Sunday, December 27, 2009

I Know The Meaning Of Life!

Actually just mine, it's art. the meaning to your life might have nothing at all to do with art.

in "my reasons" i had promised to elaborate on my love for art. but something i read a couple of weeks ago changed that. i came up with a line earlier this year that went, "art doesn't have to be true to be honest." but after reading what might be the most beautiful and profound piece ever, i changed it to "art doesn't have to be true but it has to be honest." i've read it about 5 times since. of course it has to do with art. it's moving, it's amazing, it's glorious, it's inspiring, it's enlightening, it's a million other such adjectives and it's the preface to my current buddy, "the nigger of the narcissus" by joseph conrad. it was written in 1897 so as you can imagine the word that you're surely thinking of right now was probably common place back then. and he only mentions that word in quotes otherwise he is usually called by his name in the narrative. anyway that's neither here nor there but i figured it might need some clarification. also no racist could write something so divine as you will soon find out.

the more i'm exposed to art the more i love and understand it. i can now find artfulness that i hadn't necessarily before in movies i had seen years ago or songs from my high school days. my senses have become more artful so my tastes have changed. even in observing women, my new artful eye can spot beauties my old eyes would've been blind to. and yes, observing women is an art form. (and don't worry i understand the fine line between observing and stalking :) ) i think that might become obvious looking through any art gallery around the world. obviously writing is the art form that chose me. i say it chose me because i personally would've chose to be a musician. that's the funny thing about art, it chooses you. something i might be drawn to might not say anything to you and vice versa. i always knew that i wanted art to have a strong presence in my life, just didn't know in what form. i neglected writing for many years because i loved music so much. unfortunately rhythm was never my strong suit.


before i keep going on and on i'll just get to the piece i was talking about. i'll be leaving the 2 introductory paragraphs and the concluding one. the first paragraph is about the work of art and the second of the artist and the last of the reward. if you want to read the entire thing you are more than welcome to e-mail me at bit.2@hotmail.com or message me on facebook and i will gladly send it to you. please read carefully, it might seem to be a difficult read at first but it really isn't. without further ado, the preface to "the nigger of the narcissus" by joseph conrad




A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line. and art itself may be defined as a single minded attempt to render the highest kind of justice to the visible universe, by bringing to light the truth, manifold and one, underlying its every aspect. it is an attempt to find in its forms, in its colours, in its light, in its shadows, in the aspects of matter and in the facts of life, what of each is fundamental, what is enduring and essential - their one illuminating and convincing quality - the very truth of their existence. the artist, then like the thinker or the scientist, seeks the truth and makes his appeal. impressed by the aspect of the world the thinker plunges into ideas, the scientist into facts - whence, presently, emerging they make their appeal to those qualities of our being that fit us best for the hazardous enterprise of living. they speak authoritatively to our common sense, to our intelligence, to our desire of peace or to our desire of unrest; not seldom to our prejudices, sometimes to our fears, often to our egoism - but always to our credulity. and their words are heard with reverence, for their concern is with weighty matters: with the cultivation of our minds and the proper care of our bodies; with the attainment of our ambitions; with the perfection of the means and the glorification of our precious aims.
it is otherwise with the artist
confronted by the same enigmatic spectacle the artist descends within himself, and in that lonely region of stress and strife, if he be deserving and fortunate, he finds the terms of his appeal. his appeal is made to our less obvious capacities; to the part of our nature which, because of the warlike conditions of existence, is necessarily kept out of sight within the more resisting and hard qualities - like the vulnerable body within the steel armour. his appeal is less loud, more profound, less distinct, more stirring - and sooner forgotten. yet its effect endures for ever. the changing wisdom of successive generations discards ideas, questions facts, demolishes theories. but the artist appeals to the part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom; to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition - and, therefore, more permanently enduring. he speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation - and to the subtle but invincible, conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts; to the the solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds men to each other, which binds together all humanity - the dead to the living and the living to the unborn. ...

... to arrest, for the space of a breath, the hands busy about the work of the earth, and compel men entranced by the sight of distant goals to glance for a moment at the surrounding vision of form and colour, of sunshine and shadows; to make them pause for a look, for a sigh, for a smile - such is the aim. difficult and evanescent and reserved only for a very few to achieve. but sometimes, by the deserving and the fortunate, even that task is accomplished. and when it is accomplished - behold! - all the truth of life is there; a moment of vision, a sigh, a smile - and the return to an eternal rest.


(it's like he read my mind)



i can't think of a better post to end off the year 2009 with. i thank you all that have been reading, from the bottom of my heart, for taking part in my art. i wish you all an artful 2010!

Saturday, December 26, 2009

I Don't Like To Dream About Getting Paid

One of my most recurring, day dream fantasies is to be a starving musician living in an unfurnished loft in the gutter side of downtown vancouver. living completely alone and detached from the world outside me. just my thoughts and window, my pen and pad, my keyboard and guitar. that's it. writing endless verses without so much as knowing the meaning of writer's block. hitting every combination of keys and strings never been heard, effortlessly. belting every human emotion never been felt, sublimely. striking inconceivable chords at the speed of sound straight to the heart, directly.
and after my unforeseen, unfortunate and mysterious demise, instead of band wagon jumpers only the truly touched will hang on to my work for a moment's peace. elliott smith style.

the meaning of shame is someone living your dream but them only seeing it as their nightmare.

we only see the pros of our aspirations, ignoring the cons. and the fortunate concentrate on the cons, sometimes fatally, ignoring the pros.

forever envious are we. forever envious is me.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Karma


I'm waiting for karma to catch up.

Maybe my wait is something karma ignores.

Maybe my wanting pay-back is something karma loathes.





Friday, December 18, 2009

Fall From Grace

I'm an ideal that can't live up to it's idea.

I tend to put people i love and respect on a pedestal. you might not see anything wrong with that except that when they fall off that horse, it hurts me more than it hurts them and i have no one to blame but myself for refusing to believe they're just human. on the other hand i know i've fallen from grace in front of more than just one pair of eyes.

underestimating someone can at least lead to a more obvious and distinct reward. personally, when i don't think much of someone and they prove me wrong with time, i feel bewildered and a great but weird respect for humanity. i'm not scared to admit i've done it more than once and some of those who i secretly held in contempt are now really good friends of mine. and i love them all the more for it.
sorry.

overestimating someone always leads to heartbreak but also an enlightenment that we can't help but appreciate. we glamorize them in our head. they intrigue us intellectually and/or emotionally and we look for things in them that bring us to their level. the level which is completely concocted through our own infatuation. sometimes it takes years for us to realize that that person wasn't really who we thought they were. something triggers this, an event, something said or something done. the love and respect is not lost but there's a difference in it. disappointment is inevitable. and really you can't be mad at them. all you can do is promise yourself to be more aware and to not let that happen again. i've made the mistake a million times in both overestimating and underestimating. i was never good at math.




Monday, December 14, 2009

Bound

We're ALL bound. we're ALL trapped. i'm no different. i realized this sometime towards the end years of my dismal high school performance. when i was in grade 13, ya laugh it up. when i was in grade 13 is when it really hit me the hardest. the boundaries we all set for ourselves. you know it all starts in the later years of elementary when we start to form cliques and we all become afraid to act differently from the "rules" of our cliques. we set our boundaries. before you feel like this is just a problem long forgotten, you're wrong. this is just where it starts... blatantly anyway.

high school i spent being "not me", well i didn't know "me". my hair has not felt a single drop of gel since, the earring came out and i stopped bathing in cologne. i stopped hiding my ideals and my idols that were not necessarily a part of the make up of the clique i belonged to. the fear of loving nirvana and the smashing pumpkins as much as pac and big faded. i no longer felt fear of letting it be known that i loved things that i wasn't necessarily supposed to love because of my previously set boundaries. FUCK YOU! (punk phase commenced)

The thing is, we form these brotherhoods as a need to belong. it's human nature to want to belong. which is fine but it's also in our nature to dismiss or condemn. we want to belong so much and when we find our haven the next step usually is to exclusify (is that a word?) ourselves. we're this group, you're that group. YOU SUCK! why do we do that? we're not satisfied simply being a part of a brotherhood so we have to antagonize the other brotherhood.

We started with land. i occupy this country, screw yours. and religion, this is mine, yours is absurd. and then even within our countries and religions the division never seems to end. i'm catholic, fuck protestant. i'm liberal, fuck conservatives. tables and chairs! in darfur where they're all muslims, the arabic muslims are wiping out the african muslims! (not that i'm upset with saddam being taken down but are the do-gooders really doing all that well when more obviously severe situations are getting worse?) the natives had it right. they considered land as we consider air. it was for everyone, no one could claim it. wishful thinking.

I'm not ashamed of being canadian by any means, there's a million worse places to be born. but the only reason i am has nothing to do with me as a person whatsoever. although being canadian has obviously had an effect on who i've become. i hope i'm not confusing you. my mom gave birth to me here, that's it. you can call me a sikh but that has nothing to do with me whatsover. my parents were sikh. i don't want to wear my jeans well below my ass, tell me i don't love hip hop. i hate indian pop culture, i find it to be idiotic, so when i express this view, i'm whitewashed. you see where i'm going with this? why can't i be part of this as well as part of that? why are there boundaries withholding me from letting me be completely me? why can't i be both? why can't we all be one and at the same time be different? because we're bound. like Common says, "i just wanna BE."

suggestion for a new year's resolution: BE BOUND-LESS!








Monday, December 7, 2009

Merry Christmas!

I understand the irony of this title considering my last post but it seems christmas has nothing to do with religion anymore. before i go on a boring rant about the commercialization of christmas, which has been done to death and no one seems to care anyway. that's not what i'm here for today. for the first time for as far back as i can remember, i'm somewhat enjoying the holiday season.... so far. well, it's not that i never enjoy the holidays, i just never enjoyed it as much as the rest seem to. aside from the parties, the winter has almost always had nothing but heart break, depression and loneliness for me. it's like no matter how great of a year i might be having, it all seems to start crumbling towards the end. and the next year usually starts that way as well. i'm simply refusing to let that happen this year. simply by not letting anything get me down. it works, trust me.
Now i'm not that person that we all know that hates christmas out of spite. we all have at least one scrooge in our life that refuses to enjoy the holidays just because happy people annoy them. that's fine if you're that person, to each their own. i'm merely pointing out that i'm not that guy. i have reasons. one year i found out i had cancer. one year i was completely broke working minimum wage as a security guard sitting in my car in front of a liquor store, every night, all night, with no heat in my car and barely any money to fix that problem. one year i was told my grandfather (who i mention in "my reasons") was ill beyond repair and of course by february he was no longer with us. you get the idea. it just seems as if bad news always waits for the winter to come a' knockin'.

This year, however, i'm hell bent on enjoying the winter. i've actually gotten some bad news already but it was more like disappointing news rather than bad and pales in comparison to anything in the past and can hardly be considered a reason to think of jumping. i'm kind of scared the bad news might just be coming around the mountains in search of my chimney so i'm nailing mine shut with a piece of plywood. blocking santa is just a risk i'll have to take to enjoy christmas. it feels good to go from "bah humbug!" to "ho, ho, ho!!!!". i hope this turns into an annual affair.
stay tuned for the month of january for a series reflecting on changes.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE!!!

Sunday, December 6, 2009

The Miseducation of Amman Parmar


A dear friend of mine recently e-mailed me an essay he wrote about fate (very well written btw) and it got me ta thankin. This subject is ALWAYS in the back of my mind. I spend a lot of time thinking about these kinds of things, fate, religion, spirituality, philosophy, values, morals, ethics, the suns, the moons, the gods and the earths, to be or not be type shit. You know, always trying to "find yourself". You put all these things together, sort of cut n paste your likes and dislikes and you try to figure something out that you think defines you. THIS IS ME! How many of us can REALLY say that? I'm almost always unsure about myself. The only thing I'm sure of is I love writing and women, THAT'S IT!


This problem begins at birth. You're being taught all these things by your parents before you even know how to talk or walk. You're observing religion or lack there of since birth. If your parents are religious, you're automatically now part of that religion. You get baptised or they circumcise the poor jewish kids or they sacrifice a goat for you or whatever they might be into. As you grow you're learning from your parents' words and actions which then kind of force their values and morals and ethics upon you. You go to school and the teacher teaches you to share and shit. You see? Like if no one ever told you the name of the colour "blue" would you still call "blue", "blue"? Probably not (well, I would because it only makes sense ;D). You would make up your own word for the colour "x". Ya, now you see.


But then a quarter of your life goes by and you start to think "wait a minute, this part doesn't make sense to me". This is where the problem gets tough. Now you're stuck with all these ideas and ideals and knowledge and myth and if's, but's and maybe's. So you're trying to sort through an eternal cipher of questions with very few, if any answers. In fact, you start to come across more questions WHILE questioning and never even getting a single answer. But we end up with some "maybe's".


Now you're halfway through life and you're only more confused. So you wish you just followed some faith or rule or ideal blindly because it's a hell of a lot easier. A lot of us do this already but some of us choose not to. Or now some of your "maybe's" have turned into "probably's" and those eventually turn into "certainly's" but these "certainties" are still "maybes" in the real world outside your own head. For instance, no one can really say there's no God just like no one can say there is. I'm not sure of the accuracy of this statistic but for life on earth to have started there was a 30 trillion (the trillions is where im not sure of the accuracy of this stat, i tried looking it up but couldn't word it right and i was losing my train so if u know, do tell) to one shot for all the things to come together to create a single celled organism. So ya, maybe GOD made that happen OR it was just CHANCE! And who knows if God's the good guy anyway? What if God's actually the bad guy, i mean there's just as many bad things and people as good in this world right? Or maybe he's neutral like sweden and he's just trying to say, "hey, leave me out of this, man. You caused your problems, you figure 'em out." Or what if God's just some punk kid and we're his toys that he didn't want to clean up and we're just stuck here until his mom tells him to. Armeggedon anyone?


I'm personally leaning towards no God, nothingness, randomness, it just is but that's me.... now. None of us will know until we're dead. I'll be on my death bed either seeing the white light or thinking "FUCK! i wasted my life thinking about shit that doesn't matter."

..........flatline............


LOVE, PEACE AND UNDERSTANDING! That's all that matters. The rest is brain excercise.
(originally posted on facebook on oct 29, 09)

Saturday, December 5, 2009

So I Says To Myself, I Says...


The other day i looked in the mirror and for the first time ever I didn't wink at myself or throw up the "dubs" while smiling foolishly at my lame attempt to humour myself. I do this EVERY time i see myself in the mirror when alone. So what do i do?

I continue to brush my teeth and ask myself "what do I think, I'm better than myself?"
"No, its just that i've been doing that everytime I'm alone and in front of a mirror my ENTIRE FUCKING LIFE! I think it's time to grow up and let it go." I replied.
"But it's become part of my everday routine, what else would i do?"
"Nothing, no faces"
"What about the wink and the gun, I haven't done that in ages"
"No, cold turkey, no faces"
"What's the big deal anyway?"
"I'm not a kid anymore, winking at myself and throwing up gang signs at myself is not normal"
"Sure it is, I'm pretty sure other people do it"
"No, they don't, I'm weird, I need to stop being weird"
"Weird's cool"
"No, weird is not cool, weird people are never cool, weird people are only cool to other weird people who think you're weirder than they are"
"I'm not going to stop, I don't care"
"I need to see a doctor, people that do these kinds of things are either on crack or mentally unstable"
"I'm exaggerating"
"No, seriously, I should be instintutionalized"
"I'm being dramatic"
"What do i know?"
"As much as I know and I know this isn't normal, it's OCD, people take medicine for this non sensical behaviour"
"Whatever, I'm not gonna stop, it makes me happy for like 2 seconds, what's wrong with that?"
"IT'S RETARDED!!!"
"YOU'RE RETARDED!!!!"
"I'M YOU!!!"
"whatever"
"just stop"


I did the wink and the gun the next time i saw myself in the mirror because I hadn't done that one in ages.

(originally posted on facebook on aug 13, 09)