drabble #2: double dribble, er, drabble

"So sad. Ah well, back to work. Its always someone else. But its a completely different matter if it happens to you.", said the voice at the other end of the phone.

"But what happened? I didn't hear from you all day. Was it an accident?", I asked, worried.

"Nah, nothing like that. Those things happen to other people."

"Then what? You fell in love, didn't you?"

"For what, the millionth time? How is that even a new occurrence?"

"Then what? Got stuck in the rain without an umbrella?"

"No."

"Got pushed out of the train by an angry woman with three babies, one on each arm, and the third dangling by her neck with a cartload of fish by her side?"

"No."
I could feel her smiling that wry smile of hers on the other side of the receiver.

"At least give me a hint. Is it good or bad?"

"Well, its not a particularly nice experience..."

"Theft?"

"No."

"Fraud."

"No."

"Rape?"

"No! Have you gone nuts?"

"I give up. What happened? Tell me. Else I shall die of either impatience or old age. Most probably old age. But still..."

"Nope. Guess."

"Oh, come on..."

"Loose motion..."

Drabble #!: On drabbles

All right, so I join the bandwaggon.
-----------------------------------

#1:

"Dribble drabble wibble wabble piddle pop pop.
Twiddle diddle with a fiddle in the fiddle shop."

He placed the piece of parchment on the table, stood up, and critically appraised his work. Not satisfied, he reached into his coat-pocket, and from within withdrawing a monocle, affixed the same upon his eye.

Afresh, he gazed at the paper, then reassembling his features into a not unkindly smile, he folded it up and tucked it into the recesses from whence the monocle had come.

And then he sauntered off towards the dining hall, to display the product of his latest artistic excesses.

Random sthuff

Doodle that I came up with during a lecture. I thought i'd call it 'Diffraction'.

One piece at a time #1: Far-Out Fuzz

(A series of disordered thoughts on music)

I was listening to a rather diverse collection of songs today, slightly different from the music I've been listening to of late. I swung up and caught the handhold as the train pulled into yet another station and a stream of humanity rushed past. The song was Paper Puli, by Bangalore rock band Thermal and a Quarter. The song starts off with, "Frank Zappa once said, 'Rock journalism is all about people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read.' " The train pushed off again, with the stream of humanity, now a pool of humanity crowded into the half the space of a multiplex washroom, with one gentleman who was trying to facilitate the fostering acquaintance between my face and his elbow. I kindly declined, but getting back to topic, if not anything else, I could read. Couldn't I?

Paper puli wound up its act and Deep Purple started off with Highway Star, remarkable how much the starting riff resembles that of Sinbad the Sailor from Rock On, but ah, well, it must've been 'independently composed'. I wanted to sing, but knowing my voice, I'd probably have joined the railway casualties list had I done so. The song was superb, the vocals scratchy, rough, and typical of that period. What period? The 70's of course. Wasn't that when it all happened? Well, yes and no. The seventies were an amazing time to be in, if you were a music lover. There was something for everyone. Rock, pop, metal, grunge, reggae, blues, you name it. Not that these genres didn't exist before that. Hendrix was wrapping up, he passed away in 1970, John Petrucci was three years old, and there was this new band that called itself Led Zeppelin, formed in 1968, in the same year as this other band called Black Sabbath. And the people of our world seemed to have rediscovered new and extremely inventive ways of using a variety of trance-inducing substances for both recreational and inspirational purposes, and would forge ahead and produce realms and genres of music that would then proceed to blow the minds (whatever fragments remained). It was to be an amazing high, er, no, amazing journey.

After Deep Purple came Iron Maiden's Blood Brothers. And good song though it was, I was rather distracted by two strikingly beautiful ladies who were engaged in the rather un-maidenly act of striking down an unfortunate soul who happeneth to glance rather lecherously in their direction, going by their version. The poor victim, er, pervert was mutinously complaining that it had simply been something in his eye. A crowd was in its nascent stages around the spectacle, for our people are never ones to turn down wholesome free entertainment, and were gatherin' 'round with the satisfied expressions of one who's platform ticket has yielded its money's worth. Unfortunately, the train had a schedule of its own to keep up with, and with a clang of the gears that amounted to a mechanical sigh, it set off once more, bearing me with it.

What surprised me, as my playlist progressed, playing Edwin Starr's War, Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge over troubled water, and Rolling Stones' You can't always get what you want, was the sheer amount of variety that emerged from that period. I thought back of how people were stereotyped now according to what kind of music they listened to, Rock artists are dumb. Satanic Metal Punks. Gay pop loving freaks. And those days, when everyone was a brother, food was cheap and music was peace, how would they have been like? (Again, I have no idea weather the seventies were really like that, and they most probably not, but what the heck, why can't people dream?) The train went on, with its assorted clangs and rattles providing background accompaniment to the subtle nuances of an ever effective Pink Floyd' Comfortably numb, which was followed by the Eagles' Tequila Sunrise.

I had almost reached, and AC/DC (visit Edocsil's wall, no, not facebook) was playing Back in Black. I waited for the song to finish, and wound up my earphones. There was so much I couldn't cover, the Who, Queen, Alice Cooper, KISS, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bruce Springsteen, The Doors, The Ramones, Presley (deserves a special mention for cult-ishness, hats and wierd hairdos off to him.), Lennon, Marley, and god-knows-how-many-more-bands-I'm-forgetting, so much more I couldn't write about, about the experimentalism, about the feckless, reckless nature of the bands, and their individual personae, the stories, world reception, styles and the emergence of the sub-genres that classify music today, (and how dare I forget them, the groupies), and of course, Hindi music from that era, and how it influenced / was influenced by its western counterparts. But I leave all that for a later date, and end with an excellent dictum from the age of psychedelia. Peace, bro'.

ps. One interesting piece of information that puzzled me, though. Deep Purple once occupied a position in the Guinness Book of World Records as "the loudest pop group". Er, pop. How?
Theories and answers are welcome at mail.ltgtr@gmail.com, on our facebook page, or at sahihaiyaar.blogspot.com.

Also, this site, whose address I happened to find on wikipedia, happens to have a wealth of information on the 1968-1976 period, do visit it if you feel like. http://musiccollectorsite.blogspot.com/

Disclaimer. All the songs mentioned are the sole property of their respective artists, this article is not part of any promotional propaganda or publicity material, and may be shamelessly copied, lifted and reproduced in any form, with the cognizance of the author. He'd feel good about it.

Gedanken

Think, for a second. All right.
Now think of something else.
What did you think of?

Think of all the things that you could have thought of, from musing upon the past, to contemplating the infinite excesses of the future, to present counterfactuals, to imaginaria, problems, solutions, corundums and doldrums. Think of all the good times that simply rolled, and those that sat like a rabid hippopotamus surrounded by the vertical sea. And all the birds, the bees and the potatoes.

Now go in a step further and refine.

Think not of counterfactuals, of musings of what could have been, and what might have been if the past had been what it could have been. What has happened, has happened, and you are where you are, for all the multiverses in all of their infinite wisdom cannot prove otherwise. At least, not yet.

Think, in the meanwhile, for you surely you ought to have freed up some space among all that grey matter, of what could be, depending only on what you do now. Of conclusions, results and outcomes based on non predeterminate input actions, and of possibilities, and the probabilities of their happening. Fantasize about the wide world, and everything that is in, on, off, remotely connected to, abrstactly visualizable, completely irrational, seemingly logical nuances that comprise it. It takes all kinds.

Sum them up over all of the dimensions that you can think of.
You get one, no?

Then think of the fact that you could actually have done something instead of simply sitting and thinking.

And finally, think of the cat in the box, and the fact that indeterminacy is a way of life. So is asymmetry, by the way. And that the blackness is where the light seems brightest. Nope, not metaphors. only tautologies.

And if in the course of these contemplations you happen to hit upon the solutions to one of humanity's greatest mysteries, then do one of the following:

1. if its a mathematical theorem, relax. take a shower. and then rush out in the middle and run around shouting 'eureka' till you get arrested for public indecency, or pelted with stones.
2. if its an earth changing physical revelation about the matter and fabric of the universe, then go to germany and occupy a position at the patent office over there.
3. if you realise who the one true love of your life is, then call her up. (assume) Either it will work out, or it wont. no sense in sitting and thinking. you've done that enough already.
4. if its a solution to world peace (fight less), the food shortage (grow more potatoes), AIDS (porn/condoms), the depleting ozone layer(fart less), or what the girl next door is wearing today (black lace, one can always wish, can't they) and any of the ten billion thousand other problems, then mail us at ohmygodifoundit@dontpissmeoff.com. Actually, no.
5. and if you found the answer to life, the universe and everything, then go cry in a corner. Somebody's done that already.

And if that isn't an experiment enough, my dear, then what is?