In the forever quest of finding where my true potential lies in, I went back to poetry in the past few days. After writing a few of my own, I, in a truly eureka moment, struck upon the possibility of exploring poems of better known writers. Not that I haven’t read some before, but have always conveniently ignored the poets of yesteryears, as I’ve always found them to be too rigid in their structure (read as — can’t understand shit). So I decided to dust the cobwebs and get some olden times poetry, American and otherwise, and a poetry handbook better explaining all the structure I’ve been avoiding in the farce of belonging to the modern genre of poets … :) Needless to say, I’m enjoying the time; sometimes the handbook makes me feel that I’m back at school, but I’m sure its well worth the effort.

Of course, only god can surpass my planning abilities (lets not talk about implementation please; I come from the UT CS department). In the wake of a few good friends leaving for India this past weekend, I realized I might have a truck load of free time in my hand, which I might rather use for “creative” purposes. So I wondered, as I often do, why not continue my guitar learning, which was left abandoned at infancy, along with some poetry on the side, and continue the quest towards a leaner/meaner figure as well! My calculations pertaining to time made me believe I’ll have time for all these and more. Of course, I later realized that nothing much really changed in my scheme of things (with respects to the free time), and I’ve been reduced to a single threaded machine that I previously was.

With Christmas down the corner, society (read – my close friends) will ask the same trite questions to me. To be subtle and artistic, let me rephrase what they usually ask – “why don’t you move your lazy fat ass and come for some trip?” Not that I’m averse of trips, the thought of another trip with the New-Years NY trip round the corner gives me the chills. As I might have hinted before in my blog somewhere, I need some time to myself once a while. I’m a very complex creature, as you might have noticed, and in order to figure out all intricacies, I need some quality introspection time. Many questions arise – “What should I do in life?”, “Which movie should I watch next?”, “I shouldn’t have stared at that girl like a dead man with eyes open”, “Should I sleep for more than 6 hours or not?” and so on. Without the answers to such questions, I can’t ask more questions; so I have to spend time with myself, which essentially means I am usually not incredibly enthusiastic about trips, especially not 2 in a span of 2 weeks! It should be clear from the above that this has nothing to do with inertia, lethargy, and other so called vices.

Also, this past weekend, Gorhe decided to pay us a visit. Well, he was coming for someone’s (that’s a secret you guys …) graduation and realized that his legs would be ours if he doesn’t drop in. After the usual trudy’s-giri, & hara-kiri, it was time for him to leave. Just when we were resigning to the thought that Gorhe might have calmed down a bit, he blows us away with this incredible plan of tickets ( the details of which are too complex for me to write ), where basically he and his friend were leaving for NY in two different flights spaced 3 hours from each other. Well, you might ask, why do I care? … because it needed two separate cars, one of which might have been mine. Well, trouble was averted when his flight was canceled, and Ashwin was awake/gracious/enthu enough to drive twice to the airport. So, that’s that.

Interesting how my train of thought pretty much derailed from its initial destination of poetry enlightenment, to an account of daily chores. Well, not so interesting on the other hand …

I was in the midst of writing a highly intellectual blog entry about how “chill through spine” might be a glorification of a certain liquid state of affairs, resulting from a barrage of horror movies, when a good friend of mine, during some conversation, bluntly put forth the premise of how movies could be equated to being a waste of time. Of course, this blog isn’t a direct consequence of the statement, I’ve been pondering oh-so-often writing about the issue, but it certainly acted as a catalyst.
Obviously, this is not an innuendo by any means; I’m utterly incapable (in terms of both literary and intellectual abilities) of such high-level constructs of cynicism against peers.

I could easily just replace ‘movies’ by ‘books’ in this entry, but I’d rather be slightly prudent and be presumptuous about a topic that I’ve relatively more experience with (note the emphasis on relative). Books have their own place of course, there is no better means of deconstruction of a story, scenario, or character as a great writer can achieve. However, I am of the opinion that, successfully expressing all possible complexities in a span of a few hours, is a greater (and more difficult) achievement. Obviously, artists in both realms have different means at their disposal to exploit; if one has the advantage of loquacity, the other is armed with the power to tingle multiple senses extraneously. Anyways, comparisons among the two art forms is a topic of its own, let me not digress, and rather try to absolve films (great ones for that) from the aforementioned allegation.

I don’t deny that certain movies are nothing but a gross waste of time, and I don’t have a problem with people stating the same. What I do have a problem with however, is generalizing the premise of a movie, any movie, to be a waste of time.

However one might try to glorify commercial cinema (commercially viable I mean), there is not much doubt that the truly great movies are the ones from the parallel genre. Movies from the intellectuals: directors that are constantly facing a paradox of acceptance of their ideas and imaginations by a wider audience, for a constant want of appreciation where on the other hand, they couldn’t care less about the commercial success of their ventures. Movies where clichés are not thrown around like peanuts, instead a few hours are meant to leave an indelible impression on the audience.

What constitutes a great movie? A compelling story is certainly an advantage, but I’ve inevitably discovered that great movies are considered those which are reflections of the artist making the film, most usually the director. Great films are akin to philosophy; making you think, appreciate and self-discover.

Not to mention, there is some sort of sadistic pleasure one drives out of a surreal, cryptic, perverse, ambiguous movie that is open to interpretations; that drives you wild, constantly in the search of achieving parity with the director … and I’m sure the feeling’s quite prevalent considering such movies are alluded to be masterpieces from their creators, be it in the form of Persona by Bergman, Interiors by Allen or Mulholland Drive by Lynch.

Great movies are ones which consist of unforgettable (be it gratifying or harrowing) images, ones that contain stylistic statements probably resulting from personal references and beliefs to an extent that every scene has an identity of its own, carrying a mark of the director with it, for instance, you can identify a Bergman or Scorsese movie quite easily without exercising too many grey cells.

It is stupid (for lack of a more subtle term) to categorize the movies I’m talking about to be inaccessible. Inaccessible, to one’s sentiments, for reasons of alien dialect, austere plots, cultural references, cryptic ideas, etc. With the risk of sound preposterous, I would attribute such illusions to be an inability (probably resulting from inertia) to embrace a movie to be an art form, with all its dimensions, and not just a titular existence meant only for purposes of senseless entertainment.

I’m not saying I’m completely oblivious of the horrendously corny, stupidly slapstick, glaringly redundant movie that often comes out, and I’m certainly not proud of my inability to be so. Everything you see, everything you read, must ideally leave an impression on you; make you grow, realize your mistakes, or consider a new approach to life or a circumstance, marvel at the beauty of the artist’s vision, or his ability to implement it so flawlessly on celluloid; or what the heck, simply shed a tear or two, from sadness or joy.

Anything else, yes, is certainly a “waste of time” …