Author: iknowthemall

"Freaks my balance out..."

Art and Hopelessness

I felt a tremor of happiness run through me when I first saw that my blog was finally being read. Then, I felt convulsed. This tremor was the contemptible electrical signal that marked everything wrong with my motivations of pursuing art. Or maybe, it’s the artists who are to blame.

What it told me was that I coveted the desire to be appreciated more than the desire to create.  I wrote for an audience, that is, and not for myself, or for the sake of art: “the good and the beautiful”. Whatever was written by me was glossed and decorated so it be delectable for the readers, howsoever imaginary they might be. Hence, everything I wrote was mendacious, and since writers pride themselves on telling the truth, I was nothing but an abhorrence pursuing a sacrilege in the name of (self-proclaimed) art.

But then, who is immune to this feeling? I’m sure every artist goes to bed insecure that he is nothing more than a base whiner who does nothing better than earn money (not a lot of it anyway) for having himself heard, that he is intellectually crippled to the extent that he cannot even realise how worthless he is. The next moment, however, would return in him a breath of self-assuredness, depending upon his achievements maybe, and he would soon be stroking his vanity by comparing his intellect with the masses. This is the cost of having a higher conscience. Every artist is cursed to suffer immense torment over just the tag of being one.

Essentially it boils down to self-worth, and the tender sentiments in this regard can be mutilated to shambles by just a passing comment, as they often do. It’s difficult to keep a count of writers, potentially as good as Philip Roth, paralysed because a passing comment slit the arteries of their motivation whence bled all their self-worth.

(I have to confess here that this post has lost direction a bit, but that often happens with first drafts, and I won’t care to edit it, I already have a zillion projects waiting to be edited ‘just a little’. In your face, my filthy readers, see how I am indifferent to you!)

The shameless, or the appreciated, meanwhile, keep pursuing the elusive goal – the goal that must not be ever reached for it would destroy the real intent behind any work of art (for the intent is nothing more than pursuing the elusive goal). In the process, they discover many a truths about human nature, through projecting themselves on others, through empathising with others, and through musing about the purpose of life. By doing this, by making themselves miserable everyday and by keeping at it, they open to the perceptive fellow human eyes a window to their own souls. Of course they demand attention like lovers, but that is just a small charge for a service very appreciable indeed.

Written in Dust: The Keyboard Speaks

“The faintest ink is more powerful than the greatest memory.”

As I was dusting my keyboard yesterday, I noticed a more stubborn type of dust on some of the keys, which I didn’t rub off: it was precious. Why? Because it told a very interesting tale…

Of the keys in the alphabet, Q had a significantly greater covering of the dust than any of the other keys, most of which were clean. TAB was a bit cleaner than the CAPS LOCK key, indicating clearly the usage of these. So I will try to draw inferences out of the patterns now.

Inference 1: I am mostly a cheerful person.
) was cleaner than (, indicating that I’d made the happy face 🙂 more than the long face :(. A little less used symbol was |, which means I’m more often sure of my emotions (I make the 😐 face when I am confused or unsure of what to say).

Inference 2: I am a textbook grammarian.
There was dust on the top part of the ‘ button, which means I press it with SHIFT more than without. That is, I use the ” more than ‘. Also, my SHIFT buttons are very clean indicating my love for the correct case. * was mostly unused.

Inference 3: Though I’ve been in a long-distance relation before as well, it’s from my current girl that I have learned how to kiss on chat.
The dust on * was wearing thin and looked polished. : ?* is how I kiss.

Inference 4: I have a love of the exclaimed!
Of all the numeric keys, 1 was the cleanest. Unsurprisingly, I use the ! mark a lot.

Inference 5: I am an escapist as well.
No, I’m not. I just press the ESC key a lot. Maybe I am, but the key has nothing to do with it, I bet. Or maybe Lacan was right: our unconscious is structured like language.

The Reform

It’s been a long time that I’ve been complaining of inertia, feeling good only about my likeness to the antihero of Notes from Underground when he said that a decent and intelligent man was forced to not take any steps at all.

My Muse is a druggie: she comes to her job only in patches, and when she does she charges a huge sum of attention for her job (which is hugely shoddy anyway), rest of the time she’s out partying with the Muses of other wannabe writers. Today on, however, she is going to be regular: if she doesn’t come to work, the work will go to her.

My room had been a crime scene till yesterday, looking as if dark marauders had come and ransacked it: clothes strewn everywhere alongside juice cartons, chocolate wrappers, biscuit wrappers, chewing gum wrappers (yes I eat them so much that they are sizable). My life was a chaos of similar proportions. I had to work on my thesis and with the deadline staring me in the face I turned my eyeballs inwards and did some soul-searching. Guess what I found! A coupon offering discount on my soul (70%) valid till 31/12/2011. Gosh.

Instantly, I picked up my bucket: washed my clothes and myself too. I picked up the litter, and threw it all out: it took three outings (I have a small square room 8 ft by 8 ft). I cleaned my keyboard (and I have noticed some really cool things in the patterns of dust on my keys, which will be elaborated in the next post), my monitor, my table, leaving the spider webs to be dusted away tomorrow first thing in the morning. I joined postaday. I installed sticky notes. I wrote three notes, one of which was redundant. I washed my water-bottle and filled it and it shines neat on my table. I cut the  lid off my shoe-box and will now use it as a dustbin. I bought pens. I arranged my books. To reward myself, well, I ate chocolate cookies.

All this is the result of an inexplicable yet (or, hence) intense lack of thought and a stupor that clogged the very veins of my motivation, and thence action. Today, the levee broke, and guilt like water gushed in and filled my lungs with an ache to work, and now I breathe the sweet air of a satisfying day.

The dam’s been blown to smithereens for good. This time, I am sure.

The beginning. Yo.

I’ve been wallowing in self-pity and loathing that I haven’t been writing enough, considering my aspirations. I am, through this post, agreeing excitedly to the pop promise that I will blog regularly – write a post everyday. Either that or I jump off my roof. I don’t kid. I never joke. When you laugh at anything in this blog, you will be laughing at me, you cruel (wo)man, keep that in mind.

(Thank you, TheDailyPost :?* I want you to bring me visitors, and I promise to give their greedy eyes some entertainment everyday.)

The Insecure Rat and its Piano

Shuffling, shifting,
peeking, sneaking,
smelling, feeling,
through my tiny eyes I see
all the cats and bitches
that for some reason
are cross with me.
All I want is to please
the women, the cats,
the bitches, and still be able
to look into the mirror that is
(it reflected humans once
but the fallen shard
is now staring at me)
frightening me, mocking me.
If I hide from the mirror
the cats will eat me;
if I hide from the cats
I will eat myself.

There’s but one sound
daring me, inspiring me
to go on; on those wafts
I will dance forever
I will forget myself
I will sing to myself
I will be a man.

But that mirror in the corner
sees me, even at my piano,
I have not the courage,
to move it, to remove it.

The Master Design

A plan to beguile it was, maybe
maybe not. A plan to amuse it was, maybe
maybe not. But here I tell you the story
as it had happened: as it happens,
the designer made a room, unique and aloof
in a dark jungle of no matter, and
to fool the foolish he called out aloud –
this is where there will be life.
He painted it blue on the outside,
all eight walls and even the doors, impassable.
Through fate, or through courage
through sin, or through discipline
through whichever gate we use to enter,
the room is empty, the room is green.

Fools bang their heads on the walls, fools make merry
but some fools become poets and start to worry
about the emptiness, about the room,
about the green and the persistent gloom.
Some poets remain fools and lament in the green room,
others find a switch, very green – it lies concealed,
and some poets remain fools and turn it on,
while other poets just let it be,
and poets that day they cease to be
in their green room of gloom.

He is a poet who, foolishly, found the switch.
Then foolishly, he turned it on.
Howls abound, the room was red,
a brazen bloody picture of dread.
But between the colours he could see,
the room was the same per se,
the same fools making merry,
the same fools banging their heads on the walls,
the same poets lamenting foolishly
and the same foolish poets searching needlessly.
Green gloom, red dread, or blue bloom,
oh how he wished he could write a poem
and tell others what he’d seen
till it dawned on him a poem like he had in mind
he once had seen…

Rain Dogs

I sometimes wanna dance and sometimes I wanna type so fast that it hurts my fingers but I cannot I just cannot because the words don’t come to me, so I go slow and decide to paint it rather, patiently, but I suck at that too. So I swallow my tongue and turn my eyeballs right in and churn out what I see and taste inside of me. But it is all crap. Then I decide to read some and get myself inspired to write. And the words I read feel like shit and I want to paint the pages black, which would have a beauty to it, unlike the patterns of shit they scribble so thoughtfully in there, hoping to make it smell like eau du cologne. Them morons. So I just sleep peacefully because it’s no use getting angry over the indelible mistakes of someone else and break my things.
I do wake up next morning and take a crap. Sometimes I don’t. And when I don’t I feel like crap the entire day and want to puke all over the bastards who look so clean, even when they’re so full of shit inside. Sometimes I just let them be. Other times I come back home all disgusted and write bad words about them in a notebook and feel even more crappy writing crap about crap, which is not characteristic of art, but is surely a damnable characteristic of what they call art.
I sometimes forget what I was going to write and then I start to tremble and my spintcher gets all woozy and loose and I leak crap like it was blood from a vein. I come back to my room stumbling and woozier than before, but only this time I am really horny so I take my dick into my hands and shake the piss out of it. I feel a tiny bit relaxed after this but I still want to rack their brains into a freezer and then crush it into pieces, them morons.
Then there are the snobs, them fucking snobs. They think they gotten what they have by virtue of deserving it. My hairy ass they deserve it. They don’t deserve milk from their mommas’ breasts if you ask me. But who asks me, I just rot in my room alone scribbling dirty words on a white sheet of paper. Sometimes I wanna kick their face in, I wanna burn their houses and set their eyes and tongues on fire, the fucking snobs. I see them everywhere, even the guy in the mirror is a damning snob that bastard. I wanna kick his face in too. I did that once, only hurt my own hand so I don’t do it anymore. No use breaking myself over someone else’s flaws of character.
Now I bloody well can live with the world if these were the only kind of filth it had. But oh no wait! You gotta have all kind of crap to make it the best democratic toilet in the whole of the universe, which I am very sure is another giant shithole, waiting to be filled. There comes the real slimy shit now: the retards. Each one a unique shitflake, that is what they are. And they don’t even know that the joke’s on them, they fucking give me Goosebumps. I cannot even punch their face in because the shit will only splatter all over me, in my eyes and on my face and that is something I don’t like because you cannot look shitty even if you are full of it. The retards was what I was talking about but I cannot, since they are so damn laughable that no one wants to talk about them in a serious conversation.
And I assure you that it’s in your benefit to mind the seriousness of this conversation, you shitty listener.
Some nights I wish I was a rain dog, so I could forget the way back home and go sleep under a calming benign sky with the stars looking at me. Them fucking lucky rain dogs, they crap so happily.

The Death of David

Sometimes I wonder if you’re a mere figment of my imagination, for only beauty imagined can be so perfect, so uncompromising. I have been a dreamer, an actor in those dreams, a self-conceived hero of extraordinary comedies, but I had to yield to your magnificence, I could not help but dream of you, you who made me a dreamer in my dreams. I would be lying if I said I’m going to accept your frailties. No, I’m not. Yet I’m going to accept you, oh Abishag, my perfect queen.

For centuries I have been cold, the loveless winter refusing to relent, my world a foggy morning and my heart a drumbeat, waiting, ticking, for your warmth. You are the moon of my night, the wings of my flight.

You make me a fool, you make my past a careless indulgence, but for the dreams of a future with you I will kill the soul of my past. I have no cushions to rest my head upon, no bed of roses, no past so sanguine, but I sleep now in the sky upon the clouds of your breath. You have made me immortal.

Lie next to me, let me praise your beauty, awful, distant.

Let me drown in the sea of your hair, each thread worthy of my life. Let me live in the shadow of your eyes, cool and moist as a pacific breeze, protect me from the cruel harsh sun. Let me breathe in your breaths, and make me yours to the bone. I tremble to think of your lips, concealing a voice so criminal, breaking hearts as you break a tone. The light of your eyes petrifies me, my sight a slave to your wishes.

Why, my queen, can I not see anything but your face? I will not defile you, not even in thought, you who I enshrine.

Oh my king, your orders my fate-line, I protect you from the devil, from the stygian cravings of lust.

No, Abishag, I dare not the fire of your beauty, give me back my freedom, it is my humble demand.

You had to but think of it, my lord, here are your eyes, your thoughts no longer mine; but I warn you again, the flesh is a well full of waters of crime.

I dare not look into your eyes again, but my world is you, you are my vision, you are my choice. I choose to die in the desert of your body, drink myself to life at the oases that are your breasts. Marry me, queen, I beseech, I beg.

Oh king, against your blaze I cannot stand, but I cannot bear the wrath of the Gods, the scorn of the eighteen to whom you have been sworn.

Let them marry the blade of my sword, mightier than the bolt of Zeus. Between your thighs lies my salvation, and I won’t spare the Gods that come between us. Come Abishag, resurrect my desires!

Order of the lord I cannot contravene, but the fires of consummation are the fires of hell, they will engulf you, they will cauterize your soul, brand you a sinner, and repent you will alone.

I care not, I wish to live the future that killed the soul of my past. Come to my embrace, these ephemeral pleasures are the reasons of my life, of a game well played, of an end that breezes into a new start… Alas! The sting was too harsh, the heat of lust a heat too hot. I’m not immortal, but the seeds of life I have cast.

Oh my king, lured and lost, fated to the same end, chasing a foolish cause. But the seeds will live, and the throne will be mine, my son a weapon of vengeance, a slave forever, performing a pantomime. Just like his father.

The Rip in the Clouds

From a leak in the clouds,
experiencing the free-fall,
(not really free,
but trapped by gravity)
collecting on my lintel,
getting stronger, heavier,
getting slower, lazier,
crashing on the sill,
crashing on the grateful soil,
creating puddles of futility,
thus giving me an opportunity,
to watch my reflection,
hiding in the ripples,
disgusted to look at me,
the divine messengers,
clear the air, remove the haze,
and wake me up from my dream.

Bed-sheet Genius

Rumours like fires spread
of a man finally out of bed
claiming to have seen in a dream
the meaning of life and the
trick to remember the dream.

In his dream was a layer of snow,
the more he dug the more he’d know.
He dug till the air grew thin
motionless he stood at the end,
with the sky, far away, grinning.

And in his dream did he realize
that he could’ve dug on either side.
No sooner than he had thought this
the earth beneath started to crack
and the wind broke in with a hiss.

His dream was now flooded with light
no ground below, he was in a flight.
He fell through the sky to the land,
only to find that if he had dug upwards,
he would’ve only found sand.

So the genius fell and fell,
through the hole and the sky.
The trick to remember the dream
was to break the rhyme.
Thus he woke up with a start.