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Tuesday, February 23, 2010

linkings -- overlapping realities

reading, watching movies, tv, -- the media world -- has changed us. duh! but the extent to which it has -- once we stop to think, it is quite interesting, to say the least. we find how it has colored our perspectives. helped our minds evolve-- as human beings, for better or worse. for instance, we see a place, and we are reminded of a movie we have seen or a book we have read. sometimes it hits us like a ton of bricks. at other times like the touch of a feather, a half-remembered song.(Books had a great role in romanticizing the English countryside for me, and for many others. Same goes with movies in the case of  England, and Britishness,  Paris, Tuscany. Cuisine  attains a compeletely different aura.) our conversations are colored by the characters we hear and see -- in real life, or in the world of books or movies. we see a person, and all these ideas or notions swirl in our brains, most of the time, in the subconscious -- about the character of the person. we may be wrong completely, but we already have a notion -- prejudiced or not-- about him or her. types. genres. from books, movies, tv. since i watch mysteries and crime dramas mostly, my notions are colored by those. at the airport, i see this man wearing a University logoed sweatshirt -- middle- aged, good looking ,athletic single guy, and in my mind he is this lothario type professor in mysteries. selfish, brilliant (maybe) using others esp women, not above murdering his wife... . Watching Criminal Minds made me afraid of the average man. In the realm of romance and courting, after all these revelations in the media, fictional or real,   feminine wiles and masculine whatnots have lost their punch -- unless they live in the twelfth century like my nazranis.



Harold Bloom's theory of anxiety of influence in the case of writers becomes relevant in the case of ordinary men and women. similes and metaphors and usages which were once looked upon with awe are now cliches. we want edgier, racier words and phrases and ideas. again overlapping genres of life. watch CSI, or the Bourne movies,even the new Bond movies -- mainstream cinema has adopted the edgy, racy mind-boggling collage-like capturing of images of an art film. like an abstract painting which talks. and makes sense. poets try to capture that broken, fast, urban graffiti that is life now.the rule breaking mural by outlaws. the soul searing fragmented cries of the underground musicians. the scars, the scorings ,the deep lines of colors that run like veins. that connect roots to branches, and to clouds and to the ocean.



people wanting to transcend time and place and minds. virtual reality, parallel reality, time travel, thought travel.... pushing the boundaries, blurring, images travelling with the speed of thought, again, overlapping realities. one of my favorite movies that has captured this age's need and craving for virtual reality, where the mind hurries forward before the body, is a short film I saw on a Facebook page.  fascinating. it is like a postmodern poem in motion. locomotion. visions of a future where thoughts and airplanes will display tracks in the skies, came to my mind when i saw it. i will be able to capture it in words in a poem, i hope. genres overlap --the music that fuels the images is apt -- "staying alive". that is the main thing -- staying alive -- men and women wanting to feel alive. become a part of the more obvious, conspicuous realities.

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