Shrugging Atlas

If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater the effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders -- what would you tell him to do?

I don't know. What could he do? What would you tell him?

To shrug.

I'm smart.

We know, they say, with a tinge of understanding in their voice, and a great deal of disapproval for my arrogance in their eye.


I'm strong.
We know that, they assure me, with a sideways glance at my slight frame and an ill-masked look that conveys their supposed attempt to humour the child they know I am being.


I know.
We know, they sigh, shaking their heads at the book between my fingers and my black-framed glasses that, like my face, are buried in the pages it houses.


I think.
We have always known, they venture. They look nowhere but in the depths of my eyes, as though searching for a break, a flaw in the thought whose lack of sentiment discomforts them.


I believe.
They smile, knowing my rationality will keep me from any real belief- their eyes betraying that they do not believe a belief in rationality to be true.

I love.
They look befuddled- their foreheads creasing into a maze of wrinkles, the corners of their mouths turning down in disbelief. They look for that hint of a sentiment they may identify with, search my face painstakingly, helplessly for that 'love'. They do not find it.
They do not find it, for my love is for the rare few that foster it, nurture it, bring it forth. For those wrinkled pages. For the comforting woodenness of a stage. For the lilting notes of a violin. For the faces- the ones I see every time I blink, and I will never tire of.
For them, for those who don't see how that love is born, I bear none. So they continue to search. Endlessly.

I live for me.
They protest instinctively, pointlessly, helplessly. They try to convince me that I'll grow out of it as I will grow out of everything else that I am now. Selfishness, they explain with gracious patience, will get me nowhere.
At them, I smile. I nod. I acknowledge. I listen. I understand. I don't disagree. I don't blame them for what they say. But I don't agree. I quietly, in the secrecy of my mind, revel in the confusion they bear towards me.
They will never grow out of it, I think, and laugh at the joke I know is only for me. To them, I offer no explanation. I present no defence. I make no comparison.

I am.
They are silent.

Men and Women Merely Players

Learn your lines! 

Why are you wearing uncomfortable clothes?! You can't rehearse in uncomfortable clothes! 

We have no money! 

Lights. 

Lines. 

Applause.

Theatre.
What a word. What a concept. What an experience. Magic.

I've always known why I love the stage. It's simple. Theatre's in my blood. Not from my rich theatrical heritage- more like a rush of hormonal imbalance that shoots through my veins when I think about the fervour that the stage brings.
Working in theatre, with all its dimensions, has always culminated in being on stage. About the sheer joy that rehearsal brings to my day. About the spark that runs from my head to my toes every time I set foot on that cold wooden floor, the warmth of the fluorescent lights hitting my eyes till they water, the exhilaration of applause that echoes in my mind for days after I hear it.
You know how Sartre once said, "Acting is happy agony."? Well, he was right. Then again, that man always knew what he was talking about.
I can't recall the number of times a script, a scene, a line has twisted my insides with the confusion, the complexity, the unfamiliarity it brings. And I know there's a lot more the come. The thing is, that intestinal convolution is part of a far bigger, far more ethereal deal. Somehow, in my head, it's a fair barter. Some frustration, in return for a thrill like none other. What's the harm?
We go through our lives pretending, as someone I know very acutely pointed out. Pretending that we fit into society as we see it. That we know what the Algebra teacher is talking about (Well, some of us). That our minds are merely subject to a higher power. That, in following a dozen rules that we did not choose for ourselves, we are living honourably. That we care more about honour than happiness.
I could go on, but I'm sure you see the point.
Well, I like to act, because it helps me shed the coat of pretence. More significantly, it allows me the opportunity to point it out to others, so that they may, may, realise how much it is obstructing their vision.
Because, at the end of the day, isn't that what art is about? The painter paints to express his inner desires and  visions. The dancer dances to tell a story through his body. The musician uses his notes, his voice, the power of his instrument, to create a mood, foster a sentiment in a way that only he can. I act, because there are thousands of stories that deserve to be told, thousands of desires that are begging to be expressed, thousands of emotions that nobody is brave enough to face: and I can live them. Albeit for a while. And in living them, I can tell those stories, represent all those people, pull the mask off my face and hope that it may inspire others to do the same. It gives me the courage to be the truest version of myself, and wearing that face, I am the most I can be.
All the world's a stage, said Shakespeare.
My world may as well be one.

Leave Me To My Mistakes

This is a public apology for all the ridiculous typos that seem to have infested my posts.
I should have known better than to let them get the better of me.
If only Spell-Check had the extraterrestrial ability  to pick out words that don't fit the context. I can't really help it if I type 'life' in the stead of 'live'. I'm only human! Damn you, Spell-Check. I know they're both words, but why don't you possess the intelligence to know when the word DOESN'T FIT THERE?
Anywho. You know what they say about bad workmen. Fortunately, I, am not a bad workman. I genuinely do have bad tools. Or the wrong ones.
Let's not dwell here. I know this blog is called Ravings of a Know-It-All, but I don't have to keep wanting to prove its legitimacy to you.
I'm going to start typing slower in the future, I swear. I'd say I'll start double-checking everything I type, but even I don't believe that. I'd hardly expect you to.
Imagine my embarrassment if you found any typos in this post.
Sigh.
Fingers crossed.
With love.

Hello, I Love You

If heaven had a voice, it would be his. If heaven had a bard, he would be it. If heaven had a beauty contest, he would win it.



If he were reading this right now, though, he'd probably be laughing. For the place that he belongs, is not heaven. He was too adventurous, too intelligent, too...completely out of his mind, to have to be sent there for the rest of his existence. But I know better than to say he's in hell. Hell, is for the unimaginative few, that do wrong without thinking it through, or knowing why. No, he is in a very special place. One, in fact of his very own creation. And the name of the band to which he belonged (I dare not call it 'his band', I've heard that annoyed him.)- should provide me with ample proof of the place I mean.



Beyond The Doors of perception, you will find him. You will find the curly haired genius I'm raving about.

You will find Jim Morrison.

And you won't find him alone. When I shut my eyes and think about what it was that made Morrison, Morrison, the answers fall into my lap, like they were waiting to get there all along. His poetry and his voice are only part of it- an indispensable part, but a mere fraction, nevertheless. There was more. There was alcohol, women, Robbie Krieger, and the police force of the United States of America. The backdrop to his fame. And that's what you'd find with him: that familiar bottle, the air of a high (I mean that quite literally, actually) and a thousand gyrating women, who'd been shipped specially from Hell for him. Or Heaven, if they gyrated Monday through Friday and worked in a soup kitchen on weekends.
Nevertheless, I'm digressing.

Why is it that Jim Morrison makes me- and so many others, feel the magic that music made him feel? I don't know. I don't know what it is about him, that makes me think he's the most beautiful man I've ever seen. I don't know what it is about his lyrics, that makes me laugh, cry, reminisce and float. I don't know what it is about his voice, that makes me feel like he's singing only for me, like I'm swimming in the richness of his tenor, and there's nothing to the world except the things he's singing about.

What I do know, though, is this. No ordinary man can life a life as dramatic as he did, write some of the best poetry of his age (and ages hence), and make a living out of messing with the heads of every solitary person in the world- and not succumb to the unending glamour of insanity.
What I would give, to live in his time. What I would give to be able to experience what he gave his audiences each time he went up on that stage. Everything. And more. But, I suppose, that's the beauty and the sorrow of a live well-lived. There's no going back, and there's no moving forward.

So I do what I can do best with him around me. I play his music, listen to his voice, and write poetry of my own.

Because, love, this isn't The End.

One day, someday, we might just meet. And that's a hope I'm willing to live in.

Come on, come on, come on, come on
And Touch Me, babe,
Can't you see that I am not afraid?

Sometimes, it's just about the words.

I haven't done this in a while.

Not that I returned as a result of some incurable withdrawal symptoms, but I've always found that starting dramatic is helpful. Either way, I must confess, I did not come here with the intention of typing out a new post. I came here, to delete my account. That's right.

I took said decision purely on the basis of a host of pointless yet, I must maintain, logical doubts, that began unashamedly entering my subconscious and poking at it with iron rods. "How do you know if anyone's even reading this?". "What's the point of a blog, REALLY?" Sometimes a snide, "Don't flatter yourself.", with a characteristic scoff that I'm mostly used to throwing at people outside of myself. You know the drill.

But then, the inevitable happened. I logged in, and found that I didn't know how to delete my account. That's right. I don't know how to delete a blogger account. (If that's even what it's called.) Laugh away.

And so, I did what any helpless, cyber-challenged writer would do. I gave up, and wrote this instead. Predictable, I know.

Because, I decided today, fuck it. I don't know how many of you are reading this, or how many of you know who I am, or if you did read it, and absolutely hated it. I am narcissistic, I am a below-clinical insomnia, and I am overflowing with words and ideas, sometimes pointless and misplaced, that would bear no context or relevance to any place else, or anybody else. So I'm going to write here.
Irrespective.

So if you're reading, hey.

Alone

In a cage a single man

Soldered off from the rest

Sits in silence and, it may be said,

A peaceful acceptance

Of the unending

Solitude- his foe, his friend

Since the day he opened his unforgiving eyes .

And so the sights of war

Of play and of friendly spirit

Seem to him like trials

Of a foreign world far and beyond

His own, of iron wrought.

In the world live men together

Loving, laughing, speaking, fighting:

A team, a group, a family

A government, an army -

Tied by the silken threads of

Warm sentiments intangible.

And so this lonely man,

In his dark and cold prison cell:

Seems to them like they behold some

Strange and frightening manifestation:

Of the face of pain and of sorrow.

And as the world kills,

Screams, stabs:

Each man trying to make

The world his own:

The lonely man sits quiet

And still, living for himself:

No blood, no hate, no love

No gore.

The steel in his gaze, the stead of his stance-

Are virtues to the general brothers unknown.

I stand and watch these

Strange apparitions

In a silence that confounds me:

For I am a lonesome, caged soul

In a shared world born:

So I think of what I

Have been told.

Of what I see.

And finally facing my own soul,

I question the truth of the world in its whole:

What is the answer to my question,

The one we have always known:

Are the children of the universe

All for all, or one for one?

Lost in Translation

A typical experiment involves a few very basic and essential components:

• A Set of Variables:

For example, if your experiment is to verify that white light is made up of 7 visible colours, you will perform the experiment considering that: A prism will cause dispersion, that all the colours of light travel at different speeds in glass, and that you are aware of which colour is which based on your visual perception of them. These are things about your experiment that have already been discovered, or that you have observed. and will form the basis for your findings.

A social experiment is no different. You must consider the majorities, as opposed to the niches, and assume that for a homogeneous group- say college students, the general reactions will be the same. More importantly, it is essential to predict that subconscious involvement will be wholesome, regardless of the relevance of the experiment in question to the subjects.

• Apparatus:

For the aforementioned experiment, what we shall need is a prism, a white-light torch, and a screen- keeping it to the bare essentials.

All you really need for the Social Hypothesis, is this country's most dispensable resource. People. People are the premise for every social experiment. And, preferably, a cyber forum. Facebook is most suitable, considering its universality, and general heat-of-action scenario.

• A Stimulus to the Procedure:

For the dispersion to be set in action, the white light needs to be shone on the prism. Simple. One step. After that, the dispersion is passive, as is the colours appearing on the screen.

More psychologically speaking, the primary stimulus is the inclination to perform the experiment in the first place. Say interest in light, or curiosity about the results.

That said, these alternate, curious experiments require stimuli, too. Physical stimuli. Like, say, going with the Facebook analogy- a changed status. Or something equally earth-shattering in teenage and cyber terms.
What it also requires, is a mental push. A conversation that goes something like 'I bet you can't put this up on Facebook', followed by a mild argument, and ending with 'Ooh, I want to know what people will say'. And, if you're a little smarter than the crowds you walk with, a hypothesis about a proposed result.

• The Result:

And then the wait. To see that screen, to read those comments. To see if people knew you would achieve it all along, or if they're surprised out of their wits by your unexpected prowess.
The reaction. Watching as they fawn over you, ask you questions, dwell on the intimate intricacies of your life, while you've already moved on.
You're already solving a new integral in your head.

But all this is lost in translation, isn't it?
I guess you could go ahead and call this an experiment, too.

Que sera sera.