HALF NELSON - DRAFT #2

I'm not going to be apologetic as I write this, but I won't be sharing the whole of the second draft of 'Half Nelson' (this to the ones who 'read') but I'll be pointing out nuances all the same, because I guess I've got reason to believe that I can't be understood unless I take the initiative to shove ahead personal interpretations of myself, and I'm burdened with doing that because people, as you all know, won't even intend to do it in the first place. And as I'm not someone who can be discounted based on surface appearances, I'm just taking the initiative to enlighten you with whatever I can tell about what I think I am.

"No one works to hide the sight,
a line of gold in the diamond light,
teams with truth, that's lying in the middle;
a heck of a little, burning bright:

It's a stock of Kryptonite..."

ABOVE: Simple painting of someone that's alone. Took it because I didn't want large-scale royalty issues.

I'm not exaggerating. I don't expect you to get the issue already, in fact I don't think I can get away even with expecting you to get it after you're done with the whole of the draft, and I don't attribute that to my abstractness, or to your incapability to make sense out of sensibility, but rather to the drift in communication that's bound to exist from man to man. Just that it's going to be magnified in the case of you and me.

"City's scrawling in my mind
that two's now the official one,
I guess I'm missing out on half the fun;
Overwritten till complete,
there's not a crease in this street,
and I'm holding the baton,
I just can't skip my run..."

A man's known no more by what he is, now it's more like he's known for what 'he's managed' or who 'he's with' and this isn't a triumph of any sort; it's not like some worldwide acceptance of the fact that there's a woman behind every big man, and I don't want to be confronted by debate on this aspect because I believe I'm the only one who sees a girl like I should, and the rest are just looking at written rules and some are breaking rules that they think are wrong. And I don't get to feel sorry that I lost my rule-book somewhere three years ago, and I'm still not searching it.

"And you won't get me off my mind,
(now would you?)
Yeah, I can see the line too..."

I seriously didn't know who I was addressing as I wrote the above lines, and the funny thing is I can justify both ends, so in the end I had to explain to myself saying that I was actually talking to both him and her (although the lines look addressed more to 'her' than 'him'). I don't want you to misinterpret my statements and take me to be someone who's laughing mockingly at the disillusioned world or something, no, I'm someone who wishes I could happily be a part of the mess and not know about it, but since I'm out of it, all I do is wish someone from the other side would make it out too so that I'd have actual company. Company I don't have to 'look for'. And 'the line' is not 'personal space' but a rather irritating mutation of that concept, where both he and she never let go of each other, because they secretly fear the other could be taken away by a vulture that's stronger than the pheasants they are, and that's sick, you know. Because I've always liked someone that's free and I've liked her freedom and I guess she'd like me back enough for me to sit back and be confident that Kes would surely get back home without me tying her to a string.

And to be otherwise is just... unfair. To her, and of course, to me.

SUBTLE SHUTTLIN'

I first wanted to make a video of myself ‘speaking’ everything I say in this, because however intolerable I might appear in a picture frame, I could at least be glad of getting the right emotional impact that I might intend to get, like how Woody Allen wanted us to get saddened by his histrionics in ‘Annie Hall’ rather than to laugh at him, but I eventually had to put the idea aside and go on with what I consider myself to be the best at, and I fixed my mind upon this chiefly because of a couple of reasons:

1. As said before, I suck at remembering my lines and even though I am not exactly editing what I write here, I don’t think my mind-mouth connection is as synchronized in function as that of my mind, finger and keyboard and I have to add that I am actually not confident about sitting a video session, however personal that is going to be.
2. I happened to read Derrida.

I’m not impersonating Stevie Ray, and I’m not robbing him of his title (yes, this is going to be a lyric that I would write in due course) I just looked for a fancy title for this post and I decided to show some loyalty to the Mayer clan, but I actually could end up calling it ‘Shuttling’ or ‘Shuttle Run’. I think the latter does more justice, considering it covers an issue than an actual act. And I think I made absolutely no sense in my previous lines, but don’t worry: What’s coming is the actual part.

It’s about this strenuous part of life I wish to call the ‘pre-prime’ that no one who’s past it would understand (because I believe that it’s a wipe of memory that highlights its end) and which the ‘pre-pre-primes’ unknowingly look up to, and this part of life is very democratic to the extent of being wasteful where you’re given a lot of things to pick from and you’re not even blindfolded so you can technically see everything you choose, and choose accordingly, but there is a little knot in this plot: You’re not intimated about what’s allowed. So the process is that you get to learn the hard way that is in truth the easiest because all you need to do is to live it, but at a non-organic level it’s not… It’s just… too affecting to say the least.

There’re red cones, there’re blue cones, there’re yellow ones and there’re even ones that are multi-coloured and there’s this special cone that’s called ‘home’ which serves to be a point of return whenever you want to turn back, whenever the fatigue is too much to take, because going on from cone to cone just takes you far from it, and that makes you want to keep an eye on how far you’ve wandered from the place you began. There’s no rule that asks you to keep going on, but you find that the next cone ahead is much closer and the cone you left behind has nothing but bad memories, and although this sounds like a progression, this isn’t because all along, you’re just moving to your side, yeah, it’s a sideward movement in life where you’re allowed to face front or let your sides face the front and you keep doing this till you get a cone and you lift her up and you advance till she burns your hands and you let her down and then you think of turning back.

But this special cone called ‘home’, well… She’s amazing because she’s where you started from, she’s given you this ‘push’ and hence becomes a sort of God to you, not in the actual way, but in the way that she’s more than just a mentor, but there’s a flipside to her too. You don’t know if you left home or if you were kicked out, and that’s part of the package called ‘doubt’ because of which you’ll never be sure if you’ll be welcomed home again, as you don’t know if you were welcome any time before in the first place, and you know… That worries you sick. Because although you don’t know if it’s an illusion or a vague recall of reality, but you have this feeling inside that everything would get back to being alright if you get back home and that’s not like it’s a give-up in life and getting back to your cubby-hole, or at least… I’m not sure what it is, but I feel like that’s what I should be doing because you know, this cone called ‘home’, she’s pure white. And it’s not unknown that every other colour is bound to call yourself to it, to pretend that it’s more attractive than the one you’re in (which is precisely what happens when you see magenta from mauve) but that’s ruled out, that’s a closed door, a dead-end when I was on white. Because white’s everything, and when I saw this dazzling display that’s going on even now in front of my eyes, I always used to tell myself that however they combine, they’re NOTHING compared to white. Because, as I quoted earlier, she’s everything and I’m exaggerating in a worldly sense beyond doubt, but that’s the point of it all: That’s the whole heck of a silver lining, this fact that I never left home as long as I was in it, and that’s a very secure feeling, something people wish would happen to them which would, but it happens just once and I learned that through the so-called ‘hard way’. I don’t know if I would be taken in, I guess I would be rather a cynic in that aspect, but I would wish to hell she would. Yeah.

And about this whole process of ‘shuttling’ failing if I refuse to leave a cone, which could end up in obesity, well… I guess she’d be enough of a toil to keep me fit for a lifetime. She’s whatever I am, the whole metaphysical entity, and right now I’m just the poor soul who has been enlightened about the concept of enlightenment, a Gautam Buddha who wants to get back to being Siddhartha after finding out that the ultimate happiness is to derive joy out of sorrow. She made me accustomed to that. And I can’t stop hearing something telling me to get back to old habits. Old School.

I’ll be writing this lyric sometime soon. I have reason to believe that I would.

ON FILM...

Could be the first thing I wrote without starting off with a title, and it so happened that I ended without one too. Supposed to serve a purpose, (which I wish it does!) and I think it has a couple of nice lines that I actually think are amazing to have come out of me, given the state of mind I was/am in, and well, to sum it up: Not my best, but all the same I guess I'm proud to induct it in 'My Book of Rhymes' honorarily, because it's one of the best reflections of the mindset I'm in.



IMAGE: Meaning behind the reference to Michelangelo (Didn't think it's required, but you can never tell :P). His famed 'The Last Judgement' on the ceiling of Sistine Chapel. I guess you'd make the rest up yourself.

UNTITLED

Nothing's art, art's nothing.

It's always been a bunch,
splashing sketches on the screen,
and I guess it always would be
what it's always been;

A finger on the keyhole window,
and a publicist to raise the stakes;
a parade of popularity pimps,
living on green than gasps or double-takes;

Sick of being stunted by the painted sky,
let's bid Michelangelo goodbye...

A sliver of a shift from shelf to street,
stitched-up scenes, with the lines unseen
helping make the nothingness complete;
reaching out to a cynical world
determined not to turn the leaf,

All done for this bumper prize
that we call 'BELIEF'...

P.S. I hope you got all the Mayer signs :)

WHO ARE YOU?

I actually feel a bit embarrassed to say that this 'lyric' of mine actually began with the framework of a tune, and that 'tune' was something that I came up with, and as excited as I was about it in the beginning, it took me a day and a half to realize that it was unmistakeably mundane, resembling songs that can't actually be called as songs, and I even had ripped a bit off Mayer's cover of Marvin Gaye's 'Inner City Blues (make me wanna holler)', and so... Those reasons, as well as a change of mind midway related to the mood of the lyric itself, I decided to call it off and stop with whatever I had written, and I must say that although this one isn't actually going to be a part of 'My Book of Rhymes', the fact that it inspired a new bunch of words under the title 'IDENTITY' (something that I'd write soon, I hope) as well as its statement-like verses made me want to archive it all the same. So, here's 'WHO ARE YOU?' for you, as much as I had written it.

WHO ARE YOU?



So you have a strand of white, to hide
the blackness that's bright inside,
how many layers have you got to undo,
to see the real you?

What happened to your bow-tie?
Has the 'occasion' made you live a lie?
Or is there anything of you that's true?
Tell me,
WHO ARE YOU?!

Well, it's a sculpted world,
so I know the concrete mix won't cry,
and now that the east's
part of a western coalition,
there wouldn't be a sunset in her sky,
and she won't care you're conundrums,
too disgusting to discern;
don't worry, she'd never learn!

But fickle Florence, she's just a disease
for which I have the required immunity,
so you've still got to deal with
the omnipresence of me...

I thought I could get no worse.

PARANOIA...

The funniest thing about my life (according to me, at least) would be how I always feel like I'm idle despite all the things that happen around me. I don't know if it's just me thinking that there's a lot happening, and 'around' actually implies things I'm part of, that I'm connected to, and anyway: I don't know if there's really a lot of activity about me or if the whole world is inactive along with me, but my point is that I happen to feel hopelessly, strangely inactive all the time. And I'm not dragging my inner self into this, I'm just talking about what's apparent, what's obvious. What the eye can perceive, and what often happens to escape mine.

There was a death. I'm waiting for the right mind to write about that, and that's a separate, self intriguing episode, and I don't want to merge that with something totally unconnected. Plus I think he deserves more respect than just be mentioned (which is why I don't want to drop a word about that in this post). Anyway, that subject is actually one contrary to this, sort of like an antonymous coexistence, a natural oxymoron, you know, like how something impacts you to the core, and how something just grazes past and there's actually not even a need for regrowth, there wasn't anything lost in that process and so you're still intact. But this impacting thing, well... It's like I'm being digested and churned and 'unsettled' and I don't want this to end, though. I'm just looking for the end-product, for feelings like these, they always end up being constructive (Unless you have cancer, in which case you know what happens, and I exclude 'emo's and goths out of this list because I don't think they'd get a life even if they die, so I guess you get my point).

I feel desperate to write a piece of lyric. In despair, actually and I've thought of a wild, wide variety of names from 'Sunday' (redirected from 'Sundae' as in 'Ice cream sundaes') to 'Cater some love' and 'Lydia' (again!) and well... No I actually just thought of 'Sunday' and the rest are lies. But I did think of some lines, which deserve a place in this 'Book of Rhymes' blog because they tend to tell you how I start to work on a thought, and I actually happen to give you the raw thought. And here it is.

"It's an understatement, to say I'm retrospecting,
'cause I've demented myself, to a seven year rewind;
I've sort of got her on my mind..."

I'm exceeding my limits. I don't know if I'm entitled to have said so much, because I'm not a person who often talks of works of fiction: It can't get anything more real than what I am now, and... I still haven't gotten over that 'feeling' that I haven't got an adjective to define with. It's been a long while, in fact it's longer than just long and the gap's not just mental it's physical actually: Devastatingly physical with mountains in the way. I don't mind trekking, if only I'd be taken in on the other side, and only that it's been too long and it's not like it was any thick before either. But the thing is, I'm reminded of things I hadn't bothered to think about so long, something I'd blame on my dearth of hope, but all of a sudden it's a blast and there's pieces all over, of characteristic smiles, loose fitting house T-Shirts, distinct skinniness, eyebrows that look the same or actually a 'face' that looks the same, not to mention the way lips align and heck I'm saying too much!

I need to stop.

ON MASCOTS...

Well, this post can be thought of as a knee-jerk reflex, you know. Sort of a thing that's natural when something unexpected happens. Like when you're walking in a crowd and the advancement's too slow to be called so, and everyone around you looks like they're just lolling about where they stand, and there's this airlessness around making you dizzy after something like a bad film or a really hopeless concert and there's this guy you watched it with, an acquaintance, and all you remember of him at that moment is that he was wearing a white T-Shirt, and knowing that you just pat the back of one resembling him and it's vague because you don't feel his build or any sort of familiarity. Instead it's a pair of straps that you feel underneath your palms and the dizziness makes you check again, and you almost think like you see a rhinoceros frown at you as the girl turns about, and you get startled. Yeah, startled!

That was a work of fiction, by the way. And that's not how I felt when I found that everyone who read 'Nearness of Far' asked for a clarification about the same four lines that I didn't actually give much of a thought about, as I wrote them: The Bridge, which, ironically, is supposed to be the most crucial and impacting part of a usual lyric. Here goes.

"I'm still mulling about for a mascot,
(would I find one in this century?)
Would I get help showing what I've got?
Or would she find something for me...?"

'Mascot'. Some sort of 'thing' or an 'emblem', something that helps fight the gap and helps relate in a Babel world. Something to counter the opposing forces, you know, create a crevice enough for affection to surface.

I could do with a good Blueberry Pie...


(With all credit to Wong Kar Wai and his visually poetic 'My Blueberry Nights'. Norah Jones, who sings with her eyes, Jude Law, who laughs with them, and of course... The ice-cream that tops this ravishing pie.)