Tuesday, December 18, 2007

How Populairty kills Creativity.


As my last post said, I’m running out of creativity as also of reasons to put the blame on. Being utterly jobless, I resorted to my 2nd most visited website (first being orkut I’m ashamed to admit). And I put creativity to search and this is one of the images which popped up.

It was so simple yet so true and enlightening at the same moment. Its my “wallpaper for a long time”.

Yes, Popularity is killing all creativity. Rather the popular media. TV, Internet, Cell phones, ipods, and all those things that keep you away from the real world.

I must make it clear outright that I’m not against advancement of technology. I’m glad there are these medium to bring people together, even tough it sorts of backfires at places.

TV from being a mode of disseminating information and a bit of entertainment on the side, has turned out to be this monster which has everyone and anyone addicted to it. Its worse than drugs. Yes, you may not watch TV, but you download all those series and stuff and watch them obsessively either ways. Here again, I must say some of them are really good- the TV stuff, but how can you watch them again and again and with such dedication? Reality TV is the worst thing happening to mankind. It’s the most distorted form of reality being fed to millions who accept anything that comes their way. It’s the most gruesome intrusion on privacy and a perfect example of how nobody’s business is everybody’s business.

Then there’s the internet. Second life, virtual reality, orkut and all sorts of networking, cool gizmo sites- all cool stuff man. But at what price? I’m sure there are more lonely depressed chronic schizophrenics now in the world than ever before. The internet seems to be the panacea to all our miseries in life. We allow the hidden monster to come to fore here. Take my own example for instance, years ago when I was bored or frustrated I was with friends (face to face conversations in the real world), reading books, and writing in my diary. Now I chat on gtalk or on my cell or I blog (I’m not complaining at all here). I’ve met some really brilliant people on the internet and met them in real life too. And I’m grateful for that. But then I hear so many of them call the internet their best friend and how they are married to the screen in front of them.

Then we have our favorites- cell phones and ipods. When I see people walking alone ( or even when they have company), they are chattering away on their cells or listening to their music on their players. What did people do when they didn’t have these? They just walked right? Maybe thought about life and stuff and came up with some great works of art and literature. All the man-hours spent on these gadgets- I’m sure takes away all the time share for grey matter to exercise. What if all those news items regarding brain and oral cancers due to usage of cell phones turned out to be true and not just a pile of rat droppings?

In the good old days, when there were no such media to “ bring people closer” I think we were better off. We had more time on our hands. We did our work, met people and had a good time and when we had leisure, we pondered and thought and thus philosophers came. It was a good time to have such people who devoted their life to think about the world and universe and life and birds and bees and humans and ethics and society and all those things that now we find easily on Wikipedia. Knowledge is power and we have it our fingertips, literally. But somewhere we are losing our imagination. Someone had once said ( I think it was Einstein) : Imagination is more important than knowledge. We’re losing that by the day. We have some creativity left, but it doesn’t seem all that refreshingly fresh. We are becoming a generation of androids glued to screens, every waking moment of their lives.

If we think of philosophers, most people, or atleast I would, think of Plato, Socrates, Nietzsche, Marx, Machiavelli, et al. I can’t recall any of the modern ones as such except maybe Albert Camus, Sartre and Bertrand Russel. And I’ve only just heard of them.
This list maybe helpful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Western_philosophers
Same of writers, http://gutenberg.net.au/greatest-books-a.html
Go to the end of the list and try to find out how many and how much do you know about them ( not that you’d know a lot about the old ones). And somehow if you see the timeline for invention and widespread use of technology and media-
TV- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Televison
Internet- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet
Cell Phones- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mobile_phones
Ipods - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod

- you’ll find some link between the lack of creative greats in this era and that of increasing dependence on such media.

I could be completely wrong in my opinions here. Maybe I’m biased in restricting creativity to writers and philosophers. Maybe I’m handicapped by my own lack of knowledge about today’s literary icons and intellectuals. Maybe these guys would be legends for the generations to come. But something tells me Shakespeare would still be more famous and acclaimed than Rushdie. And I’m sure really intelligent and widely read and omniscient persons will find this rubbish, but then hell its my blog :P. All I'm trying to convey here is that this age of " being connected 24/7" seems to rob us of any creativity that we could possess. I do not mean that the internet and others don't allow us to be creative. What I intend here is to point out that, there is an over-exposure to lots of attractive things on these media and we get distracted and are sucked into a whirlpool of instant entertainment and gratification and don't really sit down to to ponder and express and explore our own creative talents to the fullest. Well, that's about it, I guess. I have to wake up early tomorrow.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

A beginning.

Let me just type. Let me just write. I do not know what will result from this exercise.

But I need to do it, nevertheless. I hate not being able to write. That was my only outlet.

I feel suffocated, strangled, drowned, tied up and restless without it. There’s this inexplicable tightness clutching at my heart and I have no clue why and how to deal with it. There are these moments when you are restless and nervous. As if you know there’s something miserable waiting to happen, just around the corner and you don’t know what to do when you are face to face with it. That is how I feel. Any given moment when I’m not busy doing nothing important. Its physiological, mental, psychological and a lot of other things. There’s no word for it, yet.

There are no dreams. My mind’s become barren. Imagination has become infertile.

Does growing old do that to you?

Those days, when you were bursting with innocence, hormones, feelings, wishes. Those musings, pouring of words and tears, smiling into space thinking about nothing and everything, and those escapades into unreality- where have they gone?

The artist inside has ceased existing. There was no space for life. It was crowded with ambitions, mundane aims, selfish needs and walls. Walls around my heart, soul, mind. Nothing comes in, nothing goes out. Forever locked. Frozen. Yet burning within me every moment.

This is so juvenile. Still, its necessary.

There is this canvas waiting to be filled. But it remains white. White is a color? Or there’s such darkness that its black, impenetrable. Even grey fails to come on it.

Is it just that my outlets have closed or do I have nothing to express?

Either ways, I feel un-alive.

The entire world is an illusion. Do I just tread through this illusion waiting for it to end on my death? Or do I live it out? I have to live it out. Breathe in the scents and dust. I want to feel pain and happiness. Immeasurable pain and indefinite happiness. And express it the way I want to.

Nothing is stopping me. But I find myself incapable.

Something within is dying. There is the optimist lying docile.

There’s so much I want to do, want to achieve. But they all seem meaningless now that I feel incapable of doing what I thought I was best at and loved to- to write.

Maybe its my fault- I am lazy. Despite that, I just feel incapable otherwise. Its as if I’ve become handicapped, lost my limbs or lungs or heart or just everything.

Being sad and hurt allowed me to vent it out and write. Pain helps. I tried, in vain.

I think its true. As they say, external wound and pain are superficial and its when the heart is bleeding with sorrow and grief and misery that you really suffer. The turmoil within is worse than the injuries on surface. But I don’t have either. I tried the latter- got my ears pierced again in an attempt to “feel” the pain. Needless to say, it didn’t help matters much.

Even loneliness is something that’s so detached. Yet so deeply entrenched into the psyche. I feel miserably lonely at times. That solitude doesn’t encourage any creativity.

I think I’ve run out of reasons, of miseries to put blame on for my incompetence.

Nothing seems to help.

And I resort to whining, which just tires you out and saps your creativity further.

Maybe I should just continue to write. Somewhere, sometime I’ll find a way out or a way in. I must force myself to write everyday. I have to let things affect me. See, hear, feel and experience. And express everything. Maybe that will help.

I have to keep trying. I must.

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Balloons in the evening sky

lets release all the extra baggage in the evening sky. let these balloons take away all of that, somewhere far far away...
Technicolor Dreamboy

I don't really know what I was thinking when I got down to paint this on MS Paint.
No, I do not think this picture represents any inner needs or feelings or such bull.
It's just that I find drawing male faces harder than female faces, again no reason whatsoever as to why so.
Thats about it.

The picture's not really technicolor, is it?