Saturday, November 20, 2010

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Tree Interface

I'm sitting again with the face of another,
Branches and buds in my eyes,
Clouds on my tongue
and
the Mistress of the Dunes now looking back,
her 108 ways of seeing, her hundred and ten hands,
fragile, like
the fabric of early morning mist…
tender, like
the touch of temptation.

The future has no script, its theme is "impermanence", its vice, "death"

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Trikon Miti: A Benaras Triptych

Story One
Dazzling star from Bollywood in his prime, living in limos, on sex, wine and drugs comes to Benaras to shoot song sequence and loses his eyes in an incident and then disappears. Film industry breaking news. Star goes missing. Finds solace in boatmans house and then begins life-changing few months in disguise & in the company of a new friend who then becomes his eyes and documents everything for him. Two interconnecting trajectories of two people coming from completely different environments. And connecting by chance. A coming-of-age story by force.

Story Two
Deaf and dumb couple find love and salvation, local style in Benaras. The world in the gulleys, the pan, the incense, the cows, dogs, birds, river, earth, sky, the sensorial trip sans words. An expression of love via only one medium. Eyes.

Story Three
A brother and sister come to Benaras to look for their mother who is apparently in Benaras waiting for her death. Their journey in search of their mother through the labyrinthian maze of Benaras, their relationship evolving from one that was cold and distant to an ethereal relationship, a cosmic primordial bond. The mother's character, a mysterious ascetic lost in the transcriptions of the divine.

Friday, October 29, 2010

When the phantasmagoric heart begins sending you visuals of your soul, catch it and articulate everything in poetry, visuals and sound. The illustrations rich with that sunset-edge, defeating the purpose of the mundaneness of constant striving...
Benaras, back to here and now, life and death, side-by-side, like lost friends meeting again by the river...

Monday, October 25, 2010

The River (Polly Jean Harvey)

And they came to the river
And they came from the road
And he wanted the sun
Just to call his own
And they walked on the dirt
And they walked from the road
'Til they came to the river
'Til they came up close

Throw your pain in the river
Throw your pain in the river
Leave your pain in the river
To be washed away slow

And we walked without words
And we walked with our lives
Two silent birds circled by

Like a pain in the river
And the pain in the river
And the white sun scattered
Washed away this snow

And we followed the river
And we followed the road
And we walked through this land
And we called it a home
But he wanted the sun
And I wanted the whole
And the white light scatters
And the sun sets low

Like a pain in the river
Like a pain in the river
Like a white light scatters
To be washed away slow

Like a pain in the river
Like a pain in the river
Like the way life scattered
To be washed away slow

When under ether



----

Dashal, Himachal Pradesh, Oct, 10

----

The silence that broke the noise was a violet-green on her eyelid as it made the great journey into ether and then all the surrounding space, bringing a sort of peace and closure on the inherent stillness that is the essence of us petty humans. Its nocturnary now, the owls are making their appearances on the trees looking at the moon and wondering about patterns and pictures, the wildernests of our earliest subconscious mentalities...ingrained like cups of rice...harvest in full bloom.

Now, the winter has arrived to bring a sort of whiteness into the hearts of us Himachali's metaphorically through snow. The illusion of black on white, now wiped clean, like a clean slate waiting for a new word or a drawing of a bird perched on a tree.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Dream Brother (Jeff Buckley)

There is a child sleeping near his twin
The pictures go wild in a rush of wind
That dark angel he is shuffling in
Watching over them with his black feather wings unfurled

The love you lost with her skin so fair
Is free with the wind in her butterscotch hair
Her green eyes blew goodbyes
With her head in her hands
and your kiss on the lips of another
Dream Brother, with your tears scattered round the world.

Don't be like the one who made me so old
Don't be like the one who left behind his name
'Cause they're waiting for you like I waited for mine
And nobody ever came...

I feel afraid and I call your name
I love your voice and your dance insane
I hear your words and I know your pain
Your head in your hands and her kiss on the lips of another
Your eyes to the ground
and the world spinning round forever
Asleep in the sand with the ocean washing over...
PS. Was walking back, the moon was full power staring at the mountains, the snow was a brilliant white, shining back... :)

Friday, October 22, 2010

Epiphany

Jai Rumsu Devata and then Snow.
A white Vashisht.
An important day.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Sky over 11


On. All systems go. Hinterland is home.

Monday, October 18, 2010

Excerpt: Ardh Satya

Chakravyuh mein ghusne se pehle,
kaun tha mein aur kaisa tha,
yeh mujhe yaad hi na rahega.
Chakravyuh mein ghusne ke baad,
mere aur chakravyuh ke beech,
sirf ek jaanleva nikat’ta thi,
iska mujhe pata hi na chalega.
Chakravyuh se nikalne ke baad,
main mukt ho jaoon bhale hi,
phir bhi chakravyuh ki rachna mein
farq hi na padega.
Marun ya maarun,
maara jaoon ya jaan se maardun.
iska faisla kabhi na ho paayega.
Soya hua aadmi jab
neend se uthkar chalna shuru karta hai,
tab sapnon ka sansar use,
dobara dikh hi na paayega.
Us roshni mein jo nirnay ki roshni hai
sab kuchh s’maan hoga kya?
Ek palde mein napunsakta,
ek palde mein paurush,
aur theek taraazu ke kaante par
ardh satya.

----

Before entering the circle of deceit, who I was, and what I was, I would not remember. After entering the circle of deceit, (there was) between me and the circle, only a deathly intimacy that I never realized. After leaving the circle of deceit, even if I am set free, the design of the circle of deceit, will hardly be different. Whether I kill, or die, am killed or kill (the other) these questions will never be decided. When a sleeping man awakes and steps forth, then the world of dreams may never be seen again (by him). In that, the light of Decision, will everything be level? On one tray (of balance) is impotence, and on the other is Manhood, and exactly at the needle point, a half-truth.

----

From a scene in the film "Ardh Satya". Written by Vijay Tendulkar. The image emerged because of S's WH Auden poem... so makes for good accidental poem tennis.

The Labyrinth

Anthropos apteros for days
Walked whistling round and round the Maze,
Relying happily upon
His temperment for getting on.

The hundreth time he sighted, though,
A bush he left an hour ago,
He halted where four alleys crossed,
And recognized that he was lost.

"Where am I?" Metaphysics says
No question can be asked unless
It has an answer, so I can
Assume this maze has got a plan.

If theologians are correct,
A Plan implies an Architect:
A God-built maze would be, I'm sure,
The Universe in minature.

Are data from the world of Sense,
In that case, valid evidence?
What in the universe I know
Can give directions how to go?

All Mathematics would suggest
A steady straight line as the best,
But left and right alternately
Is consonant with History.

Aesthetics, though, believes all Art
Intends to gratify the heart:
Rejecting disciplines like these,
Must I, then, go which way I please?

Such reasoning is only true
If we accept the classic view,
Which we have no right to assert,
According to the Introvert.

His absolute pre-supposition
Is - Man creates his own condition:
This maze was not divinely built,
But is secreted by my guilt.

The centre that I cannot find
Is known to my unconscious Mind;
I have no reason to despair
Because I am already there.

My problem is how not to will;
They move most quickly who stand still;
I'm only lost until I see
I'm lost because I want to be.

If this should fail, perhaps I should,
As certain educators would,
Content myself with the conclusion;
In theory there is no solution.

All statements about what I feel,
Like I-am-lost, are quite unreal:
My knowledge ends where it began;
A hedge is taller than a man."

Anthropos apteros, perplexed
To know which turning to take next,
Looked up and wished he were a bird
To whom such doubts must seem absurd.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

The real living, breathing, seeing Hinterland becomes a possibility.
Today. :) Purpose, finally. Purple. Its all purple in this blue in green, colours collaborating, artists collaborating, phases of colour with Reich's score on top, the seeds are sown, the intagibility of the fruit is like the brook's morning raga...

Girl (Soil, Himachal Pradesh)


Blue in green, nature with the intervention of mankind, brought to life in Soil. Of those extravagant moments in a time out of time, lapsed in a momentary unconvention, breaking the little metallic pieces of our snazzy homes, the twinkle in her eye brought back time...and then brought back hope. Time to come home...

Friday, October 15, 2010

Hearts Adjacent


Shot through the Fog
Breaking Winter up by shooting numbers from the clock/The cat sleeps on the atlas in Alsace Lorraine, dreaming long grass and birds on the wire/I have memories no deeper than this glass and some besides that stretch history twice/In a super 8 film colour haze, a scratched nostalgia that runs through my cogs - shot through the fog; time taking care of whatever I cared about/ So you are lost somewhere in here - your body, a raft,spinning towards the falls/Your death claimed me too - there were two throats in the noose but mine now swallows whiskey, mine is not now bruised/The black mouth of this month, bruised lips, black ice, forms a sickly smile across London's sky.
----
Certainty
There are more people alive now than have ever lived - I read that somewhere and instantly thought it impossible but if it were to be true, I wonder that, if we keep living this fast, no-one will have time to die/I've met people whose lovers died in war and I've wondered what this helplessness could be like - one minute there's a whole life entwined with yours and the next, just a space and scattered clues/When I watch old films in which animals appear, I get sad because those animals are certainly dead now - and that certainty prompts my private epitaph and I have to say it out loud : "That dog is dead, that cat is dead, that horse is dead..."
----
Piano Magic, a wonderful new discovery.

Forgetfulness by Billy Collins

The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones. Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag, and even now as you memorize the order of the planets, something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps, the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay. Whatever it is you are struggling to remember, it is not poised on the tip of your tongue, not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen. It has floated away down a dark mythological river whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall, well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle. No wonder you rise in the middle of the night to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war. No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

Animated Poetry

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Start. Point the six lines to an arrow, bring the curtain down with a flame insignia at the centre, point of kilter, the name of the sound is given to the blade of grass, that cosmic messenger, our hearts pointing heavenwards, like trees waiting for some sort of sign from a being that can only speak and understand Visra, the language of the dead. They came with dafoodils on their collars, pelicans in their wallets and white hinterlands in their hearts, they looked for a home, they looked for a refuge in the hills, and those autumn-time tea's on the verandah looking at the Himalayas without perspective.
The Probability of an Epiphany. Cues - Joy, Charlie, the age of aquarius, once in twelve years, the remergence of If and its infinite possibilities, India Fraterna, Improbable Fire, Instant Friendship, Impermanent Feedback, Idiot Face, Imperceptible Future, Ishtaaq Firoha, dot dot dot. Really...how weird all this is, the way life moves and time moves always revealing new shapes and colours, new probabilities, new failures and new hope. Its the age of aquarius, I am connected in a lunar sort of way into the whole once-in-twelve-year's epiphany-thing. Which road, which path, which way forward, why which, why how, why when?

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

The Best Cigarette by Billy Collins

There are many that I miss
having sent my last one out a car window
sparking along the road one night, years ago.

The heralded one, of course:
after sex, the two glowing tips
now the lights of a single ship;
at the end of a long dinner
with more wine to come
and a smoke ring coasting into the chandelier;
or on a white beach,
holding one with fingers still wet from a swim.

How bittersweet these punctuations
of flame and gesture;
but the best were on those mornings
when I would have a little something going
in the typewriter,
the sun bright in the windows,
maybe some Berlioz on in the background.
I would go into the kitchen for coffee
and on the way back to the page,
curled in its roller,
I would light one up and feel
its dry rush mix with the dark taste of coffee.

Then I would be my own locomotive,
trailing behind me as I returned to work
little puffs of smoke,
indicators of progress,
signs of industry and thought,
the signal that told the nineteenth century
it was moving forward.
That was the best cigarette,
when I would steam into the study
full of vaporous hope
and stand there,
the big headlamp of my face
pointed down at all the words in parallel lines.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

The Amphibian


And ten more kollisions for 10.10.10. / p

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Friday, October 8, 2010




The quirky world of Gemma Correll.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

None in words.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

VS Arts declares...


VS Arts opening his heart (art) out in protest to the common declarations by scientists the world over, about the world getting over. He declared that the earth will continue to live on and on and we could go visit him and his stall of paintings in Vashisht in 2013. Its his guarantee. How he spoke on camera, theatric denouements thrown in for effect, silences, those eyes looking away to Sai (as he cleans the xillum). It came as no surprise that I am now in the heartland, Hinterland is omnipresent, visceral, like the soul's last look back at the illusory world of the mind. It was 11.10, then, its 12.12 now.

Circular Inconsistency, Vashisht


Life is back. Vulnerability is back. Inconsistency is back.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

More Kollisions




Look here, K.
And today I dedicate the Kollisions to M, for her wonderful spirit, for the stories she told me today, for that constant shaking of her ponytail, her ragas, her showdown with a gay Hitler-fanatic, that punchline, the beers at Satya's, remembering Athlete and Trading Air, those moments later at her place listening to the wonderful Kalapini Komkali, her stories in New York, her two weeks of magic, my one week of magic, how cosmically it all came together, one day before I leave for the hills.

Eyeless


Lyric - Slipknot

Saturday, October 2, 2010


And then there were those things, the other things, the things of the mind, the nothings of the heart, the camera-tilt of the supereye, the threadless machine we once called Industry, that white-lining on the satin that never untangles from its source, that limitless light within a drop of water, the rain pouring down for ten seconds, and the water looking at the sun in macrovision remembering the moon's sudden disappearance in the last four days of summer...

The hills come rolling this time of the year. :)
Life is too short to wait for things that might never come.

Friday, October 1, 2010

XX1008



It is never easy to put words to what is essentially a subterranean process, or to speak about my work as though I am separate from it. To me, the act of creating these works is a process of evolution, a process that I go through along with the materials I use. And I use the word evolution, not in a linear sense of development, or progress, but as a tangled process that involves chaos, contradictions, emotional fluctuations, transformations and tangential leaps.

Is deterioration as beautiful a process as creation?
Is reality less real than artifice?
Is chaos the perfect symmetry?
Does death point a knowing finger at life?
What does a malignant bloom look like?

I go in search of the answers to these questions, and my sculptures are born along the way. - Sakshi Gupta
---
I'm enjoying the inconsistency of Sakshi Gupta's wonderful art.

01.10.10

A good start to 10.10. Today I think of the minds limited ways as opposed to the hearts unlimited ways, like that duality in nature, the consistency of the seas as opposed to the inconsistency of the hills. Its 01.10.10. Consistency of the clock throwing everything else out of balance.

Sans Soleil (Opening Shot)


The first image he told me about was of three children on a road in Iceland, in 1965. He said that for him it was the image of happiness and also that he had tried several times to link it to other images, but it never worked. He wrote me: one day I'll have to put it all alone at the beginning of a film with a long piece of black leader; if they don't see happiness in the picture, at least they'll see the black.

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Three days, almost...

...and I'll be back in The Inward Arc - Transvisionary Centre for Art & Aesthetics with Joy. In a few days I'll be having nice chai in that gorgeous electric blue woodenhouse, watching people walk by, hearing Cheengu cheengu, cheengu, watching Joy write those filmnames with yellow, blue, red chalk, todays screenings at Inward Arc... writing with so much care, his supramentality in his paintings, 108 ways of seeing, Om-Sheela, such positivity and then Sai Baba Mahadev passing by, coming up, we light up, then hot spring, then Chauhans, Guraans, oh Je Taime Vashisht!!!

The Business of Mourning (Andrew Tracy)


Film culture today seems rather akin to the model of an expanding universe, traveling ever further outward while that which is known about what it already encompasses becomes increasingly infinitesimal. As ever more discoveries, old and new, become ever more available to an ever more passionate, articulate, and interlinked cinephile community, the giddy thrill of discovery is accompanied by a palpable anxiety about the integrity of the medium itself. Even as images flood to us as never before, we remain fearful of their being taken irretrievably away. Gorging on cinema, we’re continually beset by a sense of loss, warily eyeing each new technological bogeyman as if it heralded the end of the purity we’ve imagined for ourselves.

The digital daemon, on both the filming and viewing side, is only the latest in a long line of developments that lay dormant for years until a certain set of conditions allowed them to bedevil our perpetually distressed consciousness. As with so many of its “revolutionary” forebears, the noise it’s generated from commentators informed and less so is primarily a lot of guff—which is not, of course, to say that it has no implications for cinema’s future. Like any other tool, digital opens up some options, precludes others, and allows some to remain the same. It’s another agent of change in a medium that has been predicated on change from the beginning. “A transitory blip in the history of the visual arts,” Kent Jones dubs it in his excellent collection Physical Evidence—not a lament, but a recognition that cinema only came into existence in the first place through the intersection of some profoundly disparate and arbitrary forces. Digital is simply another forking path for a bastardized medium that will proceed on its own merry way largely irrespective of our fervent hopes and wishes.

Which isn’t to say that we shouldn’t be concerned about where it’s going. Thing is, though, that all the anxiety about the future of the medium, and the experiments being undertaken within it, can only be articulated in terms of the past. Whatever else they are, the frequently cited standard bearers of this “revolution”—your Miami Vices, your Zodiacs, and Inland Empires—are pitched at a thoroughly familiar level of cinematic comprehension (yes, even the Lynch). Textures have changed; intentions have not. And while the former certainly conditions how we perceive the “film” in front of us, the familiar frameworks of understanding built into the latter push us continually back into the concerns of the past. Perpetually backwards-looking as we are, the best we can hope for is to better order that past in order to comprehend our still-unknown present.

All of which is to ask the simple question: is there any “filmmaker” who faces the shifts within his chosen medium with such blissful unconcern as Chris Marker? Marker’s swearing off of film for good in the Nineties had nothing of an iconoclastic air about it. As new developments tend to do, video had accentuated a preexisting condition rather than initiating an entirely new one: in Marker’s case, making the affinity of material and metaphor in his work all the more identical. “These images are not the substitute for my memory, they are my memory,” Alexandra Stewart intones in Marker’s perpetually surprising 1982 master text Sans Soleil. Though Marker has been supplanted from his own experiences by the record he’s kept of them, pushed even further away by the interpolation of the filmed records of others, it can be said that his aesthetic is founded precisely upon losing images—losing proprietorship over them, seeing them taken away and transformed by each successive incarnation. It’s a condition he highlights through the many winking mediations in his work, such as attributing the text of Sans Soleil to the letters of one “Sandor Krasna” and articulating it through the inimitable voice of Stewart.

Like his fellow recluse Godard, Marker is forever concerned with the meaning of the image, but where Godard’s palimpsests overload those images with meaning both visual and aural, the meaning of Marker’s images is being forever stripped away, and any trace of his “authorship” with it. Recall in Sans Soleil “the Zone,” his friend’s image device which renders the political struggles of the Sixties as abstract images of colored electronic movement, creating an impression of struggle, an emblem which Marker says is “more honest” than the traps of context and explanation. Material and metaphor: the Zone is both an active transformation and intervention into the image and a representation of the operations of time—a relentless process to which Marker blissfully consigns his own images at the end of the film.

Yet Marker is not indulging in some postmodern vanity about the absence of meaning. Meaning is the structuring absence of his entire project—the grin of his images is merely the meager visual evidence of the unseen cat. Marker is not a “creator” but an arranger, ordering the trace remnants of a felt but invisible past with the tools presented to him in the present. “I’ll have to give these images to my friend Chris one day, see if he can make any sense of them,” says Laura (Catherine Belkhodja), the protagonist of Level Five; “Chris, the editing wunderkind,” she slyly adds. Marker’s last feature, and his first on video, divorces him even further from the visual and verbal text he’s devised. Ostensibly the video records of Laura’s attempts to reach her dead lover by completing his computer program reenacting the Battle of Okinawa, the last and most ferocious conflict of the Pacific War, Level Five forgoes any idea of cinema as a “pure” medium, placing it instead as one element within a vast media interface, a resource to be accessed within a larger project of memory reclamation.

Yet even as it opens with a quotation from Gibson’s Neuromancer, the ubiquitous ur-text of such speculative fictions, Level Five’s vision of ultramodernity has a charmingly musty air about it. The menu screens, multiple monitors, and overlaid graphics that delineate Laura’s physical and virtual workspace seem like visions of a future conceived in the past. Rather than inadvertent quaintness, however, the bluntness and functionality of the instruments at her command retain a seductively mythic quality: a dream of labyrinthine interiors, of unending possibilities for connection and evolution seems to lurk within the unadorned casings and matter-of-fact command functions.

Marker understands the romance of technology even as he slyly undermines it. Laura likes to taunt the computer by substituting nouns for verbs in her command orders, leading to such perplexed declarations from the poor unit as “I don’t know how to shoe,” “I don’t know how to baguette,” and so on. The expanding media universe in which Marker situates his perpetual concerns provides no answers, but rather sharpens the pertinence and pathos of the questions. Just as in Sans Soleil he fantasized about a visitor from the future whose total recall makes him nostalgic for forgetting, Marker’s ventures into new media simply provide more means of entry to the unrecoverable, unalterable, and unknowable past that fascinates him. Marker’s “future” is not a projection of speculation and fantasy, but an abstract space shorn of the necessities of living in the present: a space literally out of time, a space whose removal from the helplessly chronological experience of time allows the possibility of accessing that already passed time which is the sole source of meaning.

Marker can thus be said to be both the most and least materialistic of “film”-makers. Film for him is not the simultaneous Holy Grail and lying whore which pains Godard so, paradises lost and regained with every strenuous effort. Where Godard’s invocations of classical music, painting, literature, and poetry compound his images with extrinsic doses of cultural capital, a reactionary striving for Truth within his loved and hated medium, Marker’s unconcern with the discrete qualities of his material blends them into a whole which is both seamless in its presentation and dizzying in its conceptual and stylistic leaps. Even as Marker ceaselessly draws attention to the fragile, exclusionary, and distorting properties of the filmic image, those images stand in equivalence to all the other evidence with which we seek to make some sense of the cinematic century and the post-cinematic one that follows it. Marker’s catholicity blithely forgoes any essentialist propositions about the “innate” qualities of the medium employed. Film, video, computer —all are simply extensions of our searching, questioning, occasionally lying eyes and ears.

To deny that each progressive extension entails a loss as much as it does an advance would be foolish; to proclaim that our consciousness of that loss would be effaced as well at least equally so. There has never been a pure state from which we have fallen, but it is the unyielding belief in such a state that drives us to create meaning out of the partial and unspeaking fragments that we possess. Nostalgia is a powerful force, and nostalgia for that which we never had is perhaps the most powerful of all. The intentional or unintentional task of the new media will forever be to articulate the loss, imagined, or actual, of that which preceded it, and in that business of mourning find the only justification for its existence. As Sans Soleil’s images enter the Zone in its final scene, dissolving into meaningless patterns of light and color, Stewart wonders “Will there ever be a last letter?”—a question whose optimism is as pointed as its rue.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Abstrakt Kollision





AbstraktKollisionFreshness. Featuring Hierarchy, Rocky Road, Rebel, Skeletal Error, Core, Saraswati, Alpha, Entra Trenata, Dryday, Crossroads, Digital Destruction, Digital Sunrise Pt. I, Exodus110, HorseWithFrenchBun, Mixedfeelings, Sevenhundredyearsback, Severesky, SkeptikSky, Trikon Mithi, Visible Path, Watersecrets

3, 2, 1 Room 1, Inward Arc


Cosmic Intelligence Transmitting Images To My Head. :)

11:47 to 00.02 (Moondance)

Magic every night. We have wands and we wave them in the sky letting the Moon do her dance. Peaking quietly, half-moon in waiting. Looking. Seeing the stupidities of man and probably laughing at Inspector Jigantar, Constable Babantar and Driver on our way to the wine shop. A wonderful evening of Wooten baba's sonic love, Gary Willis, Vadrum's Barber of Seville, of talking in Visra after S left, seemed like for hours on end as our minds relaxed unable to fathom the Visceral world of the void sentence, a tendency to be nothing for a few minutes, to let the mind sleep, our own unique form of meditation, of that slip of the tongue "Kudrat Ka Mela", Omo (inhale) & Azu (exhale), such moments captured and scripted for future film ideas... then those 15 minutes going back home, looking at the moon over the bridge to the sound of Truffaz's "The Dawn". And then that final moment, car parked, I thank Shiva for life, for everything and as soon as I say that, watchman appears from nowhere and greets me like he has never before, Shiva sending cosmic vibes via the human form. Transcendent. There are so many things that are completely out of our grasps. Or maybe I'm reading into everything too much. Moment-unanalysis needs to happen. So, time to stop thinking, time to live in the absence of thought, the abstrakt kollision of Visra.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010


The Eye by Vladimir Nabokov, designed by John Gall.

Moon & I: Monologue

11:39, time out of hand. I stop to think of the cosmic being, the living, breathing earth, look up at the sky and the Moon makes her appearance again from behind the passing black clouds, every once in a while, like a smile, looking at all those men in exile, waiting to make it to the other place where everything will be understood, where everything will be simpler, where love and warmth will find their way. Prior to that, a string of events...
Meeting M, diverse-enthusiast, I was introduced to his life, of his love for cars, his dream of producing a film called "0&1", of doing K2K (Kanyakumari to Kashmir) in his Gypsy, getting NDTV to cover it, he has charted out his life on the blueprint of his mind, its all clear. And that wonderful ending to the evening when JG made fresh Dosa's and Coriander Mint Chutney. All in all, the magic stayed another night, keeping me company day after day as I understand and constantly think of topics like impermanence, the body electric and the oneness of life. I'm waiting here, I seethesea.

And with Tagore, the sun... :)



Last Poems #13

The first day's sun
questioned
the new appearance of being –
Who are you?
There was no answer.

Years went by.
Day's last sun
asked the last question from the shores of the west
in the soundless evening –
Who are you?
There was no answer.

----

Rabindranath Tagore wrote until the end which came for him on August 7, 1941. This poem is from Final Poems recently published. They are translated from the Bengali jointly by Wendy Barker Saranindranath Tagore, a great grandson of the venerable Tagore.

According to the authors of Final Poems, this poem is the most famous of Tagore's later poems in the Bengali language. They point out its similarity to the Creation Hymn of the Vig Reda (c. 2000 BCE). This hymn begins with the unforgettable line, "There was neither nonexistence nor existence then."
It ends with these lines:

Who really knows? Who will here proclaim it? Whence
was it produced? Whence is its creation? The gods
came afterwards, with the creation of this universe. Who
then knows whence it has arisen?

Whence this creation has arisen – perhaps it formed itself,
or perhaps it did not – the one who looks down on it, in
the highest heaven, only he knows – or perhaps he does
not know.

Question (By Tagore)

God, again and again through the ages you have sent messengers
To this pitiless world
They have said, 'Forgive everyone', they have said, 'Love one another --
Rid your hearts of evil.'
They are revered and remembered, yet still in these dark days
We turn them away with hollow greetings, from outside the doors of our houses.

And meanwhile I see secretive hatred murdering the helpless
Under cover of night;
And Justice weeping silently and furtively at power misused,
No hope of redress.
I see young men working themselves into a frenzy,
In agony dashing their heads against stone to no avail.

My voice is choked today; I have no music in my flute:
Black moonless night
Has imprisoned my world, plunged it into nightmare. And this is why,
With tears in my eyes, I ask:
Those who have poisoned your air, those who have extinguished your light,
Can it be that you have forgiven them? Can it be that you love them?

Monday, September 27, 2010

Language of the Dead

Notes

AHER/I's concept of Notes. And how he uses it to document the advice he needs to give to young musicians, of disciplining them with key words like Time, Professionalism, Duty, capital T, capital P, capital D and of XY1-1111 and how he documents magic on the phone, those moments that often escape from the grasps of time, poems, sightings of the moon, of moments of love and warmth, of those kinetic moments post-Gx-genome, of ideas and thoughts in Visra. How differently we all see the world, how differently we utilise our minds and our hearts, how strange all this really is. Its beyond belief. The violin could be three notes lower and we would never know what hit us. Really...

11:11 & The Moon

After a wash of Nu Taq K, I stepped out from J-Ganter's place to see the headless moon, my eyes like two little windows. And discovering the music of Jagjit Singh again, 17 years later and I still remember the nuances in those heartfelt songs. I remember those tapes I had of "In search" & "Insight". And I'm constantly thinking of that one annoying little thing, of my file (life) and if the "increasedeleteescapedefeat" procedure is being carried out on it, my ascii heart still in waiting. Driving back, looking at the moon at 11:11 through my window and a strange poem rests on my head and heart.

I miss much,
the eternal touch
of that girl from Kutch.


----

Three minutes later, the sound rings from the pixel transmission centre of friendship or a brotherhood, of a moment waiting to be held in my fingertips, fists clenched around plastic, the heart and the bubbles, bringing the lungs to the forefront of that second when the water is dreaming, when all the air rises, enters and is finally let out, fumes in unison with the mind's psychotropic ways...

Saturday, September 25, 2010

On "Exodus110"

File: Exodus110, If_en_blafen_sho & If_shan_bashen_Ko
Visra, the language of the dead, and the stories of two friends Ifenblafensho & Ifshanbashenko who meet "here" (on earth) and then "there" (in heaven) where they talk in Visra and everything is understood. The language of the heart finds no boundaries in translation or communication, it transcends all boundaries. It lives after death when all language has disappeared, when the time has come only for the soul to speak, only for love's most deepest contact, a real contact of two souls. Not like in these times when love has to be so carefully evaluated and analyzed before it can be accepted and reciprocated. Ifenblafensho & Ifshanbashenko are waiting to move to that space of superconsciousness, where we can say hello to our departed German friend.
Ifsoroha is here, now. Right here, right now.

Friday, September 24, 2010

Peripetics by Zeitguised

Peripetics from zeitguised on Vimeo.

‘Peripetics or The installation of an irreversible axis on a dynamic timeline’

Zeitguised made a piece in six acts for the opening exhibition at the Zirkel Gallery. It entails six imaginations of disoriented systems that take a catastrophic turn, including the evolution of educational plant-body-machine models and liquid building materials.

Length: 5000F/ 3min 20s
Sound Design: Zeitguised with Michael Fakesch

Thursday, September 23, 2010


23rd September. I remember the day fifteen years back. On the thirteenth floor of Barton Centre, Ebony Restaurant. With a million thoughts of love and that auroral image of A. I'm not there. I'm here. Now. Period.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Bizarre Banalities of a day

A day that started with that strange moment after my haircut when I felt Mahesha, the auto-driver had the same eyes as mine.
Of later, when the mind said to the heart, "Dont be silly" and the heart replied, "C'mon Billy". To document some moments in point form. She has her own string section (and J-Ganter replies "She comes with strings attached"), possibility of opening scene in a film. Of the man who transcribes Viscera and understands its deepest meaning in the spell check, of J-Ganter's txt "sorry for me is waiting for you"...and talking of txts, that midnight rally, those Navratilova-esque safe shots and that moment when the ball hit the net, over and out, of the ascii-magic of computers and how the processing unit converts all the 1's to 0's in the deletion procedure, of looking at the time at 11:11, car-clock colon's blinking in 4/4, re-discovering Kailasa's Jhoomo Re, reaching home and as I'm going to sleep after an exhausting day, the time 00.00, my ascii heart erased of all the potential of a real love, all metadata in the recycle bin, all one's converted to zero's. Its time to leave. Really. To disappear...

To end with that lovely quote from Sans Soleil. I'm paraphrasing here -
"Only banalities interest me, I have chased it with the relentlessness of a bounty hunter"

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

JVS

The Life of Jigantar, ex-cop, dramaturgist.
In the ongoing series of documenting the language of Viscera, the language of the heart, the two friends Babantar and Jigantar meet up to see what's happening in the world today only to be surprised by the sonic un-intelligence of the corporate world only to be consumed in total unfiltered entertainment, sifarha va jigantar trifola gulpetaga begum. This is the beginning of the avant-garde.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Back.
*Insert Grunge riff here* :)

Saturday, September 18, 2010

To...

I need to throw this knife out the window,
My hands are turning red, the blood rushing to my head
My heart like an anchor, holding my thoughts like a thread.

I need to throw this strife out the window,
My face is holding unwanted genetic information
And traces of that ultimate descent into subjugation.

Friday, September 17, 2010

N. Singh, the man out of time


A very heavy day. Full of information, sensorial, arterial, visceral. Of all those things that happened, I loved that phone call with TV, of pink Giraffe's, of Benares meets Diesel cherippu, classic articulation, my friend for life, that long call with DT, the way I became that floating string back in the air, that vulnerable kite, flying about with no direction or purpose, of how I can never base anything on life, of expecting absolutely nothing, being now and surrendering to nothingness, like that leaf flying about...this will be my life as I know it. Impermanence is the only thing I can count on. And ofcourse the ten fingers of my hand, the ten seconds that we have, nothing more, nothing less.

Then...

An epic evening. Unexpected. Chandrakanth, Inspector Jiganthar and me finally connect like three dots. Energies overwhelmingly powerful as we discuss ideas for a set of experimental films to be shot in the language of Viscera, subtitles open to receive topics ranging from Love, Fear, Loss, Disappointment, Anger, Politics. Of two friends talking in an unknown language, sometimes saying nothing, just listening to music. The electricity in the room was quite brilliant, Jean-Luc Ponty exploding through the Yamaha speakers, until we were disturbed by an uninvited visitor at 11pm, the cult of N. Singh. As soon as he entered, aural transfers went berzerk. He broke time. A third party- application. He would be that uninvited guest who roams around the city disrupting time and breaking connections by bringing his life's problems into the lives of others. He spoke with no filters revealing his innermost problems to strangers. After an uncomfortable confrontational episode, he left and we returned to the room to talk. Chand told me about N. Singh's wife who has apparently gone nuts. Then, from that thought, Chand was reminded of this very strange story of a boy who he once knew, who was in a coma for about five years, whose brain was operated (experimented) on fourteen times, his father and how he met him, man in white and white who was around the neighbourhood looking for a Xerox place, accidently landing up in Chand's office. A man part of the criminal intelligence outfit Octopus. All these people, their characters and their lives were out of a film. Of how Chand tried to teach painting to the "mentally withdrawn" child as he made labels on the painting with tags like sky, earth, river. Of how the brain is so fragile, a little out of balance and we have absolutely nothing. This boy has lost all memory and the only things that still remain are those basest of human experiences, the sun, the sea, the clouds, of how he would get up, lost, and want to leave to see Chand and not realise he is in his presence, of getting him out of the studio, circling the neighbourhood and coming back to calm the mind, of how he lost it totally due to his hate for his parents, breaking everything in Chands studio. Then those strings of serendipitous moments, both Chand and me saying "Who" at the same time, those brilliant sparks going off between Prax and me, as always, a type of visceral extravaganza everytime we meet. God is great for giving me this. And so much more. How can I ever be unhappy?

And in the end, as the three of us looked at the mic facing the wall, the only thought that crossed our minds is "When is the wall going to speak and say something, how much longer can a mic wait...?"

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Three-point trajectory (Development)

Idea for a film:
Naseeruddin Shah. Aging pianist. Lives in an old wooden house, high ceilings, sculpture, art, steinway grand piano, Chopin notations scattered everywhere, culture, books, films, music. Invites his compadre, experimental artist Om Puri over for dinner to celebrate a re-union of sorts, a meeting after many many years, and Om's new love, a 25 year old film student. Possibly Deepika Padukone. Cool, contemporary, avant-garde outlook on life. 2 hours, one evening. Shot in real-time. Dinner, music, dialogue and possible chemistry going off between Naseer and Deepika as he begins to re-imagine Chopin at twelve o' clock, midnight. Of the meaning of love, insecurity, infatuation, age-difference, confrontation, sincerity, of a long-term friendship, impermanence of love and other things of the heart. What a young girl could do to shake the equation of an ethereal bond between two aging friends. Is love really required? How do you decide what's more important, a friendship or a (fleeting) love? Answers to the basest of human questions. Is art the bringer/giver of presence? Is the elusive artist more attractive than the artistic lover?

N. Gopu - D. Okat (Exchange)
NG
Wow, interesting subject, bro. Very interesting...I can totally picture it in my head. Art, love and all that you have mentioned. Quirky characters, intelligent dialogues, some deep philosophy at midnight. You should definitely get down and work on this man. And since you are in this frame of mind, have you seen Jules et Jim?

DO
No whats that...
I sent the idea to a friend and this is what she added to it...
----
Very nice, but would tweak the central idea/characters a little since the young woman/mentor love angle has been done to death. What if during this reunion between the two, the neighbour (young woman who lives alone) has locked herself out and has to spend a couple of hours with them in naseer;s flat till her spare keys arrive. This way everyone is starting from point A. No one has any prior stake on the woman hence each one tries to out do the other.

Makes any sense?
----
Nice, no? Remember Srika saying "NICE" and that granmom type of chin...

NG
Oh, I didn't know the young girl would be a protege.

My two cents, bro..

In my opinion, if you take the second idea, there isn't any 'conflict', no? So it becomes fully character driven, which is also nice. I didn't like this 'outdoing the other in a span of 2 hours' idea much da. Then it would be just better to keep it like a conversation between 3 intellectuals, on the topics you've mentioned, without introducing any romance. Just some chemistry at the most... Plus, I feel, locking herself out by mistake seems too forced. It would take you some effort to establish the premise here, but, with your version, its all there.

I like your take man, without keeping a protege mentor relationship, though. Om puri dating this girl who seems too good to be real. This way the woman also feels comfortable to open up on such topics...

"Is love really required? How do you decide what's more important, a friendship or a (fleeting) love?"

It would be more dynamic if Naseer and this 'couple' talk on such topics..Naseer getting more and more fascinated by this woman, as she puts forward her perspective on different subjects.

Also, in the second version there isn't really a scope for introducing topics like "meaning of love, insecurity, infatuation, age-difference, confrontation, sincerity, of a long-term friendship, impermanence of love and other things of the heart".
There wouldn't be any 'confrontation' or 'insecurity', no?

This is a superb subject , bro..Loved it. Keep working on it man..

Fin, for now. Building procedure to begin. *Halo*

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Little-ities


Ethereal bond, circa 1977. I love my brother for all that he is. x
----
And then later
Impermanence (Live at the Electric Crystal Table, 150910)
"In impermanence, lies all of life", I realized as I wished S Babantar (the spirit of Aryakaanthe) goodbye. Of the solar and the lunar, Shiva's calling, that Kundalini awakening, of the cosmic way and how strange everything really is, our bodies, our minds, the tricks they play, the moments they wear and tear, of our deepest sincere emotions flying on a thin string of kite, flying about with the possibility of sudden death, of love and how it can end immediately with no prior warnings, of that minority of Army X coming back full circle to impermanence as its dressed in white waiting for the red to stain it once and for all.

I'm coming to terms with many things. Of them I love my hearts band, those trumpets, violins, string section, pizzicato overriding the electricity of the music, those flourishes of guitars, open chords, those sweeping voices riding the clouds on those darkest of nights, that band I'd like to call it Impermanence.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

"Ence"

Impermanence, like that wolf at the door, waiting to come in, wearing purple socks, grinding its teeth into the wood.
Transience, like that moment out of time, waiting to dissolve, wearing a feather hat, a minor threat that's no good.
Subservience, like that child on the edge, waiting to drop, wearing nature's clothes, coming crashing down like it should.

Monday, September 13, 2010

A line,
The Radius of the Sun,

A circle,
The Heart of the Moon.

----

J-Ganther K and me meet again, the chain broken, two-day absence, hearts connect and as we look at Superman posing the only thing that came to our minds is Compon K (switching the amp before switching on the comp, primal f**kup, dislocated day), that secret language of the soul, uncontrolled breath, a sort of meditation finding its way, speaking in tongues bringing us closer than we could ever imagine.

Pain has an element of blank;
It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there were
A day when it was not.

It has no future but itself,
Its infinite realms contain
Its past, enlightened to perceive
New periods of pain.
----
Emily Dickinson

Sunday, September 12, 2010

A pink crayon, a white piece of paper, a ribbon, an eye, hundredhands and three-hundred thousand thoughts of love as they make patterns and shapes formed from a dream of a curious love, a memory of her face and the touch of her heart, her technicolour love, those 16.7 million colours...

Saturday, September 11, 2010

The curve of the G

I love the way light attaches itself to an object, how it makes the shapes change, the shadowtricks, those lemon yellow twelve'o'clock afternoons, lunch on nice plates, the black and grey diagrams forming abstract rhythms inside my head, those electro-beats decorating that cup of tea sonically, the first half of the poem suffused in idealism, that felicity and how inherently out of our grasps our most honest expressions are, that first ray of light as it enters the room, that first look of love, that first smile that keeps immediacy always waiting at the door, like a smiling wolf or maybe an amiable chromosome bear singing in the key of B-Flat minor, the way the sound appears and fills the room... fully...

Thursday, September 9, 2010

The Paradox of Our Age

We have bigger houses but smaller families;
More conveniences, but less time;
We have more degrees, but less sense;
More knowledge, but less judgment;
More experts, but more problems;
More medicines, but less healthiness;
We've been all the way to the moon and back,
but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor.
We build more computers to hold more information to
produce more copies than ever but have less communication.
We have become long on quantity,
but short on quality.
These are times of fast foods but slow digestion;
Tall man but short character;
Steep profits but shallow relationships.
It's a time when there is much in the window,
but nothing in the room.
----
Dalai Lama
(Thankyou, D)

3,4,5,6,7,8,9 & The Age of Aquarius

...and to think of those six nights, those seven days, that time, that sky, those walls, the colour and the shape of her eyes, the way she looked straight into my soul, the things she said, a kind of blue, the closeness, those lockups - options one to ninety nine, wine, of those light moments in the rain, eyes adrift in Mondy's, that comfort of black, the way the eyes see and only see, that thing we call time, the hands of time, its inconsistency, moments fluttering about like butterflies, the archaeology of dreams, that first wink, blinkety blinky blink, that first x on the sealink, cinematic moments for posterity, Xiva's third eye smiling as I miss my flight, extended glances into the night...

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

The Last Calligraphers

The Last Calligraphers from Hinterland Films on Vimeo.


The Musalman (Urdu: مسلمان) is the oldest Urdu-language daily newspaper published from Chennai in India. It is an evening paper with four pages, all of which are handwritten by calligraphers, before being mass-produced with a printing press. According to the Wired and The Times of India, The Musalman is possibly the only "handwritten" newspaper in the world.

The newspaper was founded by Janab Syed Azmathullah Sahib in 1927. It was inaugurated by Dr. Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari, the president of the Madras session of the Indian National Congress. The newspaper's office has been located at the Triplicane High Road in Chennai.

After Janab Syed Azmathullah's death, the newspaper was edited by Janab Syed Fazullah sahib, who died on 26 April 2008, at the age of 78. In 2007, Fazullah had expressed fear that the calligraphy might die with him, since his sons were not interested in carrying on the calligraphy tradition. Fazullah's son, Syed Nasarulla, had stated that he has no interest in calligraphy, and "there will be changes", when he takes over.

The calligraphers, known as katibs, work in a little corner of a 800 sq. ft. one-room office. They don't have many facilities — only two wall fans, three bulbs and a tube light. As of 2008, the calligraphy team consists of one man and two women, who work almost three hours on each page of the hand-written newspaper. The hand-written product is processed onto a photo negative and mass-produced with a printing press.

The newspaper's office often hosts renowned poets, religious leaders and royalty, some of whom contribute to the pages.

The newspaper consists of four pages. The front page is for national and international news, the second and the third pages are for local news, and the fourth page is for sports. Some space is left blank at the bottom right corner of the front page, in case there is some breaking news.

As of April 2008, the paper is sold for 75 paise a copy, and has around 22,000 subscribers.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

IF is the middle word of LIFE

Death is close, very very close...and life is inherently and mysteriously out of our grasps.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

"The Word" by Tony Hoagland

Down near the bottom
of the crossed-out list
of things you have to do today,

between "green thread"
and "broccoli" you find
that you have penciled "sunlight."

Resting on the page, the word
is as beautiful, it touches you
as if you had a friend

and sunlight were a present
he had sent you from some place distant
as this morning -- to cheer you up,

and to remind you that,
among your duties, pleasure
is a thing,

that also needs accomplishing
Do you remember?
that time and light are kinds

of love, and love
is no less practical
than a coffee grinder

or a safe spare tire?
Tomorrow you may be utterly
without a clue

but today you get a telegram,
from the heart in exile
proclaiming that the kingdom

still exists,
the king and queen alive,
still speaking to their children,

- to any one among them
who can find the time,
to sit out in the sun and listen.

Time & other things...

Night. Thoughts of time. Who decided on that pause and how long it should be, one second to the other. Why sixty seconds, why sixty minutes, why twenty-four hours? Because of the sun, because of the moon? Why anger, why grudge, why time sends its hands onto us with such aggression. And then all the puppets on the floor dancing to its rhythm trying to keep up with money & appointments. In the final earth, the redemption will be for the one who has no recollection, interest or concern for time. Its these puppets I am scared of most. These humans... the ones who live for time and money, those idiots who say "time is money" and those strangers I thought I knew. How way off the mark I am... how far out on the periphery I stand. Looking... its time to get away again.

And then I remembered the high points of the evening, Ji To Ke and his yellow-insulation tape on his temples, making him more oriental than he already is, the disgusting job of telling him about the disgusting job, that last analysis of Reverse Khan, Nimhans employees analysing that cigarette butt for hints and clues and that ongoing dream of Jigaanthar and me speaking in viscera, all gibberish, like the heart's air, like the Dara Okat monologues, that field of lilies and those 24 frames per hour of a mysterious face at sunset time...

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

I Think I Miss You

I Think I Miss You (Music video) from Hinterland Films on Vimeo.


Official video for the Anxieteam song "I think I miss you". Shot by Saul Tiff, directed and conceptualised by Isaac Niemand & Premjit Ramachandran in Benaras, India.

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Thoughts from a lunar night

Unfolding like sheets of paper, Inspector Jigaanthar K and me head out into the night to meet Mr. Crasta. Cardigans blasting on the way, our heads finding kinetic energy shaping the thoughts from the moon's incessant delivery of light from behind the clouds, across the sky and into the black of that monsoon night, the snail that attached itself to a bill, how it tore off making the tear a snail-like shape, that moment when I said "I don't know who is driving this car", our flurry of thoughts in the treelined eighty feet road, less than hundredwords probably title for a label, Axl sending out positive energy, his love supreme. And love also from one mysterious girl living hundreds of miles away, shaping the mood for the moon and drawing her circles in my head.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

A coffee with DT in a red room full of lillies, David Lynch-style, a room trapped in an unimaginable time, beyond reason or faith, off the counters of human perception.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010



Looking at Omkareshwar sideways.

Monday, August 16, 2010

A Document of Some Things


Mandu captured, heart in full transition (translation), projecting these images on a stone wall, while I sit with Roopmati in Jahaz Mahal. Those vivid black elephants, Vinod, Pardeep, the boys of mandu, slow-motion shots of them dancing in ecstacy, of possible videos for Bonobo's Black Sands, running, dancing in those corridors of Dhariya Khan's tomb and Haathi Mahal, black and brown, one sun, one moon, brush boys living on the earth, cool spot boy Manish, his pointed boots, the look of local love for Japanese tourists, those two muslims, Yusuf Ali and Muranuddin, strange disposition of men who like watching porn together, their ongoing quest to kidnap me to Kaaliboudi and Khwaja ji's Dargah there, of the words I couldn't somehow trust, my instinct projecting snake-like forms on Maharaja's corridors, photographer from Ellora with his dhandhe ka machine, his life in Ellora (possible film about these instant photographers waiting in the terraces of these gorgeous places trying to make a living printing moments of every memory to take home and slip inside a book or use as a bookmark, maybe pin to the wall of those middle-class homes, his stoner eyes looking, a slight friendship, then foodtime and those Relax-point men, poha oh, Joyaho's roha, Mr. White, one hand in a bandage, greeting and being PR on the floor, the baby-face flashed onto the trading head, duality in focus, that drive from Mandu to Omkareshwar, Pappu bhai talking of stories and times in strange chipmunk voice, the soundtrack overriding the images of rolling meadows, tree-haircuts everywhere...and then onto Omkareshwar, Kailash Kher's "Babam bam" re-imagined by local DJ, everyone dancing, that machine that tells you the weight via video projection of strange man, black & white video, giving them a piece of his prediction. Lost in dictation, India is where the heart finds its way through the chaos, the dirt, the earth. India, Je'Taime (supported by the music of Black Sands)

And then I looked at the time, it was 11.11... publish post, D song.

Friday, August 13, 2010

Back in the plains, Ahmedabad and Baroda, the spirit of Doshi in my heart, his smile, his art of selflessness, of thoughts of travelling with him to Bhuj, shooting in the Rann of Kutch, the spirit of Smrutivan, then onto Baroda, screening of new films at the Faculty of Fine Arts, the soft light of Maneesha in her studio, those high ceilings, Doshi still smiling through the skylights, Vasu's wonderful sincerity, no superficiality, those sweet artschool girls and their avant-garde thoughts... and today I leave for Mandu waiting to hold my breath next to history shining light on the monsoon's way... time stand still, the time is now, the place is here. :)

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Astral Projection

Today Daniel spoke of his meeting with Dr. Tripathi, "the scientist of enlightenment", of living on wheat and water for years, of Swami Devi, his Guru and astral projection.

----

Astral projection (or astral travel) is an interpretation of any form of out-of-body experience (OBE) that assumes the existence of an "astral body" separate from the physical body and capable of travelling outside it. Astral projection or travel denotes the astral body leaving the physical body to travel in the astral plane.

The idea of astral travel is rooted in common worldwide religious accounts of the afterlife in which the consciousness' or soul's journey or "ascent" is described in such terms as "an...out-of body experience, wherein the spiritual traveller leaves the physical body and travels in his/her subtle body (or dreambody or astral body) into ‘higher’ realms." It is therefore associated with near death experiences and is also frequently reported as spontaneously experienced in association with sleep and dreams, illness, surgical operations, drug experiences, sleep paralysis and forms of meditation.

It is also sometimes attempted for its own sake, or may be believed to be necessary to, or the result of, some forms of spiritual practice. It may involve "travel to higher realms" called astral planes but is commonly used to describe any sensation of being "out of the body"[8] in the everyday world, even seeing one's body from outside or above. It may be reported in the form of an apparitional experience, a supposed encounter with a doppelgänger, some living person also seen somewhere else at the same time.

Through the 1960s and 70s, surveys reported percentages ranging from 8% to as many as 50% (in certain groups) of respondents who state they had such an experience. The subjective nature of the experience permits explanations that do not rely on the existence of an "astral" body and plane. There is little beyond anecdotal evidence to support the idea that people can actually "leave the body".

The expression "astral projection" came to be used in two different ways. For the Golden Dawn and some Theosophists it retained the classical and medieval philosophers' meaning of journeying to other worlds, heavens, hells, the astrological spheres and other imaginal landscapes, but outside these circles the term was increasingly applied to non-physical travel around the physical world rather than the astral. Though this usage continues to be widespread, the "etheric travel" label coined by later Theosophists such as Leadbetter and Bailey[citation needed] is more appropriate to such scenarios.
Commonly in the astral projection experience, the experients describe themselves as being in a domain which often has no parallel to any physical setting, although they say they can visit different times and/or physical settings. Environments may be populated or unpopulated, artificial, natural or completely abstract and from beatific to horrific. A common belief is that one may access a compendium of mystical knowledge called the Akashic records. In many of these accounts, the experiencer correlates the astral world with the world of dreams. They report seeing dreamers enact dream scenarios on the astral plane, unaware of the wider environment around them. Some also state that "falling" dreams are brought about by projection. The astral environment is often theoretically divided into levels or planes. There are many different views concerning the overall structure of the astral planes in various traditions. These planes may include heavens and hells and other after-death spheres, transcendent environments or other less-easily characterized states.

In contrast to astral projection, etheric projection is described as the ability to move about in the material world in an etheric body which is usually, though not always, invisible to people who are presently "in their bodies." Robert Monroe describes this type of projection as a projection to "Locale I" or the "Here-Now", and describes it as containing people and places that he feels actually exist in the material world. Robert Bruce refers to a similar area as the "Real Time Zone" (RTZ) and describes it as the nonphysical, dimension-level closest to the physical.

According to Max Heindel, the etheric "double" serves as a medium between the astral and physical realms. In his system, the ether, also called prana, is the "vital force" that empowers the physical forms in order for that change to take place. From his descriptions it can be inferred that when one views the physical during an out-of-body experience, one is not technically "in" the astral realm at all.[34]

The subtle vehicle remains connected to the physical body during the separation by a so-called “silver cord”, said to be that mentioned in Ecclesiastes 12:6.

Stephen LaBerge suggested in his 1985 book Lucid Dreaming that all such "out-of-body experiences" may represent partially lucid dreams or "misinterpreted dream experiences", in which the sleeper does not fully recognize the situation. "In the dark forest, one may experience a tree as a tiger, but it is still in fact only a tree."

Friday, August 6, 2010

Kundalini Rising



Kundalini is a powerful energy that is within each one of us and some believe is the foundation of life itself, the Divine Mother Goddess, the life force of the universe that is present in all things. The ancient Yogis of India created Yoga to awaken Her power and devoted there entire lives to the cultivation and understanding of Kundalini. It has also been a part of many other ancient cultures and religions throughout history. Until recently only the privileged and spiritually adept had the knowledge of how to awaken the Kundalini or knew of the secrets of its power. But as we progress in this age of awakening, awareness and knowledge of this evolutionary energy is beginning to emerge and people all over the world are experiencing Kundalini Awakening. It is known by a variety of names in many different cultures but the Sages of India called it The Kundalini. In Sanskrit this literally means 'the curl of the hair' or 'coiled', it is usually envisaged as a sleeping serpent coiled and ready to be awakened and is sometimes referred to as 'Serpent Power'. It is also related to the Mother Goddess, Mother Nature or the Sacred Femine.

Once Kundalini is awakened an evolution of the mind, body and spirit occurs. Leading to a higher state of consciousness and spiritual awareness. With the emergence in the West of practices such as Reiki, Meditation and Yoga over the last century many more people have awakened this dormant power that is kept hidden within. When Kundalini rises it is essentially connecting the male and female energies and connecting the individual with the Divine consciousness although there are conflicting views on the process of awakening and it's purpose so it is important to understand that there are still many unanswered questions. It is a very individual and subjective experience dependant on one's karma and life experience.

Kundalini is located at the base of the spine between the Root and Sacral Chakras and lays dormant in most people, it is usually developed and awakened through spiritual practice but can awaken spontaneously in some people. Some say it is the life force energy that resides in all things, also know as prana or chi, others that it is the all powerful evolutionary energy that is hidden from us and must be cultivated to be awakened.

Strange Meeting: Daniel

Morning. Big bowl of dahi at PAPU. Israeli-looking indian girl talking of her life, and beside her the quiet, calm, stillness of Daniel, man from Israel. India-fanatic. Been in India five years, drawn to Shiva in places like Omkareshwar and Benaras. Musician. Thinker. Evening. Comes over. Play him the music of Indra Okat, he loves it. And then suddenly I ask him if he has had a kundalini experience. Somehow his mannerisms seemed to have a serpent-sorta bent. Yes. How how strange. He described the whole experience. Insane... of his head spinning like the hood of snake, of him holding that imaginary axis that controls the uncoiling, the way he read people's thoughts like subtitles, knowing exactly what they thought, of that mad season in Omkareshwar being drawn to Shiva power, connecting with Him, of Hathayoga, vipaasana and how funny Goenka was, of how he stared at ants and flies for eleven hours a day, of losing his mind in isolation in the beaches of Puri, of his Polish friend who also had a Kundalini awakening. I just sat and heard him talk...

Saturday, July 31, 2010

Sabka Malik Ek: Monologue 1

When I met Sai Baba in the Spring of 2010, I had no idea who he was, what his story was or where he came from.. I wasn't equipped with a fancy camera, lights, mics…

When we met, there was an instant karmic connection. Like we were destined to meet. I had to document it. There and then. And to stay true to the material, the film is presented as simply as it was shot. I have tried to map a man's soul, his essence, a set of lessons from a man's life...

That spring in the Himalayas, I listened to Sai Baba talk, he made kawa (chai) and dinner for me. I was introduced to a life of acceptance, of happiness, of love and devotion, of sincerity… and in that seeing and being present, the I-carapace disappeared.

In Sai Baba I found a friend. For life.

Monday, July 19, 2010

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Research: Corpora Callosa

Benway

Of all good things, sun-yogi's, kundalini, the tobacco-death ceremony in the Andamans, living on that island next to the forbidden North Sentinel island, of tripping on acid in Gokharna and swimming with dolphins, of all things herbal, of all things organic, of the heart, of the soul, of the spirit. The Benway to life, englishman, organic farmer, dashal village, himachal pradesh, the heart of the hinterland rests in his eyes.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Monday, July 12, 2010

A Time And A Place

Kerala Chapter

The Floating Man, , Wayanad, Kerala (2009)

The Floating Man from Hinterland Films on Vimeo.



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Ghosts, Wayanad, Kerala (2009)

Ghosts from Hinterland Films on Vimeo.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Sabka Malik Ek

Psy-Baba now swooping down like a bird of prey. Video footage ensemble cast, silver-line, floating cloud. Sabka Malik Ek. See to the eye, catch to the mind. In his words. Later shot horses by the Beas grazing. Like being back in the lute ages. Synchronised serendipity, electric clock ticking backwards, a man out of time. Then, spring, then subodh, angry one-eyed baba, subodh's quiet friend ajith, the eeriness surrounding the dhuni at the temple, angry baba yelling, then subodh breaking into song "ye bhagwan ka maunder" and before that some light music to ease the atmosphere, "ud jaayega hans akela" and "papiha". Strange exposition, hand curling to venus-shape around neck, uncoiled or coiled serpent I don't know, I could only guess that he has a mind full of porcupines. And those strange scenes, three of us sitting one behind the other facing angry baba in silence, the 50-ruppee quarrel on scoring enough hash for one joint. The quiet chaos of the unsettled mind breaks through the unflinching leash of the winded soul.

And then it hit me…

Friday, July 9, 2010

Lamo


I can have moments crushed in turmeric paste, I can have the concept of infinity, the kinetic sumatra painting strange shapes in the sky, each one a different colour, a different tone, an ascent to the seventh.

Monday, July 5, 2010

You Can't Have It All - Barbara Ras

But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands gloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven year-old finger on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back. You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look of the black dog, the look that says, If I could I would bite every sorrow until it fled, and when it is August, you can have it August and abundantly so. You can have love, though often it will be mysterious, like the white foam that bubbles up at the top of the bean pot over the red kidneys until you realize foam's twin is blood.

You can have the skin at the center between a man's legs, so solid, so doll-like. You can have the life of the mind, glowing occasionally in priestly vestments, never admitting pettiness, never stooping to bribe the sullen guard who'll tell you all roads narrow at the border. You can speak a foreign language, sometimes, and it can mean something. You can visit the marker on the grave where your father wept openly. You can't bring back the dead, but you can have the words forgive and forget hold hands as if they meant to spend a lifetime together. And you can be grateful for makeup, the way it kisses your face, half spice, half amnesia, grateful for Mozart, his many notes racing one another towards joy, for towels sucking up the drops on your clean skin, and for deeper thirsts, for passion fruit, for saliva. You can have the dream, the dream of Egypt, the horses of Egypt and you riding in the hot sand. You can have your grandfather sitting on the side of your bed, at least for a while, you can have clouds and letters, the leaping of distances, and Indian food with yellow sauce like sunrise.

You can't count on grace to pick you out of a crowd but here is your friend to teach you how to high jump, how to throw yourself over the bar, backwards, until you learn about love, about sweet surrender, and here are periwinkles, buses that kneel, farms in the mind as real as Africa. And when adulthood fails you, you can still summon the memory of the black swan on the pond of your childhood, the rye bread with peanut butter and bananas your grandmother gave you while the rest of the family slept. There is the voice you can still summon at will, like your mother's, it will always whisper, you can't have it all,
but there is this.

1600, 050710, Hinterland




Pretty Ms. Magpie posed for me on film today. File under "Wildlife Analysis".

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The Yellow-billed Blue Magpie or Gold-billed Magpie (Urocissa flavirostris) is a passerine bird in the crow and jay family,
Corvidae. It forms a superspecies with the Taiwan Blue Magpie and the Red-billed Blue Magpie. The species ranges from Pakistan to Burma with a disjunct population in Vietnam.

Blue upperparts with very long, graduated, black-and-white tipped tail. Separated from Red-billed by yellow-bill, and white on head, restricted to crescent on nape. Juvenile has olive-yellow bell. Broadleaved and coniferous forests. Resident; breeds 1800-3300m, winters down to 1000m.