2019, this is where I leave you

Well well, what do we have here? Hiding in the shadows, afraid and cold. Do you even remember now the heady early days – full of false promises, fluttered eyelashes and broken hearts not yet hardened? And it all began so well too, a renewed optimism when even an affirmed and avowed realist says that things surely cannot get much worse, they surely have to get better. But then the world takes a collective shit and it all goes to hell. It surprises me that when there are so many obvious things that can be done better (or at least not be made worse), how do they escape the collective wisdom of this planet of 7 billion and its (mostly) democratically elected leaders as they continue to be needlessly cruel like a vicious kid around day-old pups?

I started writing this in a Dick Dastardly voice, but I have now decided that it’s quite obviously Philip Marlowe.

I read a graphic novel today, Memetic – it was a quick read about a sloth meme which sets mankind hurtling off towards extinction (seriously). The art is disturbing but of place in a body horror, end of the world kind of way. Sounds weird, but for a 100 pager it does make you think of the ways we are evolving with technology aided communication, greater information symmetry and of perhaps there being an inevitability to it all, of assimilating into a hive mind. As a species we are programmed to share information more and more efficiently but I do wonder if anybody really does the fact checking bit in a hive mind. And it seems all the more important given the contagion can be so quick, so widespread and often so very destructive. Can we stop it though? And should we stop it? It’s fatalistic but given we live under the illusion of free will we need to accept the consequences of our deliberate actions and the fact that if we do go *pooft* it is going to be nobody’s fault but ours. I think that the book qualifies as art in that it makes me think and makes me a bit uncomfortable.

To limber your sensibility, stalk the aesthetic everywhere: cracks in a sidewalk, people’s ways of walking. The aesthetic isn’t bounded by art, which merely concentrates it for efficient consumption. If you can’t put a mental frame around, and relish, the accidental aspect of a street or a person, or really of anything, you will respond to art only sluggishly. This line from Peter Schjeldahl stuck to me, and as a corollary to the above, we can very fairly say that art, as an efficient mean to distil aesthetics, is also an adjunct to evolution and openness to all forms of it is an essential precondition to evolving. I can agree with that, though I guess all the evolution in the world isn’t going to keep me awake at a dance concert. And art is something that exists external to and independent of you and yet can give you hope – a theme I really connected with while reading Murder Falcon, which was probably my favourite graphic novel of the year. I had read the author before in Extremity which was pretty good as well (actually that one’s incredible too) but MF (heh) made me cry at the end of a book about mystical anthropomorphic creatures summoned to fight kaijus by playing metal as loud as possible, if you can believe it. It’s reassuring to feel sometimes, you get quite used to pretending that nothing bothers you, not really (Zeno could take lessons. Only joking, love the guy.) and then you get itchy eyes and you blink furiously and then put on the mask again.

So, I guess it wasn’t all bad? Maybe I will get to moaning again in another post. I visited Farakka after nearly 15 years and walking through the township with mom and brother under an evening sun was a pretty surreal experience. A proper nostalgia trip for me and reassuring to see that despite the many changes, some people and places feel exactly the same. The sky had spectacular colours and the river was as wide as ever. I did have a smoke by the river, something I had never done before. Other places were seen too, new places mostly and mostly beautiful. I didn’t mind that at all. An assortment of pictures follows.

 

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Not many new songs listened to. I did watch the new Star Wars movie, it was good, certainly not great. It hit a few high marks but I am not exactly a Star Wars aficionado and a few references would have well been lost on me and it was just okay – a few plot points connected and a few left dangling. The basic issue I had was ultimately this trilogy doesn’t really matter in terms of pushing the story forward. And Disney is just peddling nostalgia and I love nostalgia but it all gets too much sometimes. Saw Knives Out at the same time and it was so much better – I guess it deals in nostalgia too, given its really a locked room murder mystery ala Agatha Christie.

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I should figure out the list of favourite books and movies for the year. Till next time.