Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Abstractions of a Bored Brain...

Why am I even writing this? I have absolutely no idea what I want to write about today, no flash of 'inspiration' to guide me.

Do I tell you mundane facts about my life? Facts which would have absolutely no significance to any reader, even the ones I know in real life.

Should I wax eloquent about my philosophy of life, love and God?

Should I make this a bitching blog where I rant and rave about how everyone and everything is against me? How the world is conspiring to prevent me from doing justice to all the awesome talents I have?

Or should I break tradition and write a short story?

Nope, not yet. But one is in the works and I will post it soon. Though I don't know if it would be good enough for discerning readers like you (ahem). The plot is clear in my head and , atleast to me, it looks good. But writing a story is a lot of hard work. You get stuck for a particular word and you spend agonizing hours in its pursuit. Its not like blogging. When you get an inspiration or idea about a blog post, the actual writing part is done in a flash of fingers in fifteen minutes or so.

But that is true for any work involving creativity - the doer gets obsessed with finding the holy grail of perfection. An author puts his soul into every bit of writing he does. It may be bad, but for the author it is the ultimate form of meditation and dedication. One incongruous word, which the readers may not even notice, will always pop up and jar the author when he reads the story.
The only way to appreciate the writing process is to indulge in it atleast once.

And poetry! It would be near impossible for someone like me to write it. I'm not a very lyrical person. Ok, i'll say it out loud here and get it over and done with. I'm indifferent to music. Very rarely will I spend time just listening to music and currently listening to it is only restricted to when i'm driving (punctutated with swear words that I hurl at idiotic and maniacal drivers and pedestrians - two very pertinent adages come to mind :
"Have you ever noticed how people driving slower than you are idiots, and people driving faster than you are maniacs?"
and
"You never really learn swearing till you start driving".)

Hence, the lack of appreciation for the intricately woven poetry that forms the basis of all songs and music. (But I've read Golden Gate by Vikram Seth. Its beautiful- and on such an amazing and uncommon theme. Thanks AD for insisting I try it. And YOU, if you haven't read it, its highly recommended)

Even painting is a strange labour of love. (Incidently, for those who've been following this blog wide-eyed with interest, I've continued to paint off and on. But it is still juvenile in execution so maybe the time to put my 'works' up here still hasn't come.). A single colour, a single out of place leaf and you feel like everything is lost and the painting is doomed. And others do not even notice any difference before and after the "disaster".

Anyway, I think I lost the thread of this post (er..you figured it out now? You've been blabbering around since the very start). So I'll close this post down. But now that i've typed so much, i'll publish it. And you have to bear it :)


Also, my blog statistics have been showing me that as soon as I update my blog and change the status message on my Gtalk chat (I provide a link to my blog from my status message, with the latest post's name) I get a big spike in readership. So now i've put in a couple of options for those who'd like to keep up-to-date with my blog (NOW would be a good time to say you want to :)), you can subscribe to the blog via email or take an RSS feed from here (Look at the right panel).

Or hell if you don't want to get into all these technical thingies, just add me to your gtalk (swapnil.bhatnagar@gmail.com) and you'll see the changes in my status message automatically.

4 comments:

bhumika said...

Writing about nothing in particular and still managing to write so much! I kind of like the stream of consciousness treatment in this post

btw, have you watched johnny gaddar? if not, watch it...

Swapnil said...

Bhumika: "STILL managing to write so much" Now this reads like a backhanded compliment!

There was no conscious treatment here, it was the actual strem of thoughts. Thank you.

Johnny - 2nd day 2nd show - oh, so slick! Loved it...

bhumika said...

backhanded compliment? i think you got me wrong...

stream of thoughts put into words is exactly what is meant by the term 'stream of consiousness'in literary criticism...

Swapnil said...

B: Oh, ok. I don't know too much about literary criticism.