time of the season

A long time ago, I was giving a junior from college a ride to a common destination. I didn't know her very well and we didn't have much to talk about - or maybe we did, but we'd never bothered to speak to each other, so I thought, perhaps now would be a good way to find out. For some odd reason I skipped the small-talk altogether and said, "It's a good time to be alive, you know. It's a good time in the history of the earth, for change, for art." And she laughed and said, "Are you trying to make conversation?"
And well, truth to tell I was just making conversation, but this heading is more than just passing fancy to me. Growing up we'd play this game: if there was a time and a place in the history of the world where you could choose to be, where would you be? And recently, I've played this game again. Once with a sixty year old neurologist, and again with a twenty-three year old literature student. The former gave me two or three periods - I don't remember them all, but they sounded fairly cerebral (excuse the pun); he also damned this age to hell because he thinks it's degenerating into barbarianism (and he isn't wrong). The latter said 1930s New York (because of Sinatra, the music, the writing, the alcohol, the parties, etcetera) , or 1950s New York (because of Kerouac and the Beat poets and everything previous), or 1960s America (for obvious reasons, and everything previous) ... and I've had my own fantasies, but for a while I haven't wanted to be alive at any other time than now. And it's precisely because we're degenerating into barbarianism - in politics, in discourse, in popular culture, in daily manners, in economics, what-have-you. But, there is a counter to this and effective or otherwise, it exists and it's popular, perhaps even populist. I mean, if the world was doing well, what would there be to do? It's only because we're facing nine-hundred different crises that our mettle is tested - our own heights and depths is what we're facing - rise or fall, but you can't stand still.
I was feeling fairly disillusioned one drunk midnight and I was bemoaning the status quo of this world, and how nothing really changes, everything is corrupt, blah blah boo-hoo! And I frustrated a smarter man with my whining and he finally said, "Look, change takes a long time! And every day there're people out there on the fringes chipping away, trying to effect change - they're doing good work." (Those weren't his words, but that's what he was saying.) The Doctors/Engineers/Journalists-without-Borders groups came to mind immediately and I realised he was right. Members of these groups are attacked, harassed, kidnapped, threatened and even murdered fairly regularly - not just by militants, and warlords, but also governments, who could do with a little starvation here and a little disease there, and a little silence/darkness here and complete isolation/lack of utilities there - because these are the things they use to control people. If there were volunteers providing these services, these assholes would actually have to do some work instead of terrorising the populace with guns and propaganda. It's similar to the reason that the Indian government hounds Naxals all over the country - I mean, other than the fact that they're armed insurrectionists threatening the fabric of our great democracy, Naxals are rumoured to provide health-care, education, and law and order in the areas they control. The reason we have so many NGOs in this country is because the government has withdrawn.

But I want to talk about something else today, actually.

When I was at college, one of my professors said that computers had effected a 'paradigm shift', meaning our world-view had been altered. Of course, in many ways, computers are thoroughly useless to most of the world: no small farmer tilling someone else's land for less-than-daily wage gives a shit about email or internet porn or blogs. But for people like us, who can use the words 'paradigm shift', they're very cool things. We can communicate with each other at any time, from anywhere provided the necessary hardware exists, in a number of ways. We can talk or write to each other, watch videos, read comic books, make music, and even make love remotely. Like Warren Ellis says, we are science fiction beings already, but just not the way we imagined we would be. Many systems have suffered because of the internet. Piracy is a big problem and its biggest victims are the corporations that distribute and disseminate, I think, and their response has been to squeeze the sources dry. They oppose 'free'-dom (don't excuse the pun here, accept it) because they have a vested interest to do so. It's fairly understandable, but as a result the product has suffered. Either because corrupt versions flood the distribution networks or the network itself is buggered.
But there's a bright side to this as well. The hierarchies, on one level, are breaking down: it doesn't matter whether you're a big artist or an unknown. Let's say more people enter the industry on a local level, for the local scene, and with the number of localities there are, suddenly the scene overall is much much larger than we imagined. Everybody's on the internet, and the internet is pregnant with possibility; the choices are that many more. I have a better chance to support new work, or work that I think speaks to me, than I did before. Remember when you were down at a local pub or whatever and the bands were pissing the hell out of you because they all sounded the same and you wondered what the hell happened to good taste? (I think for the most part it wasn't the bands that were to blame but rather what was allowed to influence them.) Well, now, if you hate the local band, or the mainstream monopolies, just browse the internet and you're bound to find someone who makes noise you love and adore. And just sending their noise around to your friends is a way to support them. It's not the greatest help in the world, but not everyone has reduced morals like you, and someone might actually care to pay them for their service. If you facilitate that, that's not too awful. So here's me doing my measly bit.

Welcome the Ocean Band, boys and girls.

Their new album, Couch Dictators, is almost ready for release from Interrobang records; the artwork is on its way. I wish you could download the album, but if you didn't do it yesterday (and that's my fault) then I'm afraid you're out of luck. But not that out of luck, of course. I wouldn't tease you if you're interested and leave you with an erection. If you want the album, message or write to me and I'll send it along electronically. The Ocean Band is a cosmopolitan band - I mean that they don't belong to one particular anything (race, nationality, discipline, politics), except perhaps the sound they make together. And right now, they're scattered across the globe doing their own things, following their own compulsions.
I love their sound. It's loud and full and it's rock 'n' roll. It could be something you could have picked up thirty years ago, but really, you couldn't. It has a freshness to it that I really appreciate. It's like listening to the White Stripes for the first time, because they've bridged a huge gap in the development of rock 'n' roll music (that I think grunge altered and then hung us over with, so we narcotised ourselves with Keane and Coldplay). The singer has a very different voice, his own voice, and the bass is bloody cool too. The guitar slashes, it's picked, it's distorted; the drums and the keyboards are solid; they're a pleasure to listen to, if you liked what your parents heard but wished the musicians were younger. Okay, I admit a lot of our parents listened to Boney M. and Abba (not my parents, by the way, but I don't ascribe good taste to everybody), but I mean the good stuff.

Angshu Chatterjee, the guitarist:
me: how did you record this album? aren't you guys all scattered?
Angshu: well, everything was recorded before the scattering happened or, at least, most of it but the mixing took ages because of that; collating e-mails and comments and so on. it's so much quicker to have five guys in a studio.
me: i think it's a really good thing it's a long album. an album that runs less than an hour is like fastfood sometimes.
Angshu: it kind of goes against the trend. the ubiquity of myspace and itunes and so forth ensures that we are moving back towards an age of singles over full length LPs.
me: i know what you mean. i read a little thingie on sound technology and kind of music it facilitates/breeds. it's a tiny snippet. i think it's a great thing your album's long, though. it demands attention. people are really lazy with appreciation, these days. it's a 'pay attention, fucker'. it's good. and it's well balanced so far.
Angshu: thanks. there're so many changes coming up though. in content, in distribution. it's a weird time in the industry. recording costs have plummeted, meaning that there's a lot more opportunity to actually finish an album for a small band, without the attendant pressures of trying to have a "hit". distribution is a big sinking ship, which means that, no matter how many good albums there are, they won't go beyond a few hundred people. predictably enough, i have long and complicated opinions on the state of the industry. join the forums! we need new people, really.
me: i know what you mean. the work we do, no matter how well we think of it, only so many people see it. trying to get it some exposure is tough.
Angshu: yes. exactement. and it takes more creative thinking than ever, because the established ways have just been wildly upset. not one major label made a profit last year. of the magazines, only spin made a profit. it's a weird and wonderful time

Things are changing in how we make and receive art, and that in itself is changing art. Notice how pop music isn't as shitty as it used to be. I'm not overwhelmed by boy-bands and busty blondes that sound like cows in lust anymore - they're around, but they're negligible as they rightfully should be. TV is getting better, not that a lot of people are watching. Great shows don't run as long as they should, but that they run at all is fantastic. Thank god for HBO/Showtime. Shows like Dexter and Weeds are doing pretty well.
Now, I don't download what I can buy. What I can't buy because I don't have access to is fair game, as far as I'm concerned. I conveniently blame whoever's responsible for not providing me with what I want: it's their fault. The champions of the free-market aren't really interested in a 'free' market or demand/supply, anyway - they're interested in profits and monopolies. Fuck them, I say. The world is changing and changing fast. It's strange and shocking - let's keep it that way.

friday

It rained today and I was glad. It was still humid, though. The air is so thick sometimes that it's unbelievable that we're near desert. At other times it seems like desert, with the dry heat and the dry wind and dry dust, not to mention the dry dust storms.
Have I mentioned my pump isn't working? We're drawing water out of the reservoir two buckets at a time. I haven't had running water in nearly a week and the landlady's absent. I don't know what to do really, because I don't know whether I need to find an electrician or a plumber, and are there regulars that the landlady uses? It's a predicament of sorts, I admit.

We did our tenth reading yesterday. We read Russians, or rather, adaptations of them. It went off pretty well on all counts. We had a good audience, attentive, and for me that was the best thing because it means that... well, we have an attentive audience. I love Theatre because the whole illusion is founded on an understanding: the performers must have conviction, and the audience must believe. It's easier said than explained or carried out, of course, but as I see it the relationship between performers and audience is one of cooperation. As an audience member I must not refuse an illusion if it is 'honest', that is, if it believes in itself; as an actor it is my responsibility to make sure that what I do is not a lie, is only just guile and artifice and has no faith. An attentive audience means that you're performing for people who want to see it. They aren't there because it's free, but because it has some small worth.
I have this one (but not just one) romantic notion: after we'd done our first reading, Raghu'd remarked that it was a good start to something that could become important, and Neel countered with '...you know, 20 people is not a revolution.' And I thought, Okay, so we offer quiet, dreamy evenings with a number of voices, a few stories and a little light music. Someone who likes it as something removed from daily experience, which might possibly make daily experience a little more pleasant (or bearable, depending on your bent of mind), steps back into the world and has a macroscopically similar week, or fortnight, with the same endless baggage. Whatever impression we make on this person has dissolved in the trudge. But if they come back, then they have us on their side, and we have them. And we have a relationship, which we must honour from then on. We do not waste their time, and they do not waste ours. And in six months, a year, two years - it's possible that we're doing something that is important. I don't mean that what we're doing is 'theatre with a social purpose', but what I'm saying is that Theatre is a social purpose. Respect art and art will respect you.

Okay, these are bunch of pictures I took.
This is Neel reading. He's writing some stuff now, generally, so this is what he does when he's not grimly hunched over the computer. I'm somewhat lying - this is what he was doing today. Friday. Generally, he wanders about and drinks lemon squash. So, if anyone's wondering what makes him so smart, that's it.

This is Dusty Bosom. At her feet is the ball. Take the ball and throw it at her. If you hit her left bosom, you get 10 points. If you hit her right bosom, you get 15 points. If you hit her in the crotch, you get 20 points. BUT, if you hit any of the mice, you get -5. Hee.

Nuts.

nexus the first

Okay, here's some stuff:

This is Neg Dupree. There's a show that airs in Britain called Balls of Steel, with a section titled "Neg's Urban Sports". Let us play these games. Anyone interested in bandying together, let me know. I'll hold the camera.
Okay, so in the bag we have Big Stranger Rodeo, Urban Skittles, and Make Them Move. There are many more available, so I urge everyone to take a gander. And when the fluff and feathers have settled, go to YouTube and watch the other videos as well.
These are, of course, a few years old. I spent a little while a few evenings back showcasing this stuff to friends, you know, showing off rediscovered treasures. This is all that you need to start knowing this man. Let him inspire you. Society needs him.

This is an article from Harper's magazine that a friend passed on to me. It's by Johnathan Lethem, and it's about plagiarism. I'm with him on the issue wholeheartedly. 'Originality' is a mirage. A work of art will influence others, who show the work respect by referring, borrowing, transforming, adapting and/or developing it. It cannot be bound by laws of ownership because the moment it enters the public imagination, it belongs to the community. And isn't that why we do what we do? To be remembered?
He makes a good and necessary distinction between piracy and plagiarism as well. I don't think I want to comment on that, because I'm mulling it over at the moment, and it is worthy of thought.
Anyway, here's the essay: The ecstasy of influence: A plagiarism by Johnathan Lethem. I think I'm going to subscribe to Harper's.

Here's a site I found thanks to Warren Ellis, you may notice I've tapped into his blog-feed on the right here. I urge reading him. He's a famous comic book writer, in case you aren't familiar with him. Look him up. I'll give you a little peek - an excerpt from yesterday's post reads:

It was then I knew I had to kill everyone in the city. With my penis.

Don't panic. He was quoting from a story. It's the post titled "Rupture", if anyone's interested.

But anyway, the site I wanted to introduce you to was Ectoplasmosis. Check it out. It's a site full of bizarre pictures, artwork, and whatnot; nothing ordinary. They might be real life images, or they might be generated elsewhere - it's nice not to know. It makes the living world a little more pregnant and promising.

Well, I hope that's enough.

The end. Bugger off.

Yerma! No, Yer Ma!

I didn't watch all of the Spanish Embassy's Kusum Haider-directed production of Lorca's Yerma. It played at the Stein Auditorium at the Habitat Center late last month, and I was thankful for the air-conditioning. I watched three scenes, the first three, and they were adequate. I don't know what they were adequate for, really - they were adequate for me to stop caring about air-conditioning. And in that sense I suppose it was an important play for me; air-conditioning is a close concern.

I should say at the outset that I have not read Lorca's Yerma, and I have no comment to make on the historical background, the authenticity of costumes and scenery, the singing, or any such like matters. I don't know enough about them and I don't think they're gravely important to understanding or enjoying a play, unless the play's about something overwhelmingly inescapable, like the World Wars. The most I could say is that I know a little Spanish (or I used to), but what the hell does that have to do with anything? Well, nothing.

The set was simple, and the design was promising I thought. There was something that looked like a haycart on stageleft, there were platforms of various levels, there were wooden benches and shelves (I think) on which were placed other properties - all of them black or brown. Now I've thought about this particular aspect for a while: I'm not opposed to challenging conventional idiom; meaning that all sets need not be brightly painted boudoirs or gaily bustling streets or any other kind of setting made loud and solid and real with larger-than-life colours or effects. All sets need not be puffing up their chests on stage, like things in children's pop-up books, and this set certainly wasn't vulgar. It was simple and basic and solid. But perhaps that was the problem. It looked too immovable, too static; and the action that occurred in and around it was much louder and very obvious.
The actors didn't seem comfortable with the set: often sitting a little awkwardly, or far too comfortably, working through it physically at a pace that tried to be dramatic but came off as contrived, perhaps because of the effort. It seemed that the direction the action had received ran contrary to the mood of the setting. Things were dull and unglamorous (in the way that new houses adopting 'Colonial' facades look Colonial), and that made sense to me because it was presenting a version of peasant life. However, the peasants were full of lusty life and loud voices (cannot fault them on volume) and louder performances and really white clothing. I mean, really really white clothing.

The story is that Yerma, a young wife, is childless and upset that her husband avoids sleeping with her, preventing her from embracing the only identity that would give her life any meaning at all, that of Mother.
In the first scene, she sees her husband off to the fields, and then bittersweetly examines how empty her happy life is - she has a kind husband who she likes well enough, but they have no issue, so woe is her. A cheerful unmarried bachelor shepherd, who she had a crush on eons ago, tells her that the only reason she doesn't have children is that she's not trying hard enough. As Scene One ends, she says through tear-welling eyes, yes, I've got to TRY.
This last word should be echoing in your mind now because of the emphasis that was put on it. I imagine Lorca might have meant it to be a little more wry, but I haven't read the play so I don't know what he meant. But if he meant to be sentimental... he should have stuck to poetry. (Although, I think he wrote plays for a living, so... for anyone feeling righteous about the fact that I'm being irreverent, heh, remember that Lorca is an immortal poet and I'm no one, so he gets the last laugh anyway.) I'd like to mention that the character of the cheerful bachelor shepherd I identified immediately as either the love-interest/coveter-of-neighbourhood-wives or the village idiot. It turned out he was both. He was made of wood. Not a bad singing voice, though.
Fine, I'll compromise - he was the harmonium.
In the second scene, while wading through a forest of tall grass, Yerma meets the 'Old Woman' who's had a lot of sex all her life but is unwilling to tell Yerma any secrets. Yerma is hopelessly naive and the Old Woman gives her half-baked ideas about desire and adultery and then leaves. A few other girls come giggling into this clearing, and Yerma reminds the flakiest of the lot of the latter's duties as a mother and the girl runs home to take care of the baby she's left there. But, not before she delivers all her lines to the audience. Yerma then sits down to eat with a friend right there in the woods, and over lunch she tries desperately to have a conversation. Except this friend makes the weirdest jokes I have ever heard every two sentences, and then falls into a fit of laughter like the Wicked Witch of the West. It was like we were watching The Lion King and the hyena queen had taken over. And it was the exact same laughter every time. Bloody uncanny. Anyway, the friend leaves and Yerma sings a duet with her cheerful bachelor shepherd. He comes singing from off-stage and of course she's surprised it's him, and when they talk, she feels a connection. Then her husband shows up and tells her to go home.
The last scene I watched was a washerwoman scene. There were a fair number of people on stage, all dressed in white, arguing and laughing and generally being naughty gossipy village women washing clothes at the stream. They say that Yerma and Victor, the bachelor shepherd, meet alone a lot and that proves that they're having sex (because everyone knows that Yerma's husband Juan is not having sex with her - he's either shy or sexless, I couldn't tell from the story). And they sing and laugh and argue and fight - "how dare you insult my friend, you foul-mouthed goatlover!" scratch hiss (except pretend-scratch and pretend-hiss, so really just half-complete unmotivated motions that begin in earnest only when the combatants have been separated) - and complain in their immaculately white costumes until... well, I don't know, I left.

Of course, I'll tell you why. It was like a high-school play. The cues were slow, the speech stunted, the performances badly directed (and some were bad dissemblers), and the tone of the play lacked abstraction with respect to the themes. They were all bound together superficially in a bundle and dropped. It felt like the director had looked at the whole knot of things Lorca had given her to play with, decided she liked all of them, and threw them all in without doing the hard work of presenting them with some integrity - it'll work out, she might've thought to herself, and done nothing further. The performances lacked commitment, but I'm being overharsh when I say this. I mean that it seemed like the characters in Lorca's script, being a hundred times and spaces removed from who and what we are, were perceived as being distant and lost; and the expanse between us sitting here at the Habitat Center New Delhi and them Spanish peasants from hundreds of years ago was bridged by a poor, poor engineer. It seemed lazily constructed and was completely unsophisticated.
A play or a production does not have to be incredibly intellectually sophisticated, but it needs to show some sensitivity to not only the actors but also the audience. It seemed to me that the play was reduced from a work of an artist to an impression of a trite What I Did On My Holidays, Isn't That A Charming Tale It Has The Whole Panorama Of Human Experience In It! It felt like the whole craft hadn't just been disrespected but also disregarded. I had the distinct impression that afterwards, at the cast party or whatever, the performance would be forgotten, and the conversation would find its way to whatever conversation is made at high-society cocktail parties - the occasion would be that friends, family or lovers were acting in a play, indulging in a hobby. Forget that a piece of creative work was exhibited, or that talents were exploited to create it, or that commitments were made to deliver Lorca's Yerma to an audience, a community. Forget that the work of the most famous name on the brochure, 'Lorca' was used for what can roughly be called a parade; or that repeating these motions over and over and over again in all likelihood stunts the sensibilities of a willing audience to what they remember seeing or doing when they were adolescents; or that watching the play is neither infuriating nor enjoyable, but merely bland. Forget all that. I suppose it's worth forgetting anyway.

But, in the afterplay, I was treated to a Peanut Butter Malt at the American Diner (to make me feel better) and I must say that that particular frosty beverage is just incredible.

Now I know this is not the ideal theatre review - it might be a bit Gonzo - but this is an experiment that I will continue. To articulate as clearly as possible why I liked or did not like something. People don't do that often enough.

location

It's almost been a year since I moved to Delhi, and I can smell it in the air. There's a smell to every season, and the smell of dry pavement and air-conditioned car deodorant must be the smell of midsummer in Delhi. I cleaned my apartment, my rooms, this weekend - bathroom, kitchen, bedroom and... well, that's all there is to it. I even took out the clips and cutouts and coloured paper from the keeping-box and stuck them up on the walls, just to mark territory, like. I've been a bit of a vagabond until recently, and it's comforting to have a cave.

My apartment is a cave. Enter through the back-alley, see the children of the presswallah play and fight and squeak and giggle 'hi', cross the landing at the back of the house through clotheslines and the widow's saris, step into the kitchen. This is my cave and I won't describe it. It gets no direct sunlight and it can be frosty come winter, but it's almost perfect now. There is no heat in my house. There is no cooler, either, but I don't know whether I need one yet. I tell everyone that the entrance is from the alley at the back, but many a delivery-boy or delivery-man has knocked on my landlady's door instead. The only way to get people to remember is to say not that the entrance is at the rear (which is bad enough), but to say that there is a 'backside entry' that must be used. It's on my pizzeria delivery bill.

At the end of the alley where it spills you out onto the road, there is a huge Porsche Cayenne. Next to it stands a Bentley, and opposite the Bentley sits a Jaguar. I point to them every day, almost. It's a pointless ritual because I'll never drive those cars and I'm not that fascinated anyway. It is exciting though when silver Porsches and yellow Lamborghinis roar past you every now and then, but then they're gone and I'm never sure why I worked myself up.

Delhi's a city for the rich and it's here in the capital that the differences and divisions between our several classes scare me, because there is 'no connect' (as they say here) anywhere between. The strata hold, seemingly impervious to any traffic of any kind. It's disconcerting, because you've got to serve somebody or get served. Sometimes it seems to me that people would never clean their floors because it would leave the floor-cleaner with nothing to do. Most chauffeurs uncannily have the same name: 'Driverji'. My Driverji-for-an-hour one morning insisted that the young lady in red trying to cross the street must be a whore, and I, working in the theatre, must enjoy the company of a better quality of lady (meaning, a better quality of whore) quite frequently. I don't know where to start or end a conversation. I think business to get by.

And business is great. I love it. Nothing better in this world than to get dressed funny and sweat it out in front of hundreds of people. There's no business like show business like no business I know. I love working with who I work and I love doing what I do, although I've spent the last few days writing proposal after proposal because the business of art has to be justified. I went and watched a play a few days ago called Yerma. I have much to say about it, but no no, it's not the time. The last play I watched in this city was almost a year ago. It was three young men performing The Complete Works of Shakespeare. It was a cock-up of sorts, but not their fault really, and reportedly I watched the worst show they did. Directors are missing-in-action, and there's no real criticism of the work. Most people writing reviews are neither practitioners, nor particularly of the dramatic bent. There is no appreciation of craftsmanship - and I don't mean this in a sour grapes kind of way; I mean, that no one cares to understand and hence, they cannot critique, they can only comment and what is that ultimately? 'I liked it' or 'I didn't like it'. No one articulates why, as if it is unrequired or that they have no responsibility to articulate why. It's an article in a paper filling space that they would have filled with advertisements if they could but they can't, I guess, because the advertisers don't really care an awful much about these rags dressed in letters anyway. It's apathetic and dull.

So, I will care to articulate, I think. I would have said all I wanted to about Yerma right now, but I've forgotten the programme at home. I shouldn't cock-up my impressions of a cock-up - that would be confusing for posterity (because three hundred years later, someone will find this blog and read these very words, blah blah). So, review of Yerma next.

Anyway. Welcome to my watermelon patch.