On a Permanent Rewind

Permanency does not look good on me. My vacillating nature extends to all facets of my life including music. However of late, I have been listening to these fifteen songs to distraction, some old favorites and some recent ones.

The Beatles - Hey Jude
The Doors - Roadhouse Blues
Pink Floyd - Learning to Fly
The Beatles - Norwegian Wood
Parikrama - But it Rained
The Doors - The End
Oasis- Champagne Supernova
The Verve - Bittersweet Symphony
Dreamtheater - Glasgow Kiss
The Who - Behind Blue Eyes
Steppenwolf - Born to be Wild
Aerosmith - Janie's got a Gun
Led Zeppelin - Ramble On
Eddie Vedder - Hard Sun
Bob Dylan - Like a Rolling Stone

Drugs, Alcohol and Religion

As I write this I feel the last strains of scotch and weed ebbing out of my body. I have been and am suspect to a plethora of addictions, not all fluid in nature. Yet nothing rouses epiphany as does alcohol and weed. Reflecting back, I guess it was the first conscious decision that severed our links from a parochial culture. By succumbing to the poison with a troubled conscience most of us took that leap, we made sure that we had a semblance of control about our life. While it has been argued that abstinence is much more difficult than addiction, I believe the conscious embrace of non-conformance also argues for more steel than society gives due credit for. As for the pure visceral pleasure of it, I suppose few things would come close to give it a run for their money.

The images that alcohol evokes of the last five years is indelible. We just seem to shed off the veneer and seem human and fallible not berated for it. While alcohol brings the best out of our social nature, could there be anything that plunges you to unfathomable morass that is your subconscious than weed. The primal pleasure that engulfs every single pore of your body on being able to discern individual notes of The Doors or Pink Floyd is an experience stranger to weed-virgins.

It is a singular thing that religion is oft mentioned in the same breath as drugs and alcohol. Maybe it is the same exhilaration that people seek in something intangible and yet powerful enough to lift their spirits from the daily hum-drum that life is. As for me I am a Hindu, in the true sense of the word.

A Season of Faith's Imperfection

Seasons as we know it baffle me. Something that has permanency etched all over it, yet remaining so transitional. They are primal in nature, our earliest memories remain attached to them, but their innate fleetingness doesn't leave much of an impression other a half-remembered post-card from the past. A sense of deja-vu is probably the most one can glean from the passage of seasons. Me, I believe the seasons leave their best imprints on our moods. My moods decide my seasons. They can range from delirious sunny ones, to overcast with doubt and indecision, to the tipsy and trippy akin to the first showers, to the keening acuteness of cold reason and the far in between balmy spring ones.

And this has been a season of faith's imperfection. For a cynic like me, having faith has always been a crown of thorns. The longing to step out of the darkness, from the miasma of doubt and dispassion is as strong in me as it is with me everybody. And for once I thought I belonged. For once I felt understood and as normal as I could wish it to be. I was happy. It was something I had been seeking and found serendipity. Yet all good things come to an end, often in a manner that make you doubt if they ever existed. It passed by leaving in its wake a cauldron full of unsaid thoughts, boiling resentment and a barely concealed anger and hatred. Blind faith had turned me blind. The light had dazzled my eyes. And it is time to slink back to my dark shell once more.

The Scales of Imbalance

Often I am suspect to spells of crystal-clear thought and moments of incredulous wisdom. Sadly most of these occur under the influence of alcohol. A remarkable person I know, deciphered some lines of sense amongst a mindless babble. And I believe, being the best judge of myself, that those four lines of sense encompass my whole being and vindicate that maybe astrology has some truth to it.

I am not trust, neither am I doubt. I am the indecisiveness in between. I am Justice.

Musical Me

My balls cringe with shame when I realize how juvenile I was four years ago, when I along with three other morons belonged to the crappiest group in Orkut- I hate music. Thankfully I came to my senses soon and Orkut is history. But then, I sort of redeem myself when I think of the shit that Bollywood dishes out in the name of music, that had made me turn away from music in the first place. Fucking retards, the whole bunch of them and the public who thinks that lots of jiggling melons, preferably white( and we crib about the Australians being racists) accompanied by some plagiarized tunes is music.

Well it took a bit of Nirvana to shake me out of the notion that music was either about some Bolly-mindless-romantic crap or booty show featuring Ricky Martin, Enrique or Snoop Dogg. I discovered that guitar and drums could traverse the entire spectrum of human emotion. They could give an expression for all the angst and frustration building inside you. They could soothe frazzled nerves and provide a panacea for all the wounds you sustain. I could go on and on. But I don't think anything, I can ever write can do justice to music, my music. How do you describe life itself. Its better left to the strains of the guitar and throbbing of the drums to speak the tale.