Dodging the Creative Leech In A Digital Age

As an eighth grader, I hated writing essays, especially the ones that asked me to expound on an archaic social theory, chock full of bizarre ideas, that seem as superfluous in present age as dial-up Internet access. Every take-home essay assignment on a Friday sat sulking in the nook of my study until it was stared at, shoved back under, and hastily brought back to surface on a Sunday evening. That’s when the bells of despair rang. The essay topic was clumsily moulded into a perfectly acceptable five-paragraph structure of cliches, paraphrases and cataclysmic arguments, unfortunately the tepid force of it all failing to rustle even a leaf in the world of literary debates. I didn't see the point of that whole ritual of forced writing. My English teacher, whom I both admired and avoided, rarely marked my assignments with anything other than “Good effort”, “Can do better” or “Work harder”.

And one uninspired weekend, I thought instead of fuming up my brain cells in the pressure cooker of my mind, I’d climb out of my languid mental landscape and find “inspiration” elsewhere. Since it was the pre-internet era, inspiration didn't come easy. I’d have to wear sneakers. I went to a senior’s house who was a Whiz at organizing ideas and making her words seem important and clever. I asked her for her thoughts on the subject of Capitalism vs Socialism. And help she did! She taught me how to draw up a convincing argument, cited examples from the Bible, quoted verses even. It was the best essay I had ever produced, the metaphors so far-reaching and profound. I was pretty damn proud of my work. Of course, it didn’t occur to my underfed ego that it was my friend’s work. Pfff! She just gave me a nudge, so to speak. I chartered that damn path on my own. I submitted my essay with a word of note to the teacher saying that I’d put my heart and soul into this one. As I anxiously waited for my essay to come back, after daydreaming at length about wide appreciation and applause, somewhere I found in myself a scratchy realization. I asked myself, “Would I have co-related examples from the Bible to socialism on my own?” “Is that what I really thought? Socialism trumps capitalism?” I warded off these as writer’s remorse and continued basking in the pre-glow of anticipatory fame. Like a delicate bowel that reveals itself one way or another, my moral compass soon rose above delusions. My essay was returned ungraded with the hissing words, “See Me!”. I knew only too well the indictment that I was up against but had little to prepare for in my defence. The teacher called me to her office, gave me tea and biscuits. I sat there mindlessly, tracing jagged speed bumpers out of cookie crumbs to intercept the zipping motion of my honour.

I don’t recall what I felt at the time or each time when someone looked at my work and said it lacked originality except a jarring pang of shame. I have to say that as a writer who loves reading and one who is rather easily-impressed, I find it difficult to block out the beauty of words that threaten to cling to me with a permanent sticking charm, impossible to unfasten. Maybe some of these words found their way back into form in my writing. If done deliberately, with bonus adjectives and adverbs to masquerade as my own. Maybe, sometimes I had no damn clue what to say and in the process of working out how to get my factory up and running, I looked at what other people have already said. It was funny how much their thoughts resonated with what I wanted to say. And I couldn't help myself but cloak their words in a new robe.

Anyway, with so many people writing these days, the odds of two people saying the same thing had to be in my favour right? I turned to my non-judgemental search engine for an answer. A renowned linguist had already put that theory to test. So get this. Each time you use a word from an existing string of words already written by an author, the odds drop by a fairly large number. So the chances that two people would have unknowingly used the exact string of eight-nine words in a sentence (well unless it’s a popular saying) are fairly low, if not none. Put those words from the two sentences in a similar context, in a similar format and you really are pushing your luck there. If caught, the only thing that’d get you out of that one are the widely-underrated quotation marks. In their absence, you may try the words, “Wow, what an uncanny coincidence!”

I started getting my writings published several years ago. In my writing stint with a magazine, I was given a starting prompt, guidelines on how to cite sources of my findings, quote important people, gather data, ask questions… My first writing test involved, as one of the five key skills I was expected to be armed with, looking at a passage and paraphrasing it. It made me think, “ So what I am really doing is borrowing words from various intellectual pools and structuring them.” I felt a little cheated, kind of like being stripped off my own creative capacity. And that river of reinvented and recycled thoughts continued to pull me under when I started writing for myself. Instead of sitting and staring at my blank screen, I opened another tab. It was intoxicating.

Until one day, I just stopped. It wasn't because my moral compass was pointing due North. I found myself getting confused and intimidated by other people’s writing. Instead, I read books, enjoying the light breeziness of flowery prose in that moment without highlighting them for days when I run short of inspiration. I sat in a quaint, no-wifi cafe with my laptop, with only dull murmurs and the smell of hazelnut latte as my creative fuel, staring at my blank screen, not knowing which direction I’d run in my labyrinth of thoughts, whether I’d move ever at all. I rose to the challenge of finding myself in my words, even though they were not half as alluring as those of my writer idols.

Sometimes on Medium, I stumble upon a story or a poem like mine and I wonder, “How did that ever happen?” What are the chances that two obscure unconnected writers would find the same, seemingly original idea to write about nearly around the same time, especially when the inception of the idea is not based on the current state of affairs? It is then that I think there are greater cosmic forces at work. The world around us is both our writing pad and our writing prompt. And we’re probably connected in more ways than the wide tangles of the internet. For me, as someone who has previously stolen other people’s thoughts to define my own, there is but one thing that defines the delicate line between plagiarism and originality.

It is the scathing voice you hear after you have finished publishing your work.

Well, here’s to hoping that in the wide world of me-toos and already-done-thats, one day, my own work will shine through. Untainted.

We Have A Map Of The Piano

When it comes to music, I think all of us have a map in our hearts for plucking the songs that speak to us and the ones we send back into planet oblivion. For some people, it’s about the bass or the guitar strings that make the heartbeat of the song. Others look for the help of words to define the soundtrack to whatever marks the theme of their lives — the rush of new love or heartbreak, prosperity or decline, melancholy or exhilaration, death or life. Music sometimes finds its way to trace our roots, our lineage, our individuality and sometimes it is just a bump on a long road to getting to our identity — as something we’d never confess in public to have liked. (Grand Confession: I am still rooting for Dido’s come-back.)

And yet, when I think of what defines my carefully-curated, indispensable playlist , one that I've been listening to for what seems like an eternity, I'm stumped. There was a time when I ditched it for months at a stretch, living off borrowed music from my husband and friends, well until I heard something as shadowy as Muse’s Starlight play in a cafe at sunset which made me go, “Wow…I do miss my playlist.” My collection of music is eclectic, mostly R&B, indie, Sufi songs, electronic and alternative rock. These songs have been transferred from desktops to laptops to phone memory, synced to death… Jogging without my playlist is an ordeal, an uphill climb.

As an experiment, I decided to go without it for a while, opening my ears to new artists, unexplored roads and shoreless depths of sounds and moods. As a result, I watched my playlist grow and expand, ushering in new artists I’d never heard before like Arctic Monkeys, Interpol, Sona Mohapatra, Gurdas Maan…

But it goes without saying that my old playlist had already grown on me and could not be done away with.

Regardless of what’s mainstream or crowd-pulling, we all go through our own evolution in music. There are your all-time go-to jams and there is that music we grow out of — you know the kind you played to insanity in the backdrop of Math sessions and midnight conversations and that, perhaps, are definitive of a phase that you've let go. There is that music that profiles you. “Babe, don’t mind me saying this but your songs…they’re just so angry! Are you going through something?” Then, there are songs that you hate just cos you’re forced to listen to them with family and friends and every time you hear them, you wince a little. (I don’t think I can ever hear a Boney M song without pulling a face.) And then let’s not forget there are those songs and artists that you ignored on principle. But you end up accidentally hearing them on the radio and you can’t help but sing them in the shower, being sucked into the quicksand of their rage and popularity. [ “Is it too late now to say sorry?”]

I like the idea of having a constant playlist — of course it’s one that I’d never play at a party or in any gathering, for I know nobody would understand it. These songs probably didn't enjoy the same glory that songs today attract. Playlists today have a shorter shelf-life I think. If you get to hear that one song fresh out of the studio, chances are that you’ll join the millions of people screaming from the rooftops about it, share videos on social media… They’ll make for water-cooler conversations. They’ll pass through several filters, including the most-popular feminist filter, before it gets ingrained into pop culture. You’ll hear that one song in everybody’s playlist along with the noise surrounding it, until everyone tires of it and it vanishes altogether to be replaced by another scintillating chart buster.

My playlist, however, is in a fairly equitable ratio of greatest hits and obscure songs, equal parts hippy-happy and permission-to-bawl-your-eyes-out gloomy. I have no clue how I arrived at it and from where I hand-picked these songs. Maybe I didn't pick these songs after all. Their ratings picked it. Maybe, I hopped from one artist to the other with Amazon’s “You may also like….”. It’s also possible that I added some songs that I heard on my favourite shows as a way to retain their best moments with me. (Case in point: Grey’s Anatomy, One Tree Hill.) Perhaps I read a reference to a song in a novel and wanted to listen to it and it just stuck. Maybe, one day, I was on my way back home waiting in the bus-shelter for the rain to stop when a cute guy came by, smiled at me, and stood close enough for me to vaguely make out the words of the song playing on his Ipod. And it became a part of my playlist. It may as well have been made up of some of those songs that got circulated at the office. (Did someone say American Pie?)

There is no way of knowing what really makes up our playlists. But the taste of it, perhaps in all its nostalgia, is so sweet that there’s no running away from it. I may ignore them for a while in a ruse to class up my taste in music, to find the same rush and familiarity in new artists, but every time I come back to it, I fall in love all over again.

It goes without saying that we all have a map of the piano and nobody can take it away from us.

Do you update your playlist occasionally? Or do you take comfort in listening to the same songs over and over again? Can you figure out which songs make you tick instantly? I'd love to hear from you, readers.

Through the Spooky Looking-Glass - And What You Could Find There

I find it extremely annoying when I'm roused from a deep slumber in the middle of the night. Obviously, I want to have someone or something to "ptchhh" at before I crawl back to my nightly neverland. But last night was weird. You see, I don't quite know what woke me up. I don't remember hearing a sound, whether it was as light as paper rustling or as noisy as the clatter of a midnight snack's sneaky construction. It wasn't a bad dream for I don't remember dreaming. It wasn't even a subconscious, maternal sense of Saanvi falling off the bed, for she was sound asleep.

And then it hit me. That strange, inexplicable, deeply unsettling feeling of a presence that you can't quite grasp, shining a torch on my darkest fears. For you don't know what lies ahead of you, and you sure can't go back to sleep. Suddenly, I get this urge to go to the bathroom. No, it's not a biological one. You know, just to make that journey of peering into the darkness, look at my reflection, double-check if there's any blood coming out of nose (or flies climbing into my mouth) or worse, an ominous presence lurking right behind my shoulders. With my heart racing, I head to the bathroom. I nervously fidget for the switch in the crippling darkness. Warm lights try to appease my discomfort, or maybe fool me into walking in. I stand at the entrance, the ominous air whisking across my face, arresting me right at the door. Like all slasher movie protagonists who are too zoned out on pills to say hello to logic, I go against my instincts and step right in. I survey the surroundings. Nothing in sight. I peer down the toilet seat. Nope, no waxy fingers climbing out. Lastly, I stare at myself in the mirror. Sure, I'm sporting my post-midnight pasty bloodsucker complexion (minus the red lippy) but nothing out of the ordinary, I'd say. I'm staring at myself hard, mentally telling myself there's nothing wrong and I should now go back to sleep. But suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, for a fleeting second, I see it. Or did I? I mean I think I saw it. And there it is again!

AAAAAAhhhhhhhh!

It seemed to me like a startlingly blown up version of what I remember of it. And all this while, I was living in the false hope that it's gone forever. And yet here it was...More life-like, more invincible...And it was still that murky green, nasty form of wiggling tails and slithering slimy skin.

Fine. It was only a lizard. But OMG, lizards are my worst fear! Being trapped with them in a small space could potentially give me a stroke. Their presence is both inexplicable and unsettling. How could they possibly crawl into a home that couldn't be more unwelcoming and hostile to them? It is a real-life horror that I'm constantly trying to escape....They somehow manage to give me the chills even when existing somewhere in the unknown crevices of my kitchen....It's their small, slow-moving, silent existence that is capable of completely transforming my perfectly homey surroundings into a cold, unpleasant atmosphere of imminent danger.

Uncannily enough, for that reason, atmospheric horror is the only kind that truly gives me the spooks. A dilapidated Victorian house covered in weeds, a cob-webbed antique mirror, creaking doors, deeply disturbing salon art and everything sinister about a seemingly innocent person or the environs of a place that only reaffirm your deepest, darkest fears of peering into the unknown are the things that haunt me the most. I think, the primer before the occurrence of a supernatural event is what you take home after watching a horror movie; the suspense is what keeps you hooked on to your seat. But jump scares whether it is in the form of creepy girl ghosts, strange beasts in the shadows or gory-masked slashers...while they may have you modulating like Julia Child at the spur of the moment but with time, they slip from your memory. The atmosphere is what gives any horror movie its spine-chilling potential and unnerving quality.

So here's my list of kickass horror movies that'll stay with you for days, have you requesting an escort service for your post-midnight bathroom trips, dodging eye-contact with your reflection or making soap opera endings of mundane events, including going to your room to fetch a towel by yourself.

1. The Innocents (1961):

First of all, let me just say this is such a beautiful movie! But maybe a small disclaimer. If you've been through the whole catalog of horrors and don't really flinch much to skeletons dropping in the dark at horror houses, this is not for you. I love it for the eerie, sinister atmosphere in monochrome; the old Victorian mansion, dark hallways, beautiful camera depictions of spectral presence in daylight and night-time apparitions on French windows. Add to that a weird governess of two delightful kids who can't quite make up their mind if they're representatives of the angel or demon. Maybe there is possession. Maybe there is not. But then there's more to all three of them that meets the eye. Well, maybe I shouldn't say any more.

2. The Orphanage (2007):

Speaking of creepy children, The Spanish film Orphanage masterfully sets a tense atmosphere of vulnerability through a lady in her mid-thirties returning back to her roots - her childhood foster home, now a creepily desolate remnant of its past glory. She brings her husband and newly adopted child along so that she can turn it around to a home catering to children with learning difficulties. But Simon, her adopted son, has a thing for imaginary friends. One of them mysteriously leads him away from his family for an extended period, following which an agonizing search begins. The search operation only makes us delve deeper and deeper into the horrors of the house, without any sign of Simon.
Caution: The jump scares in this movie will send ice cubes down your spine.
This ghost story, set in what looks like a chapel in shambles, empowered by creepy children games leading to secret basements and attics, and the melancholic theme of separation from loved ones renders it as one of the best horror movies I've ever seen, probably one that I wouldn't venture to watch again.

3. Repulsion (1965):

If you're a believer in love at first sight, maybe not such a good idea to watch this Roman Polanski spine-chilling psychological thriller. For this one is terribly convincing. Catherine Deneuve plays an evocatively beautiful, reserved woman who lives with her philandering sister in a small uptown apartment. Her sister's fling with a married man is a constant source of disgust to her, but we don't know the extent of her repulsion to proximity with the opposite sex, until an eligible bachelor comes along and vies for her attention. Now probably this man is a decent one and exactly what she needs. But her mind's clouded with all sorts of repugnant ideas, something that takes the form of an extreme form of paronoia. The chilly atmosphere created here is in the mind of this outwardly shy, harmless woman. To be subject to the hallucinations and nightmares of her warped existence is the scariest thing that I've ever witnessed in a movie. By the end of the movie, I could literally see the cracks on the wall and feel things crawling on my body. Yikes!

4. The Conjuring (2013):

Everyone I know has seen this movie, including 12-year olds, and we all agree it is nightmarishly scary in parts. I recall being scared of clapping my hands for the longest time after watching this movie. Sure it has the usual suspects - an Amityville-ish deserted house and a violent ghost shutting down clocks and banging doors shut. There are the usual spookies, creepies and inexplicable bump bumps.. But the shocks, some of them completely absurd, are so powerful that it'll have you not wanting to fall asleep at all....or appointing a night-time guard for your feet.

5. The Devil's Backbone (2001):

They just don't infuse drama with horror the way the Spanish do! This is another one based in an isolated boarding school brooding with the tragedy of lone corridors and orphaned sons of Republicans. It shows us a historical perspective of the Spanish civil war through the eyes of a young boy, not old enough to understand political calamities.  It's 1939 and in the middle of the school courtyard sits an unexploded Fascist bomb, symbolic of the state of limbo that Spain was in and the doom that was to follow. But the dark corridors of the school and the near-empty closets reveal to us much more than the imminent tragedy looming over them. A haunting of a former-child resident, the villainy of the snaky caretaker, and the layers of dark fears that the boy is both curious to uncover and terrified to find out, make this film a hauntingly melodramatic horror.

6. The Shining (1980):

A gloomy isolated hotel. Bleaky winter days. A dysfunctional family, led by a deranged alcoholic who declares his cold, unappealing abode as "Cosy"! And there's nobody else for company. Naturally, things will go awry. And how? The house takes its own sweet time to unravel empty rooms with ghostly apparitions, ominously vacant corridors turning the corner to reveal elevators filled with blood. And then, you have a man driven to destroy his small family for no rhyme or reason, except his hypnotic surroundings. This is one hair-raising tale, incidentally based on Stephen King's novel.
The last scene of the movie still haunts me. That chilling smile of Jack Torrance, impossibly captured in a picture, taken sixty years before the period that the movie is set in... I still don't get it.

7. The Haunting (1963):

This is a good old-fashioned haunted house chiller. The plot is a conventional one, something that's probably been used by one too many horror movies we know of. A bunch of stereotypical guests are cordially invited to spend a few days at an idyllic old mansion. But things are not as they seem. OK, I see you yawning. But get this. This is a ghost story plot but ghosts are not the reason you'll get spooked out. It's the anticipation of them that'll drive you crazy till the very end. There's the possibility of a hidden secret, murder, insanity and the works. You'll see the characters hunched up together in fright listening to sounds coming from the corridors - screeches, bumps, even gun shots, and you can't help wondering about what the darkness holds. The spooky set-up of it all will give you goose-bumps without quite knowing what's causing them.

I know I'm missing a host of good horror movies in this list including the likes of Exorcist and Omen. By no means is this a list of horrors that'll have you shutting your eyes through some jolt-inspiring scenes in blind terror.

But these are movies that'll creep into your psyche without a sound and come to haunt you the next time you find yourself alone.

More outlandish or conventional horror stories to add to the list? Be my guest and write in the comments below.

My Personal Alternative Art Exhibit

According to an article in nytimes, "art appreciation is a female predilection". How can they say that? Well, we spot a larger number of women buying art in comparison to men at art galleries. And it's not just another desire to browse, shop and possess that brings them to art galleries.  These women are dead serious. If you happen to overhear their conversations, you fathom that they get the esoteric symbolism and all the subtle undercurrents conveyed by the artist.

And this is where I'm at pains. Call me uncouth but for the life of me, I don't get art exhibits - expressionistic or abstract. So, for example, if you show me a modern art sketch of a horse drinking out of a can of OJ in a rather dismal setting, I will see a horse drinking out of a can of OJ in a rather dismal setting and not the evils of consumerism on our nutrition and well-being.(Duh.) So I live in the happy realization that maybe I'm one of the un-art-initiated and that's why I generally steer away from art galleries and exhibits.

But then not all art is for everyone and come on, the Museum of Modern Art in New York is now projecting video games as serious works of art. Of course, it has given rise to a heated philosophical debate among art aficionados, but at least we can safely conclude that anything can be art, as long as it renders us a personal vision inspired by life or our own perceived reality.

Which brings me to an art form that is close to my heart. Movie posters. Um, yes, I'm a movie buff and browsing through movie posters generally means either looking through them or stopping to interpret the movie's essence and decide whether it's worth anticipating for. Ok, there are these soul-less posters that just throw the core essentials that sell a movie at you - the actors and actresses you like, a picturesque setting, the movie title and the release date. And chances are, you will still go watch the movie and come back and rave about how it was all that it promised.

But there are some movie posters that go way beyond.

These are the ones that stuck...that so simplistically captured not only the gist of the movie but also the feeling that one has after watching that movie. These movie posters to me became art - that one visual that elevates the movie beyond its recurrent theme and socio-cultural subtext to be eternally etched in one's mind as a miniature of the movie.

So without further rantings, I give to you a list of movie posters that, for me, have made the cut and remained with me for reasons I can't completely decipher.

In no particular order, they are:

1. A Clockwork Orange:

I remember what a demonic cult classic this movie was and naturally, with all the peer pressure, I had to see it for myself. First glance at this poster and I knew it's going to hit me straight in my guts. The disturbia in the movie's quite evident. I was raptured by the piercingly sinister eyes of the knife-bearer and then I spot the eyeball. As expected, I couldn't go past the first fifteen minutes of this movie and that eyeball continues to haunt me.

2. Shawshank Redemption:

What you see in this image is a man with his arms stretched outwards standing in the rain, his liberated spirit, looking up at the falling rain, full of hope. What you don't expect is to see a movie about a man in prison. This poster, to me, is a spiritual experience, much like the movie that could be easily mistaken for a dreary prison drama from its title, but instead offers us a much deeper connotation of life - of the importance of slowing down and reflecting, of hope and of the human spirit. Maybe, I'm biased towards the movie but the truth is that this is the visual that I carry within me to represent this beautiful masterpiece. 

3. Trois Couleurs - Rouge

Ah, the inner limbo of Irene Jacob is unmistakable in her expression in this beautiful picture, which is also one of the central themes of the movie. The clever use of a similar poster within the movie in the form of a giant billboard located at a city crossroad and the way the other characters react when they look at the billboard for the first time is also what makes it a strikingly captivating movie poster. The color red, of course, is symbolic of the multifaceted meditations on love and fate.

4. Anatomy of a Murder:

The simplicity of this poster is what wins it for me. The cutout body - I mean you can't get more symbolic.

 5. E.T.:

This stunning poster shows us the coming into contact of E.T and Elliot in a starfield backdrop. Interestingly, this was inspired by Michelangelo's "The Creation of Adams", alluding to the portrayal of E.T as Jesus Christ and Elliott as the one in need of guidance and salvation. But as kids, we could only link it with the desire for a cool friend from the outer space. Whichever way. It works.

6.V for Vendetta:

What brilliance of color composition! The menacing dark shadow of V looms over the entire city with his sole intent of revolution symbolized through a dagger. Revolution is also portrayed though the use of a tilted angle and a color composition of red, black and sepia.

7. American Beauty:

The poster takes a bite at the fantasies that can stem out of an unchangeable but safe, surburban life. The image, in the face of it, seems fairly innocent. And then you read the tagline, "Look closer." And you just know that there will be a seedy disclosure, unfolding slowly, much like the petals of a rose.

8. Rosemary's Baby

One word. Creepyyyy...Just look at the details. That cold, eerie shade of green. Mia Farrow's vacant face superimposed over a silhouette of a baby carriage. A baby carriage seemingly on the foot of a hill, unattended. And lean closer towards the darkness and you see a tagline, "Pray for Rosemary's Baby." I got goosebumps.

9. Pulp Fiction

Seems like a round-up of everything sleazy. Uma Thurman's icy stare, the cigarettes, the cheap paperback, the pricetag and the gun. Takes you back to the jarring 90s and still so contemporary.

10. Blow-Up

I'm kind of a fan of Michelangelo Antonioni movies because they're such a tease - so new-wave and so damn incoherent that at times, you feel like you're losing your mind. And on repeat watches, you realize what a fleeting mirage they really are. The inspiration behind this iconic poster is the celebrity-obsessed mania that we, as a culture, are afflicted with. The themes that immediately come to mind when you see this poster is voyeurism. However, if you look closely, you also notice that the unsuspecting voyeur (the photographer) has entangled himself in the lure of beauty to become the one who's being watched.

I'm sure I've offended a lot of people by missing like a whole generation of kick-ass movie posters in my list but I wanted to keep it small :). And these posters to me not only have a high recall value but also that out-of-the-box, artsy touch. Feel free to slam some more awesome poster artwork in my face in your comments below.


Image Source: www.movieposter.com