today's world, have become tools that have lost their edge. Pictures,though, are still the sharpest tools of communication that we are endowed with. Expressions are strongest when nothing is said or heard, but solely felt.
I have always been an ardent fan of Shakespeare for his power of painting elaborate pictures with seemingly normal words. Words that you and I know, but fail to know the power of. He may have imagined the scene when he wrote on paper, and so many painters have come thereafter and painted on those words. The outcomes are always different but the effect is always the same. When you look at the paintings shown here, try and look at the individual elements of the paintings and you will realise that each word that shakespeare wrote has expressed something that the painter had to incorporate. These paintings can almost set the mood for the whole play to follow. Rest your glance on the poster of Macbeth for sometime and you can sense the evil in the air, and look at the poster of "As you like it" and you will be filled with a sense of adoloscent confusion amidst a voraciously colourful world. That is what I meant when I said that "A picture is worth a thousand words."
We should take time and look around us carefully, we should listen to sounds that await discovery, feel the breeze in its expressive touch, take time to understand ourselves and everything around us. Communicate, don't converse. Don't try to speak a thousand words to express your heart, just become a picture so that, the person you want to communicate to, can blink in a thousand words, as they were said, with no loss of emotions, feelings, meaning or time. We can't write or speak like Shakespeare and words, in today's world, have become tools that have lost their edge. Pictures,though, are still the sharpest tools of communication that we are endowed with. Expressions are strongest when nothing is said or heard, but solely felt.
They say to make someone laugh is the toughest part of any artist's job. I agree, because words were never really meant to make anyone laugh, they are still only a mode of conversation, whereas laughter is the end result of absolute communication devoid of ego, voice, tone, facial expressions, or any other form of man made distractions. Laughter by images hence, is the purest form of communication known to man, and we are rapidly loosing it. Shown here is one of the better know results of the power of visual communication.
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Saturday, February 26, 2005
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
There are two faces to every coin (at least every coin I have ever seen). There are two faces to every man. Like yin and yang, like heaven and earth, like day and night, like good and evil, like God and the Devil, the duality of all existence is beyond doubt. And I am not one but two faces of me.
A visual representation of the cosmos as a plethora of yin and yang
Some one said to me that I am like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in real life. Sometimes so sweet and almost immediately quite mean. And that made me wonder, if I was indeed like that. Yes, I am both of me, intermingling as I pass through time. Sometimes I am nice and coy and at others I am quite a devil. How many of us have thought how it would feel to do a crime? How many times have we imagined paramount anger, though we never get around to showing it. That is called restraint and that is what keeps us humans, so to say, "social".
And I thought about it at length. I realised that it is not my fault (at least not entirely), that I have two faces with such varying characters. But I have restraint and that is good. We can never change the fact that we are two faced, but what we can change is how it affects us. We can change the timing of the other, "less appreciated" face showing up, and we can change the difference between the faces. Can we change that in ourselves then? Not really, only to an extent though.
But, you can change it for all the people on whom you have the power, the power due to which, they allow you to affect them. Your children, your parents, your loved ones, your friends, ones who believe that you are their balancing half. Learn to use that half of their belief and change the way they manage their faces. To bridge the difference between the two faces and also to control the appearance of the two faces, everyone needs that vital ingredient called self-confidence. And at this point let me just make this point that I don't believe that there is any other kind of confidence at all. All other forms of confidence can exist only if the self is confident.
Everything you do, affects everything else, a visual attempt
Make their world or break that world, it's all in your hands. Be nice to your children. Understand that, whatever you do, no matter how big or small, affects the whole world and specially the ones who open themselves to be affected by you. Realise that the "butterfly effect" as some people call it, really does exist. Everyone makes a difference, try making the difference positive. Give others more than you have, make them feel that they are the center of your universe, make the world go around them and then watch them grow in confidence. Trust me, you will see the effect you had on them, and even if you don't, you can rest assured that you made a positive difference.div>
What more can a man want then to be wanted? What more can a mother want than her child? What more can I want than to have made a positive difference in my life? We all know what we want, but are we ready to pay the price? Pay it, right now. Stop procrastinating and do it. Tell someone how you appreciate him and he will look up to you. Build their confidence, acknowledge their identity and you will be respected by both his faces. When you are approved by both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, then you know that you are you (one man with one face).
I am trying to reconcile my Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. No more excuses that I am inert at the hands of my internal conflict. I won't let the dark side take hold of me. I am thankful to that person who made me think on this. I will apply as much of damage control on myself as I possibly can, but I promise to make the ones, who are open to me as a contributor to their lives, be happy to be around me. Calling my future generations, I am ready...
Looking forward
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Friday, February 25, 2005
The enchantress...
A few nights ago, as I went to bed, a bright light shone right into my eyes. I was stunned at the brightness of the light and as I got used to the light, I realised that the light was emanating from the moon (or reflecting off the moon, for the critical minds). But I was breathless at the sight of the one of the darkest nights I have seen in recent times being embedded with an almost perfect jewel of a moon. I was enchanated by this seemingly unattainable though eternal beauty.
All the beauty of my life shone into my eyes that night, and I could not dare look away for the fear of loosing it in a moment of man-made stupidity. I relaxed and kept on looking and as I fell asleep, I fell into the laps of the enchantress. The next day I woke up and I decided to try and write something about this experience, just because I wanted it not to die. I searched the net amidst the busy days and I saw the perfect depiction of what I saw that night.
I have never been this challenged to express something the way I imagined it and have struggled to even comprehend what an impact that dark night with a pearl in the sky has left on me. I am reminded of all the beautiful people in my life and this entry is a dedication to all of them.
I just learnt one lesson from all of this, never to hide what was meant to be expressed,
'coz in expression does it teach more than you could comprehend.
Thursday, February 24, 2005
Introduction...
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This blog is a kind of scratchpad, where I write about anything and everything.
especially
My perspective of the world around me
And as ezee says it, "Ezee does it".
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