2.
Posted: 09/30/2014 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment
i was sleeping in the night, and a pineapple crawled in to me. it kept on hurting me from the insides. i shook, i wiggled, i coughed, sneezed and spat. but the pineapple didn’t exit. so i jumped up and down and yelled. i yelled so much that the ears next to me tore and the hearts went sore. i yelled so much that the glass castles shattered and the light came through. i yelled so much until all i could hear was myself. i yelled so much and jumped up and down, until my head squashed in to my toes. and then out came the pineapple, squished and mushy, and ran for its life.
1.
Posted: 05/02/2013 Filed under: Notebook Doodles, Theatre | Tags: city, ecology, emotion, flash, mono, stories Leave a comment
someone’s photo from internet. this is the wanted plant.
There was anger that had to be expelled She grabbed the rusted aruvaal over which the grass had already grown How irritating it was to do the work once someone had reminded her Left to myself, just to left to myself she mumbled in rhythm with sharp arched blows she brought down on the erukampoo plant The fucking knife would keep turning to its blunt side the problem was her fucking wrist. No skill, no skill, she muttered, grabbing holding of a large branch She twisted it till it yelped and yanked it off the plant. The first smile for the day. White powdery milk smeared on her By the time she had uprooted the entire plant, she looked like a white lady enjoying a sunny afternoon. Someone had told her the milk was poisonous if ingested, but she had used it to heal a large puss-infested wound under her left breast last Thursday. She could not understand why this plant had to die. She anyway went on to pull out its brother, grandmother and sister, left the lover for tomorrow.
question 2012
Posted: 12/30/2012 Filed under: Theatre Leave a commentStory and story making is an object of study, much like food is an object of study. The realization of muse creates.
or
Story, story making, eating, making food, is a way of living. The muse is the realization of itself.
Why not personalize?
what is your image?
Posted: 09/05/2012 Filed under: Theatre | Tags: aijas ahmed, culture, eugeno barba, indian theatre forum, marina abramovic, performance, play, questions, sadanand menon, tagore, the postmaster, Theatre, vocal training, voice Leave a commentin search of focus, for the past two months – i’ve been in my shell, hardly getting out. no public ‘appearances’. not too many phone calls. very few friendships. so much i’ve been thinking for myself – i need to catch up to that, this. a friend recently asked me to think of an image that obsesses my head to know where to go –
treading somewhere between my no ‘formal’ training and experimental know-how, whether it is the fierce urgency of now, like Aijas Ahmed said in 2008 and i heard in 2012, or like Sadanand Menon reiterated in the same 2008 Indian Theatre Forum seminar, Not the Drama – it’s about asking the right question!
then about space, today they were two questions. one in the context of my voice, with Kalairaani. second, in the context of chai kadai with Siddharth who has just joined us. the consistency of how we use a space, much like a medium. doubting my strength. asking if i am asking the right questions. four years after the fierce urgency of now, only now learning the first steps of theatre, i stand sometimes so ‘foolishly’ dejected, come on… besides everything else i can talk about… it’s the turn of Mayan’s End of the World.
then, we tell stories for hope in a sense. but, when in theatre, writing, i should have at some point read Tagore, the giant who stands on an sentence like, ‘hope is the greatest human folly‘.
i am not tempted to draw the curtains and sleep. instead, just feeling every minute a loss of time. now in basic understanding, i know this is part of my urban existence. just that it doesn’t still erase the fact that I feel like I am running out of time to speak.
this could be like kalai pointed out this morning, i speak from the base of my mouth, actually with a titled lower lip, and this is closer to the place where thoughts flow. maybe, that’s why i feel overwhelmed all through the day.
on not speaking, an important piece on the language of silence, The Artist is Present by Marina Abramović, Russia –
everything about this reminds me of this frame in Rhapsody in August, Akira Kurosawa –
this scene of silence between these two old women who have survived the bombing in nagasaki – this silence is what i hope to achieve with sisters. and then before this, questions – how do I want to do theatre? what is my body? what is my voice? what is my script? what is my understanding of the politics of performance? where does the backstage me come in? what scripts am i going to write for this play? what ways do i wish to affect my audience? who is my audience? – and this is just the share of the personal. what then do others part of this question?
here, on voice there are two videos I would like to share to bring this small note to a close.
Odin Teatret, Denmark. Vocal Training. Video Archives. (Eugenio Barba 1972)
Ulay and Marina Abramović, Yugoslavia . ‘AAA AAA’. (1978)
my images – voice | space | now | never. reminds me of the earlier an idea. a box.
Posted: 08/25/2012 Filed under: Theatre, Uncategorized Leave a comment
Last week, at ACJ they had organized an evening interaction with Sudeep Chakravarti, the author of Red Sun: Travels in a Naxalite Country and Highway 39: Journeys through a Fractured Land. In early romance, when Sudha was traveling day and night in the Bombay trains, a few years ago, Red Sun kept him company and found him strange friends who shared the bogey. When on holidays or short escapades when my pockets are full enough for a pitcher of beer every week, I’d be in Bombay or Goa with him. Bits of the book, that’s all I have managed to read in five years. It’s expansive. What I knew of the Northeast states, Tibet, Kashmir, or Sri Lanka was from mainly from my friends from these places at college, parent’s friends, or work friends. The idea what is a home gets invariably altered. The AFSPA; the Assamese going ‘home’; Operation Bluebird; Liberalization, Privatization, and Corporatisation; the corruption; the Media; the history textbooks; they all say a very grim story. But from her own confusions that reflects a generation from Nagaland, Vibi spoke before the discussion. As soon as she had finished, I hurriedly jotted down, ‘must speak to her at the end of the evening’. I knew it was something Chaikadai could definitely create the space for. But, we are not a newspaper, magazine, or anything so concrete. After maintaining Koodankulam Speaks, this became a small editorial project for me. With the help of Sudeep Chakravarti, Vibi Yhokha and Nityanand Jayaraman, I have compiled a small set of reading and links that will help further the discussion. Though, the small nooks and corners of this as in Tamil I might call it is ‘nachu vela’ (courtesy Sukumar, Aakur, referring to sitting and cutting glass pieces one by one by hand for the kattaikuthu kreedam decorations).
Linking things. Changing it blue. Making sure everything opens in a new window. But, everything put aside, it has been a very good process for me to spend the week reading and collating. Now, that we know this is possible and have learnt many more keyboard shortcuts, we should be able to publish good comprehensive posts.
by Vibi Yhokha
“The single story creates stereotypes and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue but that they are incomplete, they make one story become the only story….Stories matter, many stories matter, stories have been used to dispossess and to malign but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize, stories can break the dignity of a people but stories can also repair that broken dignity…..”
– Chimamanda Adichie Ngozi, The Danger of a Single Story
People, especially mainland Indians, have only a single story of Nagaland. No, in fact they have different single stories. They associate the Nagas with headhunting, Hornbill festival, Rock music, fashion and yes, Conflict. Nagaland the land of myths, where life is one long festival but is also a place where life is one long, long war….
But there is so much more to Nagaland than just conflict, music…
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a tryst with phlegm and dust
Posted: 07/21/2012 Filed under: Theatre, Uncategorized Leave a commenthalf way through the essay. too many parts of my body are ill for the moment. cleaned one loft. the new house still alien and jatax pink. one more week to go there. i will only miss the lotus on the ceiling here, such quirks are rare. but feel like i really have no control about anything in that house, he he. we’ll all have to set it up together. ha. ill – so going and finishing reading for the essay. *cough* *cough* *cough*. he he he….
attempt
Posted: 07/20/2012 Filed under: Theatre, Uncategorized | Tags: collating, house shifting, notes, updates Leave a commenthouse-shifting. taking this time to do some study. collate notes. construct thought-lines. piling premises. sketching images. will have in a day or two some good comprehensive summaries and extensions from my pile of notebooks and books. will share here. library cleaning. 🙂 making essential reading lists.
purpose, continuations, perpetuity, hope
Posted: 07/18/2012 Filed under: Theatre, Uncategorized | Tags: albert camus, human beings, isaac asimov, perpetuity, purpose 1 CommentAt that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning towards his rock, in that slight pivoting, he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which becomes his fate, created by him, combined under his memory’s eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see, who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling.
I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burdens again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He, too, concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
ALBERT CAMUS The Myth of Sisyphus.
brought back from a note, because Shuba Desikan shared –
Why continue? Because we must. Because we have the call. Because it is nobler to fight for rationality without winning than to give up in the face of continued defeats. Because whatever true progress humanity makes is through the rationality of the occasional individual and because any one individual we may win for the cause may do more for humanity than a hundred thousand who hug their superstitions to their breast.
– Isaac Asimov
sunset sisters.
Posted: 07/18/2012 Filed under: Theatre | Tags: devising, notes, rehearsal, research, sticky, Theatre 1 Commentsat to organize notes on theatre & performance. much needed now, if i want to work on longer rehearsal processes. some study time alone. some collating. some referencing.
for about a month or so, i hope i’ll be able to archive as much as possible here. organized like now. shifting house in between this.
an early rehearsal photo of sunset sisters by sudharshan. – love it.
dotted lines are boundaries
Posted: 07/02/2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: aerican empire, freedom, interview, micronations, nationalism, Writing Leave a commentOnce again, I met disbelief when I talked about micro-nations. Here’s a conversation I had with Eric Lis, Emperor of Aerican Empire.
interview with Eric Lis M.D. C.M., Emperor of Aerican Empire by samyuktha pc
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Dropping the Urn — Burning the Man
Posted: 05/16/2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: ai wei wei, chai kadai, goa, new year, resolutions, travel Leave a commentsomething I wrote a long time back:
The end of a year, the start of another one, comes with a sense of celebration all over the world. It’s just celebrated on different calendar days in various cultures with their most unique festivities. Crackers in some towns. Grand feasts in others. We decided to break away from our regular routines and travel to Goa this New Year. We reached on the morning of the eve and took a drive down to the beach where we chose to stay. On our way, we were called out to from the road where a large gathering of children were jumping up and down. Next to them on a plastic chair, sat slouched a man made of hay, pots, old clothes, and sticks. The taxi driver later told us that it is a custom for them to burn this dummy made in the image of a human on New Year’s Eve to…
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blabber phase #02
Posted: 05/11/2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: playwriting, science, Theatre, writers block, Writing Leave a commenti think blabber phases shall become a regular feature on this blog. i’d probably even dedicate a space for it on the top bar, once i have blabbered enough.
from the last post one possibility: what if all friends and acquaintances land up one day to teach me the important lesson of keeping in touch? see that doesn’t excite. as much as the high moralistic result of that story, placed on a protagonist such as me – so reclusive, so forgetful, so choosy about phone calls or emails or dinners and lunches – might appeal universally on a sentimental level, as probably a sunday afternoon film on star movies, i don’t see it going any further than that. however, i do comprehend writers of sunday afternoon films on star movies do earn in numbers i can’t even talk about.
nevertheless, making that life-changing story impossible, because i am just stubborn to change that about me, i have to move on. that means more blah blah blah. the problem with real life characters is that people stereotype and i haven’t really studied psychology or psychoanalysis that much, even in terms of theatre, to fuck an audience up mentally by playing around with how they relate to stereotypes. and maybe, that is for a later date, something i can’t really be ambitious about right now. note written, kept, if someone else does work that handles this i should scrap book it so i can create a delusion of how i am still very interested and curious about this. but in fact i am interested. i just don’t see myself doing anything concrete anytime soon. so for now the morale will be low. note saved for later.
ingi has been sitting right next to me for the last post and as I am typing this one. one of her eyes are open. she sometimes sleeps like that, just to keep a watch on me. when i am alone i can get very stupid. maybe, not work. maybe, drink too much coffee. maybe, switch on the tv. maybe, flip from here focus on something else other than writing, because then I wouldn’t have to feel so bad about myself. apparently writer’s block is one of the most common topics written about in the online world. not surprised. but, i have to come to a conclusion writer’s block is basically this – you want to say something, you just don’t know what it is, and you can’t really believe you can have something to say to this world. and you have already crystallized the forms in which you need what you want to say to come out even without figuring what the fuck is actually in your head and hence the silent evenings on the terrace convincing yourself that you have this metaphysical mental block towards writing. i think it’s a little pointless in hovering about this imaginary block of wood, instead of just getting down to the physical act of it and then desperately hoping maybe now, maybe in seven years time, you will manage to crack what you want to say to the world.
slump.
what do you want to say to the world sam? ha. non fiction is so much easier way to say that you know. ah just shut up will you, say it or i’ll chop your head off.
recently, i came to the solution that the prison (as much as believe the current college) as an institution is pointless. why? okay, i was supposed to wait till i put this together as an “essay” for chai kadai, but you know what i don’t think i’ll be pouring any of the bullshit in my head in any form, if i don’t forget about forms
ingi over the years has actually acquired many human behaviourisms, or actually our behaviorisms. she is sleeping now and she is twitching her legs like me, lying on her side as she was just a smaller replica of baba, and almost snoring like sudha.
so forgetting forms. forgotten. last month’s note in puck bulletin by pushkar raj got me thinking about the state of prisons in india. the koodankulam struggle, the arrest of soni sori, and free speech being jailed day after day in this country, got me thinking about what is this whole point of arresting and detaining and what the State uses it for. i actively started thinking about this only a couple of months ago, after many people i knew by name or face were either harassed by police or arrested for being part of protests for a more dignified life, whether in Koodankulam, Kodungaiyur, Kalpakkam, Manipur, Tibet, or Chattisgarh.
the prison industrial complex debate has been brought to front by activists part of the critical resistance in the past few years (in America). the brown v plata was a decision taken by US Supreme Court last year mandating California to reduce their prison populations by 30,000 (137.5%). now, california government’s solution for this is to shift tens of thousands of prisoners from the state to the county level, therefore opening the doors for funds that will help them expand their county jails. critical resistance has been fighting for a long time to dismantle one of the planet’s largest prison systems which constantly attacks the state’s poor, working class and communities of color. more information is available in long research reports by these human rights organizations, and with quoting them specifically i should be able to elucidate this further.
however, quite a bit of overload on lectures by prof. angela davis, prof. ruth wilson, and prof. john smith. wondering about the origin of why we think its okay to punish and on why the prison (and its related atrocities like death penalty) on a governmental (universal) level is marketed as the best institutional possibility of correcting a society. so instead of focusing on prison reform here should we rather be looking for prison abolition, an alternative to prisons. and will that not be a more humanitarian protest? wondering only. not throwing accusations. why have we misconceived punishment (positive and negative enforcements) as a method of instruction, as one of ‘structural equilibria of society’?
last night, rahul and i talked about how it is so tough focus while researching. with so information available to us, and so much not available to us (which we can get to only if we have finished plodding through what is already there) there is so much to know, so much to ask, and so much more to know about. every day. the personal ethics of meticulous workaholic researchers like so many others i know. no personal ethics at all and we are still developing it. see our colleges didn’t really demand any kind of academic inquiry into our subjects. so other than personal motives to dig and delve through history, there wasn’t really any external need to be academic. now the only thing college wanted out of us was attendance in boring lectures, which was essentially teachers dictating notes, we writing it down, and hall tickets, pink slips, blue slips, and yellow.
but coming back to storytelling and whatever it is that i do, i really don’t know where to go. i read all these short stories last week, you know in between reading up on the all the laws and acts and debates relating to prisons. thought of adapting. i love the idea of adaptations. adapting julius caesar convinced me i could spend time in theatre. but i don’t know actually adaptation. adapt what? nothing seems to excite me. slump.
what fight do i fight to be sure of what i want to be vocal about on stage, in life or anywhere? and do i see it as even a possibility for me to recreate this anger in the mode of storytelling? it is the magical realism of toni morrison, gabriel garcia marquez, folk tales, george melies that excites me. that is what i want.
… okay for a few minutes there i went off to Facebook. sorry. digression. anyway, there bernard bate had put up a link to this amazing discovery of a black hole devouring a star in the centre of a galaxy 2.7 billion years away. now there is one in the centre of the milky way too, “our” galaxy. and i think a spectacular dinner scene is what my play shall be. a hungry bloody black hole in the middle of a galaxy in the middle of no where, trying to choose from its menu a small snack, and maybe let’s throw in there an orbiting planet filled with delusional living beings. now the executional possibilities of this could cause yet another slump, but for now, this is what we can work on.
limitations:
# cast
# time (one ten minute play and 53 minute play)
# budget
# deadlines (23rd May and 31st July)
blabber phase #01
Posted: 05/11/2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: deadlines, playwriting, writers block, Writing Leave a commenti just wrote a very good friend of mine a cribby cribby note about how my head all so consumed by the that stupid term – writer’s block. only when i hit send i was looking at the email and i realized the act of writing hadn’t really been blocked. i found pretty easy and quite fluent while typed off. blah blah blah. so. with all permission from readers who choose to be readers here, you will for the rest of the scrolling down as this might take, i will be blabbering. blah blah blah. it’s after all strange sounds i make that i can understand if i have anything at all left to say to the world and then i might be able to do the mental math of the viability of my energies spent in pursuing two deadlines for script submissions. must say, with no story in my head.
sometimes, i let more than a few minutes pass away wondering how it might be a good option to at least dream about transforming into ingi (our cat). her life doubtlessly more peaceful. mine just excessively boring because i so easily run out of steam. i am always sitting on the top of my head. no wonder my shoulder pains so much. something like that stupid American movie Shutter. i hear there’s a more scarier Japanese version. everything seems to have a scarier Japanese version.
so what is troubling me nothing. my laziness. my inability to push myself. oh my god i sound like my fake IAS coach. blah blah blah. does a director have the right to put three people on stage and just make them say blah blah blah for ten minutes, only because my head is saying that now? blah blah blah. maybe, if i’ll be able to stand my ground at after parties talking about the importance of experimental theatre in shattering the audience’s normal expectations of a medium of storytelling. i can’t.
so is script writing at all viable for you sam? maybe, you have to rethink this entire thing. is writing for you? is theatre for you? there we go, slump.
all the ideas and exciting new stories that seemed to come across do not sit well in the limits of these deadlines or festivals. and when i have to write for something else. slump.
such impossibility of getting anything done, with a head like mine. no focus. no purpose. no.
i am always just worrying about daily problems related to banks, bills, shifting house… and then i shout inside my head no one should be expecting me to write now. No one is. Really.
i just have so many people living inside my head. fighting with each other.
digressions. distractions.
slump.
Sudha says ‘This is you saying you cannot focus, in good language’. At least he thinks it’s good language. :)
Posted: 04/20/2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: film, focus, language, Theatre, Writing Leave a commentsometimes the word process, the act of being in a process consumes me. it procrastinates my means to any end. to find something, stick to it – look into it – is by itself a process to me. it is to bite into an apple all the way to its bitter, grainy seed, wondering where all my teeth and my tongue have been, where all these molecules have come from. once a man who came to speak at my school, or this is a scene from something i dreamt up, told us something about atoms.
atoms are everywhere. they are always moving around. my daughter is now 2000 miles away from me. but i am inhaling her. we are all in each other.
as a kid a lot of what he said remained spooky. then what he said sounded like don juan’s voice. now it’s my head bustling around.
where ever i am, whatever i am doing, whatever my means, whatever the possible ends, there are fractals of distraction; a microscopic fungal growth that spreads – a million more questions every second.
have you ever wondered if a pineapple would like itself if it was turned inside out? when a mind wavers like that, my only concrete thing to puzzle everything in to is story. that’s why storytelling amazes me. i am not great at it yet, but this short journey of playing around with theatre, film, writing, myself has been great great fun. however, today, we are sitting a day late for one of things we were supposed to sign up for. quite fed up of being busy. but still desperately wanting to be busy. ideas caught inside our head. nothing amazing us too much. small talk. the weather out is reallllly nice. we should go to the beach. even all of that said in love. we are bored.
let’s eat and watch a movie we decide. choose a movie i say, to get some time to write all this that’s in my head. secretly hoping, maybe a play will pop in to my head. then i’ll know what to do with it.
bleah
Posted: 03/19/2012 Filed under: Theatre | Tags: Acting, education, Performing Arts, Peter Hall, Theatre Leave a commentcontinuity, building up a vocabulary and method with largely the same group of actors after a number of productions, leads to work of experiment and improvisation of a sophisticated kind
said Peter Hall.
in story of a process i wrote differently. somehow my mind was shut down to his words. it still is. some times i find myself defending myself in front of this apparition. the same group is quite an impossibility. some times even boring. maybe, no play of mine could be perfect in a sense. because, the performance for me is one part of the process. the performance the presentation is bound to get better. it’s the entire process my heart is at.
****
but i am re-reading these words of his i have jotted in down in a notebook. staring at it, in fact. it definitely will be so wonderful to have a group we can stick with, to mull over things with, to throw things at each other, but does that group necessarily need to be the actors? does acting alone make theatre?
maybe, yes.
maybe, no.
still at my first step.
trying to figure out.
so bleah!
but wait let me just finish the Peter Hall quote. it is after all only those lines mentioned above that i am reluctant to digest.
continues
everybody involved can readily acknowledge that the work is picking up where they left off. but in english theatre [any theatre], even at a highly subsidized organization like the RNT, it is most often the case that the director is starting each production with an ad hoc group of actors, a diverse and nervous group who, preforce, must be turned quickly into a company … breakthroughs of trust and courage occur amidst an atmosphere of mutual respect and good humour.
smiling.
off to sleep.
goodnight.
bull
Posted: 03/15/2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bull fight, jallikattu, photography, travel Leave a comment
*finally got a digital camera and been travelling quite a bit. so once in a while i have only photos.
in a bucket’s way to say
Posted: 03/14/2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bucket, love, music, photo, Poetry, radio, self-potrait Leave a comment
this is to you radio
me knee deep forever
in love
with a vibe or two
sometimes they play the right songs
then i have to sing along
maybe sometime
just sometime
you’d shut up and listen to me radio
abrupt end
line of thought
downfall
#
(self-potrait)
the approach
Posted: 02/22/2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: approach, books, Dead Souls, excerpts, Nikolai Gogol, reading Leave a commentextract from Introduction to Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol:
The following account, given by Gogol himself to some of his friends in Moscow, shows how he wrote at least parts of the novel:
This is the sort of thing that happened to me. I was travelling one July day between the little towns of Genzano and Albano. Half way between is a miserable little inn, standing on a small hill, with billiard table in the main saloon, where people are constantly talking in different languages and the billiard balls never cease clicking. I was writing the first volume of Dead Souls at the time and never parted from my manuscript. I don’t know why, but I felt like writing as soon as I entered the inn. I ordered a small table to be brought and sat down in the corner of the saloon. I took out my manuscript and, in spite of the noise made by he rolling balls, the rushing about of the potboys, the indescribable din, the some, the close atmosphere, I became completely lost to the world and wrote a whole chapter without stirring from my place. I consider this chapter the most inspired in the whole novel. In fact, I have seldom written with such inspiration.
cooking eggs with every meal
Posted: 02/22/2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Boiled egg, Dr. Seuss, edward t hall, Karl Marx, Mills & Boon, Shopping Leave a comment
Chaos Chaos, the protozoan, can be spotted with the naked eye. It dances furiously, creating new worlds every milli-second. Chaos Chaos invaded my brain, as an idea of a three year old. Amidst books, people, theatrical spaces, restrictive communities, my mind dances exploring new ways of existing.
***
Baba and Amma were leaning on the wall smoking cigarettes. From the pile of books on either side of the bed, one of them would read aloud for me — Karl Marx, Freud, Mills & Boon, or William.
***
A baby’s head is like an omelet, its understanding of the world, let alone the real and unreal, is very scattered. Baba said before he gulped down the last bit of coffee. I am always battling against circumstance and time, refusing to let them solidify my body, head, and mind, by reading, writing, making plays…
***
For three hours, this fifteen year old girl and I had with love shared every minute of our lives with each other. So you never read? I tried to mask my disappointment for a while. Will you at least try? She punched me on my left shoulder. Why ka, what’s the use of reading books? This agitated me. The three hour love had dissolved a bit. I needed to clarify. So, do you watch or read anything? She thought for a few minutes and shot me with her crude teenage humour. There’s no use.
***
Recently, I read The Hidden Dimension by Edward T Hall an anthropological exploration of how humans interact with public and private space. It altered the way I had conceived how four people can use a space and rewrote a play. Online I read about Chaos Chaos.
***
As we get older we have to be careful not to become hard boiled eggs. Baba added.
#
reading & writing – a month of it. a dream to turn my house into a library.
read Saraswati Park, You’re An Animal, Viskovitz!, Zapatista Stories, To a Dancing God, DA-da, and began Dead Souls
so much about reading and writing. a wonderful trip.
documenting – my way to an essay
Posted: 01/17/2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Dimension, edward t hall, Essays and Manifestos, Frame of reference, Human, Space, Space exploration, Writing Leave a commenti’m feeling the worst i can feel tonight. i have had a pretty nice day, but certain things etch bad moods. then again, it is the PMS swing and i don’t want to make a big deal about it. one thing i know for pretty sure, i’ve got to sleep real super early tonight, there’s no two ways about it. i think sometimes whatever other people try around you i end up feeling left out, teary, and heavy-hearted. tough luck. stupidity.
but, i guess writing should find me a way out of this rut and a way into a smiling sleep.
….
definitions
this is the title.
some lines –
A system is created to assure freedom, sustenance, survival, and knowledge. If a system is failing to offer this at all turns and walls, the system is unmistakably faulty. Most systems we subscribe to today, or rather worship, and refuse to think beyond, are very much like this.
i’m backspacing quite a bit now. i know i want to write. i know what i want to write about. but they’re these full stops in my head annoying me. i am going to start again — there’s an essay jumping about in my head that i have to get out.
definitions (contd)
Space is the boundless, three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction.[1] Physical space is often conceived in three lineardimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless four-dimensional continuum known as spacetime. In mathematics one examines “spaces” with different numbers of dimensions and with different underlying structures. The concept of space is considered to be of fundamental importance to an understanding of the physical universe although disagreement continues between philosophers over whether it is itself an entity, a relationship between entities, or part of a conceptual framework. – wikipedia
no no no. i want to talk about not only the space we see when tilt up our heads. it’s the space around us. everywhere. the space i create for you. the space you create for me. the space we imprison ourselves in. the space we dream about. the city. the village. this blog. the shop on my street. spaces we create everyday, with their ever changing shades. it is the politics of space – public and private – the hows and whys, the what and wheres — i’ve been thinking about. recently, everything i think about have been choosing either theatre or publishing as a large mould to fall in to. so, this too; this exploration of space comes from theatre and shall travel into publishing. i hope. now hope you please sit in that locker, i have some business to take care of. no hope before actual work. okay?
let’s start with this space i am using, paper, pen, blog.
15.01.2012 in notebook
(definitions)
edward t hall,
One senses that there is also a growing awareness of a loss of relatedness to the world at large. This loss of relatedness leads to an increased need for organizing frames of reference to aid in integrating the mass of rapidly changing information with which man must cope. The Hidden Dimension attempts to provide just this… This approach underscores the fact that man is first, last, always, like other members of the animal kingdom, a prisoner of his biological organism. The gulf that separates him from the rest of the animal kingdom is not nearly so great as most people think. The more we learn about animals and the intricate adaptation mechanisms evolution has produced, the more relevant these studies become to the solution of some of the more baffling human problems… In writing about my research on man’s use of space — the space that he maintains between himself and his fellows and which he builds around him in his home and office — my purpose is to bring to awareness much that is taken for granted. By this means, I hope to increase self-identity, intensify experience, and decrease alienation, In a word, to take a small step along the road of self-knowledge to help reintroduce man to himself.
the month of november, assembled from many companies sat a greying desktop in front of me. it had been a year of fiddling around allpoetry.com. i’d been writing like the mad hatter. under very depressing circumstances, much like so many others, i needed a space for self-pity and rants. my family might not have had the strength… (to be contd) current cut in few minutes.
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the hair
Posted: 01/13/2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: beauty, body image, hair, pain, Poetry, woman, Writing Leave a commentsometimes in the mirror i look serious
frowny eyebrow one anxious eyebrow two
then run into each other
the messiest road accident ever
much like the labrador down this street
it has its ways
to speak anger, sorrow, pride, joy
and then my light mush
that darkens with pollution
smokes and age
a bit of really invisible hairs everywhere
not much of a forehead either
small like my ears
and then starts the flow
of ever growing hair
one on top each other
they like company
and cry when i separate them
good friends they are
the armpit does have its share
but i shave it off a habit,
the legs too like a baby’s bottom
most of the times
a nasty nasty habit
one tiny hair on my left breast,
a proud one in love with itself
the hair that ought to hide my vagina
i trim so carefully, ever so rarely
the climate here begs me to
but every time i chop, i pull, i wax, i shave
every single hair, i hate
myself
why so willfully bear that moment of pain
why so willfully give away what my body wants
why so willfully live in denial
i think women should be hairless!
sick me.
butterflies
Posted: 01/10/2012 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commenti feel like tomorrow i have a math exam. i need sleep.
the global village #03
Posted: 01/07/2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: city, global village, Space, urbanization Leave a commentlast time i was here i talked a bit about cities. the city in pyramid is a must watch then:
no time to write now. i have a huge amount of work to finish. so bye.
how do i treat this blog?
Posted: 12/27/2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: art, blogging, free, mind map, open, Writing Leave a commentthat’s what i actually want to write about and yet again it is edward t hall’s words in the hidden dimension:
when i am writing, everything else stops
not for me. i treat this blog, pretty much like any of my notebooks. there’s a huge amount of randomness here. there are ideas, questions, references as they come by me.
quite contrary to edward’s temperament, when i am writing, everything begins.
and there’s something about blogging — the connection (with internet), my actual notebook next to me — reading, writing, dreaming, watching videos, listening to news, mindmapping, drawing — so much. it’s like the minute i sit to write — everything begins.
and this blog is a notebook. my ideas would lie here fragmented until i actually find a way to mesh, separate, develop, cross-reference, and create from this.
free. open. out there.
the global village #02
Posted: 12/27/2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: art, cities, exploring, multitasking, Skyscrapers, the hidden dimension Leave a comment…continued. link
i’ve seriously been multi-tasking for over a week now. every night, i beg my head please please please don’t get a new idea, just get the work done. and boom. a new idea. a new thing to do. one minute i am drawing. the next i am washing vessels. the third i am watching tv. the fourth i am writing. the fifth i am editing a piece by someone so totally random. sixth i am choosing what to put next on screen at chaikadai. seventh i am checking what all i am supposed to do. eighth i am making all the pending calls. ninth i am cutting up newspapers for possible collages. tenth i am back on my notebook. now as usual i am exhausted.
anyway, the city, the global village… continued
i started reading and writing about cities, because i am actually interested in exploring the other end of the spectrum: free love. by free love i mean not just the act of freely loving, but i am encompassing all kinds of freedom as free love. because, love whether for yourself or for others is what creates freedom. so, with regard to understanding the politics of space, i am reading edward t hall’s anthropological book the hidden dimension. here’s a quote to begin:
Man is an organism with a wonderful and extraordinary past. He is distinguished from the other animals by virtue of the fact that he has elaborated what i have termed extensions of his organism…man has been able to improve or specialize various functions. the computer is an extension of part of the brain, the telephone extends the voice, the wheel extends the legs and feet. Language extends experience in time and space while writing extends language. Man has elaborated his extensions to such a degree that we are apt to forget that his humanness is in his animal nature.
i am actually waiting for some money to pour into my bank so i can buy alessandro boffa’s you’re an animal viskovitz. just a reminder.
when i walk around chennai, especially on this recently developing IT sectors, i look at all these high rise buildings. the constant construction, has made the microclimate of these originally sprawling marshlands highly humid, but dry. my nostrils burn. there’s cement lining on my face. i am going to take an hour to clean up. these high rise towers remind me of some tower of babel obsession the world is up to. who has the tallest building? who has the longest bridge? who has the biggest nose?
absurdity.
man is a social animal: teachers chant this during sociology, philosophy, biology, history, economics, and anthropology lectures. humans are animals. that puts me at peace for now. because, now i think searching for the animalness, or like edward t hall puts it, the humanness in my animal nature, coming back in touch with it, would do me good. that’s one step to free love.
abruptly stopping this as usual. i want to write a new blog post. bye.
the global village
Posted: 12/26/2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Concentric zone model, David Ricardo, Philosophy, Social Sciences, Urban and Regional Planning, Urban planning, Writing Leave a commenti’ve been reading and writing a bit on humans (as individuals and as societies) and their interaction with space. it brings me back to an idea. an object. the boundaries that i create for myself, while defining myself as an individual, surely gives me more leeway in terms of creative and spiritual (or rather philosophical) pursuits. but, like we jotted down in chai kadai today, it is a sense of community that i actually long for. living in a city, it is the hardest to find. bringing back the individual into the community, is extremely important. i think rummaging through literature on biology, sociology, anthropology, art, theatre, engineering, architecture, philosophy, psychology, history, and maybe anything else that might pop up, would open a few doors for me. for today, the notebook opens with city planning:
i studied this in school, environmental studies – an extremely comprehensive major. our teacher, suchitra akka, had actually compiled material from various sources on a variety of issues that are of critical importance: planning, development, ecology, law, philosophy, agriculture, and many more. we had entire books, pages xeroxed from hundreds of journals, downloaded material from everywhere on the internet, and a lot of field study. technically, today i am just trying to recollect, and there was this one bit on city planning (on different zone models) that popped into my head, and i think it was piece by miller. this article was mostly just images, but was trying to assess, as far as how the world has already been developed, what could be the most suited model of a city that supports social and environmental equality, a urban heart based on sustainability. he saw the city as a reflection of the anatomy of the society that created it and lives in it. he also takes into account that cities are ever-breeding living beings. he picked (if i remember correctly) three city zone models — concentric, sector and multiple nuclei.
one of the earliest was created by ernest burgess in 1924 — concentric zone model. the image reminds me of a similar image my economics teacher, kumar anna, used to explain david ricardo’s theory on rent and value. burgess superimposed the city of chicago with his theories on human ecology to find this model. as i read more, i actually figured that burgess’ model was very much based on the bid rent theory. pleasant surprise, economics actually didn’t fly over my head!
homer hoyt, proposed the sector zone model in 1939. i like his name. 🙂 i have to go sweep the house and cook now. so i am going to leave you with the images of the sector zone and the multiple nuclei zone models. they are pretty self-explanatory, so i have to say goodbye (for now).
it’s raining here
Posted: 12/14/2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Anti-nuclear movement, Environment, Nuclear, Paint, Rain Leave a commenti’ve had a tough day. maybe, just maybe, multi-tasking is not for me. but, without multi-tasking i’ll die. anyway, film, paint, words, phone calls, the day has been so hectic that i’ve missed some pretty amazing appointments in its course.
as far as the week goes, success may not be the exact word, but fun and happiness, a little bit of my back feeling like it has been torn into pieces, and excitement wraps it all up so nicely.
painted a wall.
things can’t get better than that can they. other than that PMS instigated irritation with all those people thronging around the wall, ‘sam, what can i paint? what colour can i use?’ – all those voices all around – i thoroughly enjoyed it. i’m waiting for the photographs to reach me – as usual. and maybe, then i’ll add it here.
anti-nuclear
tomorrow is the big day. the concert, the theatre, and for that i am currently painting an umbrella. never thought of doing that before. so that’s one good idea to be written down so i don’t forget.
it is raining here
so i hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow during the concert. SPACES is open air. but the umbrellas might come to use then! 😀
signing off. more painting.
bye
hardly a beginning for a story
Posted: 12/08/2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: beer, beginning, block, ending, period, story, Writing Leave a commentthe pain in my abdomen is all too common for me to talk about it, specially. and i do have friends who might think of me as ‘sick’ for such ideas, stories, and questions. but it isn’t the pain that is bothering me now, or ever. all it needs is a large glass of beer and me to be alone, unfettered in my imagination. but life runs on how much work you get done in a day. at least for those of us who need constantly replenish our bank accounts to get by – day after day.
the idea of a loud share-auto, the crowded roads, the horns, the signals, the batter with random faces, all to get forty sheets of paper hurts – even more than my abdomen – perhaps because of my abdomen. so no work has actually been done. the kitchen stays. and every other assignment has halted.
a chunk of flesh feels like it is tearing itself apart – prancing about my torso. i have half an hour before my legs give in.
shutting this down. when my eyes tear off the fan and my back off the floor, i will leave. and if i leave, i will be back.
until then…
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