Sunday 30 June 2013

Big difference

Its surprises me sometimes, how such a small thing can make a big difference.

This was one of my charcoal sketches. I love drawing trees without leaves. Though they seem monotonous and a bit creepy, there is a beauty in it.


But when I asked my mother how it was, she suggested adding leaves. I hesitated at first, but when I finished drawing the leaves on one branch, I actually thought it looked good. Just a couple of leaves made a huge difference.


Friday 21 June 2013

And another one

Simple work

I always wanted to try stencil work. But I did something different instead. Though its still the same concept. Its really simple to do, and it has a pretty nice outcome.

I realised my mistake later that, I should done it using a pen, rather than charcoal.

Friday 14 June 2013

Carry on my wayward son

We go about our lives sometimes without even noticing the feats that we overcome. Its only when we are most vulnerable or beaten down that we realise what we have achieved.

This song by Kansas, though has many meanings, has a special meaning to me. I have never ventured into the deeper meaning of this song, for I have always enjoyed listening to this song at face value.

The song according to me is a man singing it to himself in order to convince himself to keep living. The man looks at himself as a wayward son. A son who is now lost and almost defeated by all the endearing tasks he had to face.

The theatrical start is pretty much like any life ought to begin. Its absolute silence with only a chorus singing in an angelic manner. Its as if the man's inner voice is forcing him to believe in himself; To believe that what he is going through is not will not be in vain. As the chorus fades away, the starting beat kicks the story off. The story of his past.

The man's childhood and adolescence is narrated in those 45 seconds of sheer music ingenuity. half a minute into a song the music gets a slight sense of darkness; almost signifying the period where the person deals with the temptations of life. Either that or I could be way over my head in this song. Hopefully its not the latter.

What follows is when the true story starts. The story of the man's troubles.
Well many say that the the para that follows is about Icarus. For those who don't know the story of Icarus, here is the gist. 'Icarus and his father Daedalus, were imprisoned by minos. In order to escape, Daedalus who was a master craftsman, made wings out of wax for both his son and himself. While trying to escape, Icarus got way too ahead of himself and flew too high near the sun. Obviously, the heat melted the wings and Icarus fell into the sea (also known as the Icarian sea)'. So, the song speaks of something similar if not the same. It tells us how a man can get too proud and allow his pride to burn himself. But in order to gain pride, the man had to overcome some difficulty;
"Once I rose above the noise and confusion, just to get a glimpse beyond the illusion. I was soaring ever higher, but I flew too high"
So though he achieved something, he achieved nothing because he was too proud.
"Though my eyes could, I still was a blind man. Though my mind could think I still was a madman"

All of us are victims of pride. We all have the tendency to get carried away when we accomplish something. Our ability to stop and get back to reality is what makes us wise. In the song this over proud man continued in the same egoistic path believing he was undeniably right. He was so unaware of how illiterate he was about life, that he became the utter opposite of what he claimed to be, a fool.

But in order to change, the man had to realise he was wrong. He has to awaken from his daftness. After all, in order to realise that we need a map, we have to first accept that we are indeed lost. I like to believe that the refrain that followed the part about the man's awakening is that map that guided him.

The song's bridge is the turning point. The energetic riffs just make your mind bobble. Its like the part where the man started making a change. When he started living for the right reasons, and filling his life with the right experiences, the right people, the right objectives.

The last refrain has an emphasising feel to it. To me in this refrain, I feel like, the man is now singing along with his inner self, for he now believes in himself and he's hope has been revived.

My favourite bit, is the guitar bit that trails off after the last refrain. This is the end to the man's story. The music is like it is glorifying the man and his wins.

This song always has a way of lifting my spirits. I am not sure sure how much of what I wrote was understandable. I hope I was able to convey how I interpret this song. Until my next post,
"Carry on my wayward son, there'll be peace when you are done. Lay your weary head to rest, don't you cry no more"

Saturday 8 June 2013

Losing that something

You know how they say that "you never truly appreciate something until its gone"? Well I guess it is true after all.

It could be even the smallest negligible thing. But once its gone, it doesn't seem so negligible. Its funny how our mind works. How does something that didn't matter, matter so much once its gone? Is it that we start realising how much we care for that thing or is it just an instance of the selfish notion of "what's mine should always be mine'?

That something could be anything(pretty funny how my blog title slips in once in awhile during my posts). It could be a person, a pet, a nonliving thing, an abstract thing. Absolutely anything. It needn't make entire sense. It could even be something foolish like a catch phrase. It could even be a song. When you like a song or anything a lot, and when others start saying they like it too, its not an entirely nice feeling. You will feel terribly annoyed when you know that they don't like it for the right reasons; or they haven't understood the real meaning of it. Of course, it all depends on what sort of a person you are. But why is it that we feel that way? It is possessiveness, like "you do not deserve that thing because you will never like it the way I do"!

Well those cases are to some extent understandable. What I don't understand are the cases where you don't want that thing anymore. You want it gone. But when you see it fading away, you are displeased. These are definitely not those situations where you realise that you don't want to lose that something because you start remembering how much you care about. No, it isn't. Then what is it?

Or is it just that you are scared of losing something that used to be yours? The fear of knowing what was yours will no longer be yours. To not want something, but at the sametime want it! Is it naive to feel like that? Is this how the human mind works? Its frustrating the fact that we act so foolish when we are so well educated! So frustrating that you can even tend to lose focus at times.

So what do you do at times like that? I guess, if you want that thing to stay with you, you have to learn to appreciate it. If others like that thing, be it for the wrong reasons, you have to learn to share it. And if you no longer want that thing, no matter how aggravating it is to see it go, you have to learn to let it go.