Stressed and publishing it.
I am 26 this year. And not a day goes by that I fret and worry about my life. I’m eternally concerned with where my life is going and what I am doing with my time. I see my peers going on to work in enriching fields that challenge them creatively and I compare my menial, waged work and time wasted and I cringe.
Not a day goes by that I stress about where my life is headed. I don’t spend my free time working on a creative. I spend my time freaking out about how I don’t think and create. What a waste of time, no?
Not a day goes by that I compare myself to the likes of Casey Neistat (a filmmaker, not a friend) or Julie Molloy (a friend) or Sean Mikula (another friend) or Marcin Polakowski (yet another friend!) and I wonder why can’t I produce easily. From here it looks as though they produce fairly easily.
I am 26 this year and all I can think about is why I didn’t work at building a foundation to the rest of my life. Time wasted weighs heavily on me and all I can do is fret. I shouldn’t feel powerless, but I do. I should suck it up and write, draw, edit, publish and produce.
“One day,” I hope to myself everyday. One day I will wake up and things will be different. My hands won’t be cuffed and my mind won’t be so crippled by frets and worries.
But that shit isn’t so simple. That shit doesn’t just happen. Does it?
Takes work…
Source: beingascientist
Travellin’ to the holiest of holies. Yup.
TV on the Radio, Will Do. So good.
new shit,
When new movies are released, certain ideas and assumptions come up. Such as who’s in it? What is it about? And who was involved in writing, producing and directing it. When video games are released these days similar questions are posed.
It’s safe to assume that the graphics are first and foremost considered for all games. The character design, level design, lighting and shading, particle effects, animation. All these aspects, if done well, come together to create something wonderful and realistic or at least immersive.
And no matter how good looking a game is, or how involving the storyline is, not everyone will be pleased. In the arena of First Person Shooters, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is the fan favorite. Some would go so far as to say it’s the champeen.
But as any competitor in any arena, there are detractors. Modern Warfare is a game that lots of people look forward to, but to be honest each subsequent game doesn’t add much to the last, tech-wise.
The quote below isn’t lying, these games don’t make leaps and bounds with the technical aspects of each game. But there seems to be a lack of appreciation at the ability of Activision to, time and again, construct such magnificent engrossing plot lines and smooth and brisk pacing.
“Wow…from the trailer I can see that they havent really made anything new. Battlefield 3 has better tech. and has been completly remade. Fuck the COD” -MW3 site
Each game is a bigger, more intense and even more visually stunning installment of the franchise. The only developer that performs with such high standards in story telling, I think, is Rockstar Games. The GTA series and now with L.A. Noire, continually break new ground in video game realism and incredible plot lines.
When movies come out, few people complain that 35mm film stock or Red One cameras were or weren’t used. Or whether the music was done by Jonny Greenwood or Hans Zimmer. The film is appreciated for what it offers, and how it offers itself. It looks as though video game developers have matured (especially with the likes of L.A. Noire and MW3), considering the budgets they operate with, and the execution of the work. But the consumers are still a bunch of tech-horny, video-game addicts with little to no interest in appreciating the time-tested skill sets of storytelling.
Maybe, with time these people can try to appreciate video games for writing as well as whether Modern Warfare includes a new kind of shading technique or weapon arsenal. But then again, maybe they won’t.
Holy, filthy rivers.
When my Shashi informed my mother that my Grandfather’s ashes, his remains were beginning to take on a strange odor, she realized that they couldn’t stay in the house indefinitely. This fact was something that I, for some reason, had simply assumed. Baba’s remains would, in my mind, become a common sight in the house, like a comfy chair or sturdy desk.
So my mother had decided that in two weeks we would make a trip to a city called Haridwar to deposit his ashes in the Ganga River. I didn’t even know where Haridwar was, I hadn’t even heard the name. I was told it was north, in the foothills, but it didn’t ring any bells. I’ve been north before; Rishikesh, Shimla, Dharamsala. But I had never heard of Haridwar.
The drive took about seven hours, and wasn’t actually in Haridwar. It was closer to Rishikesh, in a town called Muni Ki Reti. We rested at the hotel and had some cha. The Cricket World Cup was on at the time, so we watched India play against Bangladesh, I think. This was the first time I got into the sport; I never enjoyed it growing up. Shashi explained a lot of the nuances to me, which helped. Once we were rested up, we went upriver towards the town.
A pair of bridges spanned the river, known as Ram-juhla and Lakshman-juhla, named after the brothers of legend in the Mahabharata. We walked across the bridge and saw the sights as the evening grew. My mother wanted to take us to the far bank of the river where a large Ashram conducted daily rituals worshipping the sun at dawn and dusk.
Once the ritual was complete, the members of the ashram all returned to their dormitories and the onlookers either moved on, or towards the edge of the ghat. We paid for a few small baskets with flower and sweet edible offerings, known as Dhoop I believe. We lit some incense, placed the sticks in each basket and “did” pronam before we released the offerings into the river. The first in a set of small rituals we performed before we placed Baba’s urn in the river. The pronam we performed was a simple sign of respect. An everyday example would be to touch the feet of an elder as you greet them. Something my brother and I never really did often.
I noticed there were quite a lot of foreigners there, white people especially. Many from Europe, a few jews from Israel, many Americans. All there to see the ashram and the holy river. One woman, whom I figured to be German by her accented Hindi, made me realize that there were people who traveled far and wide to live in India. I was raised there, and I still can’t speak Hindi conversationally!
I suppose living at the ashram was her cup of tea. Not mine. I found myself becoming frustrated with the rituals and the holiness of the whole thing. All I knew was the India of the 21st century, where 90% of Delhi’s untreated sewage was dumped, untreated, into the Yamuna River, another so-called holy river. Gall-bladder cancer affects 20,000-30,000 people living near the Ganga and it’s tributaries each year.
So when I was surrounded by all these people, and all these foreigners, I didn’t really see people reaching enlightenment. I saw a lot of people who didn’t really notice. But then again, it isn’t like I am crusading to help India either.
The next day we went back to the ghats, only we didn’t cross the river. We stayed a little upriver and across from where we did pronam the night before. I realized that I was scared of what would happen, and what we had to do. I was scared of feeling the weight of my grandfather’s remains in the copper pot. I was scared that he would be too heavy to float. This was something my mother was so worried about. We didn’t like the idea of Baba becoming a fixture at the bottom of the river near such a popular holy destination. Baba wasn’t exactly tolerant of the religious, and the idea of sending him down one of the holiest rivers in Hindu belief would have tasted sour had he been there. But it was an ancient river, it’s a part of India and always would be. Not that Baba was a nationalistic person in the traditional sense. But how do you commit the ashes of such a practical and un-mystical man without having to delve into that realm?
Well, we went to the ghat and my brother and I decided to take off our shoes and roll up our pant-legs in case we had to wade into the river to let Baba’s remains go. There was a risk of the urn getting beached too early if we released it from the river’s edge.
But then Noton mami noticed a pair of men sleeping an a small ferry. We had walked to the ghat where a ferry service took people across the river if the bridge wasn’t ideal. Noton mami convinced the two men, who were on break, into taking us to the middle of the river with a bribe. So they took us aboard and to the center of the river. We did pronam, and placed the incense on top of the urn as we collectively lowered the urn into the river.
As it turned out, the urn floated, despite the weight, and was carried downriver, and possibly across it’s 1500 mile stretch. That kind of definitive separation was hard, and I can only imagine how it must have been for my mother to finally say goodbye to her father. But we did it. Every thing sort of came together, finally. Apparently Roshen and I didn’t know about the details because our mother didn’t know. We just drove up there and figured it all out in the process.
Amazing work from Isaiah Seret. Raphael Saadiq’s whole style is so authentically soul. Good looking dude, too.
Raphael Saadiq - Good Man
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I also found this site, The Masses, which seems to feature a lot of filmmakers (one of which is Isaiah Seret). It looks really interesting.
I really do enjoy collectives, they have the tendency to be very driven to a particular objective. Collectives that can make ends meet, either via the organization or not, are even better. I like the idea that people with like minds can and do collaborate. You can tell I haven’t had the pleasure. But maybe soon?
It’s nice to see such a clear-cut, distilled environment for work to happen. It’s something that I’ve always felt starved for, but sooner or later I’ll get into gear and work something out.
-Rsc
