Saturday, March 4

I want some answers

I can’t find my crowquill.
It’s what I write and draw in my sketchbook with.

Can’t find it.

I know it’s somewhere around but I can’t see it.
I wish they had some sort of microchip sensors or something that I could put on my small possessions to trace them because

I have a knack of losing things.

Isn’t there some sort of an award for the best thing loser or something?
Well, there should be one.

I’d get it.




A friend wants to write a book without bothering about grammar. He says he wants to write the way he thinks and he doesn’t think in commas and fullstops and if he wrote a book like that and the book talked about how he thinks of current affairs and what’s happening to the world and about george bush (yes, I know I should’ve written George Bush but my friend doesn’t even think in upper case), and if prophet mohammad were alive today the religion of islam whould be entirely different. He wants to know if people would buy something like that. He wants to know if they’d be able to understand what he’s trying to say.

I told him maybe they won’t understand it because if he’s writing the way he’s talking then they need to hear him first to understand why he’s writing the way he is and what he’s trying to say.Then I suggested he release an audio book instead.Of course I guffawed after that because I immediately saw him sitting atop a revolving dais or some such thing, talking like a new age guru or something like that. The image was hilarious.

Why am I talking about all this?
Because I liked his idea very much.
I think it’s real.
And I think it breathes.

And I think we don’t have genii in our generation (well, there’s definitely no one I know who could be compared to Mozart, nowhere even close to that) and I often wonder why. I know I don’t know a whole lot of people who could very well be genii or even /atleast turn out to be something like that. But it doesn’t stop there. I wonder what makes us stop short of just going ahead and doing it the way we feel it should be done because sometimes we do know how a certain thing should be done (if I’m talking subjectively, I’d talk about colours, that’s my forte, I could talk about how just a thin stroke of ochre could change the whole feeling of a painting, but I’m not talking about such miniscule specifics, they’d sound boring, perhaps) (and shucks, I’m completely confused now, I think I’ve forgotten what I was talking about).

Genius, yes, I remember now.
I’m not saying my friend is a genius. He could be one but I’m not saying he is.


What am I saying then?
Just that we need more


Thought,
Stirring up
Active action

We need more

questions



If you read what Rilke says in his second letter (I think it was the second one) to the Young Poet, you’ll understand why I think questions are so important. Unless the questions are identified, how will the answers ever be found?

That's why I think my friend should go ahead and write what he wants to, without bothering about punctuation and spellings.

Now back to what I was thinking of.
Yeah, the importance of asking questions, having questions.


So, I have a question.

Where's my precious crowquill?!?



5 comments:

The Wandering Hermit said...

I want to write a book where in the Hero has no name.... I think your friend should go ahead and JUST DO IT *(as Nike forever tells us)

And I think all religions would be different if the prophets lived now...I have often wondered that if a prophet was born now what kind of religion will he proclaim and I often come back to what John Lennon said ...and I think he said it best in Imagine...

Crowquill...what is that a quill made out of crow feathers...
cheers
z

GhostOfTomJoad said...

Almost any idea is worth trying out but, first, one must evaluate if it is, in fact, self-defeating.

I don't know if you've noticed this on some of the news channels, and I mean NDTV i particular, but, sometimes, newsreaders talk like you say your friend wants to write...without punctuation... and it becomes almost impossible, for me at least, to decipher even a word of what is being said. Therefore, my immediate reaction is that, without punctuation, it may not be such a good idea but then, as you know, all good ideas face some resistance at first. And, who knows, your fried may even start a trend :-)

But your friend's idea, very vaguely, recalls James Joyce and his stream of consciousness style...which means that your friend may also be on his way to being a Joyce-like figure :-)

bluerebel said...

Totally agree with you…
Rilke was a master way ahead of his time…
e.e cummings lets say was eccentric with his punctuation and grammar…have you seen his work??…(He choose not to capitalize his own name)

"The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success."
-James Bond: Tomorrow Never Dies (its source may not be zen like but it works I think)
So tell your friend to do his best…

Shaun

Nessa said...

:)

Avalonian said...

I actually liked your post better than i like your friend's idea. I don't know if we neeed another Ulysses.