A roundup of the monsoon beauties before I these songs disappear into the vortex of my brain.
I love all the shades of a relationship they managed to capture in this one song with the one common motif of travelling in the underground. I am a fan of public transport and I have so many stories related to it. It is a modern cultural experience in itself. To see it being used like this was nothing short of magic to me. 🙂
I have loved Angus and Julia Stone since ‘Big Jet Plane’. Their dreamy music is always so soothing and this video is Vacation goals AF! 😉
I stumbled upon Roo Panes accidentally and the only question I have is why didn’t I not know him earlier? It’s like I have found Damien Rice from the parallel universe!
This one is just to add the much needed color and peppiness to the sobriety that might have been induced by all the indie songs above. XD
“I’d rather dance than talk with you”. Enough said. 🙂
Thanks to SK, I was introduced to this amazing Belgian singer and songwriter. Each and every song of his that I have heard until now (the ones with subtitles) are beautiful. Not just the music, but the video the story and the message behind it all. He is creating quite a rage in America right now with his concerts. He is definitely one of those musicians that you can’t afford to miss.
The first song that you should listen to is Papaoutai. I was going through his wikipedia page and it says that his father was mostly absent during his childhood, until he died in 1994. This song I guess is expressing the pain he went through because of his absence and you do feel his pain as well while watching the video. The instances when he witnesses boys of his age playing with their fathers and he unsuccessfully tries to do the same, until the point when he hallucinates that he actually has come to life.
The second video is Carmen. This video is an apt critique of social networking, specifically Twitter. How his life changes and goes downhill because of his addiction to Twitter. All his relationships die and ultimately the ‘twitter bird’ leads him to his doom. The music creates a feeling of dystopia and will make you question our consumerist society and the world in general.
The third one is perhaps the best video and song of his. It’s about cancer and it plays on the lines “Quand C’est?” (When is it?), the word phonetically is similar to the pronounciation of the word “cancer”. It is amazing how he uses these techniques and plays with language to reach across a wider audience.
Last but not the least is the song, “Tous Les Memes”. Stromae himself plays the role of a woman and a man, and even though it’s an old age technique, he executes the roles so damn well it’s crazy! All his videos have some sort of conclusion and message that really make you think! I still have to completely decipher this one, given that the subtitles aren’t on the mark.
In the warmth of your arms, I will find my summer.
In the moistness of your lips, I will find my rain.
In the colours of your eyes, I will find my autumn.
In the coldness of my voice, you will find the winter of it all.
~S
Most of you might not know it but when I started this blog I made a mid-year resolution to write atleast one piece everyday. I was on a loss these last few days as to what to write. Sometimes I think that the amount that a single person thinks in a day multiplied by the number of people must just be infinite. Does it mean that every thought has already been thought? Nothing new has been left to discover? Maybe whatever I am thinking and writing has been framed in exactly the same manner in someone else’s blog, journal, mind, etc.
The method I employ to write everyday is to choose something out of the ordinary that happened during the day and pick up that thread and start writing. This works most of the times bit sometimes it is just too random to make sense. The best part now is that when I write all this on a public blog, I have people who can guide me towards making more sense. Earlier, whatever I wrote was for myself but now I want to reach out to more people. I realise it is more effective as a method of introspection than writing for myself and definitely more productive. Also, the number of likes and follows I get for a particular post also tells me what kind of writing is good and what is not.
I am in the process of writing a dissertation and guidance for me, is extremely helpful.
So today I went to the library to return my books. It was ‘Ignorance’ by Milan Kundera, in case you were wondering. In my last college the librarians were really rude and were always irritated at something or the other. When you asked them to find a book for you, they just sent you to some other person and so on. In this college, it’s sooo much different. Generally, there is a man sitting at the counter who is very pleasant and also talkative. He is the one I usually go to. Today, he wasn’t there. There was a woman instead. I told her I wanted to return the book, she asked me what the genre was and what the title meant. I was taken aback for a moment. I thought for a minute and then told her that how it meant ‘deliberately not knowing something’. She was intrigued. She then asked me to tell the story. I was never any good at verbal communication. I told her what I could. Storytelling is definitely not one of my strong points. Finally, after a conversation of five minutes she let me go. It was a good one too. I began contemplating her life, being a librarian, how amazing it must be. I was reminded of the time when there was a library behind my house when I lived in Bangalore. I could look at the numerous shelves of books through the window at the back of my house. I used to go there and issue books everyday, sometimes three times in a day! The librarian just let me sit there for hours and go through the shelves. It was one of the best times of my life. And then, we shifted to another place. All good things come to an end!
What I was getting at was that I have always wanted to be a librarian, or own a book shop. It would be heavenly, spending your whole day in a library. But I understand that you begin to hate whatever you invest too much time doing. So maybe a part-time job would suffice. And maybe I would sell the book-shop after a while. To quote Jorge Luis Borges: “I have always dreamt that Paradise will be a kind of Library”.
Roommate was patient enough to come up with these.
Today me and my roommate decided to decorate our room with origami. We looked at YouTube tutorials, all set with brightly coloured origami sheets but all in vain. The end results weren’t that fascinating as compared to those on the screen. We tried making swans and cranes and bunnies and we even looked at 3-D origami swans. Apparently it needs 1024 tiles to be completed. And the time we take to make 32 tiles from an A4 sheet of paper is approximately 15 minutes. So yeah, a very tough task lies ahead of us.
Even while we were watching these videos, they were so tough to follow. I was like “What kind of sorcery is this?”, “Fucking hell this is impossible!”, “I give up!”, etc. In the end I realised that it’s quite an exercise in patience, focus and hardwork. I was reminded of all the popular culture references, Claire making origami cranes in House of Cards and Michael Scofield in Prison Break. We were actually following a tutorial which supposedly would teach us how to make “The Prison Break Crane”. It was a fun exercise nevertheless, and we have decided to work on 2 pieces every week. Do tell me about good tutorials if you know any and post a link in the comments section. Thank you very much. 🙂
Will be adding the pictures of the failed attempts soon. Facing Camera problems at the moment.
Pseudorandom Musings 