Fight the Power

&TOTSE
'Nuf Said...Check it out...It's on The Sacred Path now...

This is...My Choice.

"This might just do nobody any good.

At the end of this discourse a few people may accuse this reporter of fouling his own comfortable nest and your organization may be accused of having given hospitality to heretical and even dangerous ideas. But the elaborate structure of networks, advertising agencies, and sponsors will not be shaken or altered. It is my desire, if not my duty, to try to talk to you journeymen with some candor about what is happening to radio and television. And if what I say is responsible, I alone am responsible for the saying of it. Our history will be what we make of it. And if there are any historians about 50 or 100 years from now and there should be preserved the kinescopes of one week of all three networks they will there find recorded in black and white, and in color evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live. We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable, and complacent. We have a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main (stream) is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it and those who work at it may see a totally different picture too late...

I began by saying that our history will be what we make it. If we go on as we are then history will take its revenge,and retribution will not limp in catching up with us. Just once in a while, let us exalt the importance of ideas and information...

To those who say, "People wouldn't look, they wouldn't be interested they're too complacent, indifferent and insulated" I can only reply: There is, in one reporter's opinion considerable evidence against that contention. But even if they are right, what have they got to lose? Because if they are right and this instrument is good for nothing but to entertain, amuse and insulate then the tube is flickering now and we will soon see that the whole struggle is lost. This instrument can teach. It can illuminate and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it towards those ends. Otherwise, it is merely wiresand lights in a box.

Good night, and good luck.

- Edward R. Murrow

October 25th 1958

At the Radio-Television News Directors' Association and Foundation Honorary Award Ceremony

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One of the few inspirations for pursuing journalism.

(Will begin retro-posting about my travels and other writings soon.)

Joy

Little joys of life...ahh..okie, not so little.

Traveler’s Guide into Oblivion

"Visions of Johanna"

:

The night creeps up gently as I arise. The smatterings of incessant chatter finally ebbing away with the crowded consciousness, no remnants of rest remain. The day an oblong attempt at securing peace and tranquility to a much desiring lower oblongata. The pounding in the back of the head no lesser than it had been 12 hours ago. A mere moment has passed and the only thing that has changed is the color of the sky.

One should feel deserving of rest at times; perhaps it is only then that it comes. Such is not a treat for the wicked at heart. At times a smothering sadness protrudes to justly verify that fact with ever sharper shrills of distant echoes in the deeper recesses of the mind, taunting away at the remaining fragile morbid hope that sustains me. But attempts at perseverance guided by that which matters most somehow salvage me from a depressive state. After all, I’m on holiday.

All the while my vertically challenged self finds itself disassociated from its surroundings. A moment to recollect exactly where I am in this jittering bit of existence. A train, a journey, these stealthy mosquitoes a mere distraction from whatever lies deeper inside. Taking a look around I see heaving chests and whistling nostrils in the dimmer shadows of the train compartment, achieving a curious super-simultaneity in their combined rhythm, perhaps the very life of this train – how very trite.

Plunging into my stores of sanity and modestly I lift myself down from my coveted upper berth in a desperate attempt to seek out the loo. I slip, I grab and splat! My foot finds a day’s remains on the bogey floor; I dare not envision my lower epidermis’s state. Ubiquitously spread around are the various wares of pedestrian attire, a Bata, a Nike (fake), a Kolhapuri…ah there it is…I slip into it cautiously ready for a wet or wriggling surprise. One never can be too careful.

Slipping past the curiously dry gangway I open the loo door ready for a blast of India’s largest mobile manure factory’s finest remnants…the smell of a billion bowel movements fermented to a French chef’s cheese orgasm. But alas, I smell nothing. Concerned I follow the routine exercise to verify I still have all my senses about me. Looking (head still) to the left, right, up and down. Touch my finger to my nose from extended hands. Count back from ten, all the while breathing deeply…ughhh…there it is, my nasal block…merely phlegm protecting me from my fellow man’s finest contributions.

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And we’re done, possessions left behind and what apparently was a wicked combination of banana and cake surgically wiped off my feet with repetitive scrubs. I walk down to the wrong side of the loo entrance, and for some reason find myself in the next bogey wondering why someone is in my berth. I refrain, I wonder and it comes to me. Quietly I turn and wander back. These sorts of occurrences having become only to common and natural in the recent pass; absent memories, incoherent thoughts and the occurrences of completely unexplainable action but one gets use to these things even if the mind doesn’t. I figure things could be worse, I could be lonely.

A sneaking feeling comes across my heart reminding me there is something I need to do in situations such as these, but nothing comes, I move on. The gangway swaying side to side like a violent cradle does little to calm my anxieties. I heave away with the locomotive flow and laboriously force open the bogey door. A sweltering slap of heavy humid wind hits my face and for a moment takes the air straight out of my lungs – atmospheric backlash. I slide down against the door finding the footrest below the entrance and slowly breathe out, allowing fresh air to seep in a gradual more tame fashion. It’s cool and heavy, wiping away misplaced beads of sweat from my brow. I gaze into the darkness outside, wondering if there is something I should be appreciating.

It takes a moment but the horizon comes into focus. A vast night prairie stretches out before me at an amazing pace, unequalled under the shining sun. I absent mindedly reach out with my arms and hesitate out of some evolutionary initiative. I know the next step would have been to walk out. I don’t know how I can ever explain that one. But there it is, the vast darkness of our country, intermitted night lights of meager existence, flickering their way as a vague proof of life, too faded to attract attention yet bright enough to cause occasional curiosity. I look above to center my vision and am enamored by a celestial treat long since unexpected. Power-lines and grassy fields juxtaposed to their horizontal singularity of bright night sky glowing at its starry edges. The rapidly flowing images next to me call out for accompaniment and I’m nearly tempted to join them. After all they are as lonely as me I suppose.

I can think of only certain persistent companions now, those six that reside within me, much against my will I might add. I would gladly settle for the six that reside outside. But that isn’t a choice for me to make. I can recall certain memories of this beautiful night from some other crevice of my mind. A near about de ja vu of scenery and sounds. Here comes the rattle…yes…now the snowball shrubs…yes…and the gentle tapping on my shoulder…nothing…I guess memories can only predict the future only so far. As I pick myself up to get back I tell myself to try and remember that.

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The pounding is back, and the night doesn’t look so inviting anymore. The day’s recollection, a violating intruder onto my better consciousness; the blistering screams of grown men arguing orange prices, the blaring vendors pawing their wares and the once lovely children emptying their lungs on the verge of asphyxiating climax, I’m but stuck in a gross horrific half-sleep awaiting the completion of Stage 1 R.E.M to set in so I can finally be free from this cacophonic realm. But no dice. I wait, quietly negotiating the inner pain with the outer one, praying for someone to piss me off so I can decapitate ‘em and spit in their neck…very medieval. So cest la vie, no dice once again, and I lay there for hours quietly praying for a terrorist strike to put us all out of our misery.

After a while I remember the familiar feeling of complete and utter exhaustion seeping in as the sun reached towards the lower horizon, this pained tired shell slithering into a pulpy mass and stretching itself into a cocoon of preservative slumber, there is no rest here, only sanity. And then there was a break and so here I rose once again, succumbing to evolutionary needs of modesty more than anything else.

I wonder about how to get out of this state of mind and into sleep. I can only come back to that haunting thought of loneliness. Why rest? What for? For whom? “One should feel deserving of rest at times; perhaps it is only then that it comes.” Crap! I deserve this, I just can’t think of why. Back on the top berth the realization sinks deeper – I am alone. Well not in the literal sense of course, but isn’t the feeling of loneliness beyond rationale enough? I give myself a sudden slap in the face (a real one) just as a virtual voice whispers into my inner ear some badly needed words.

“Good night, my own bachha…you I will take care of.”

After that a smile stretches across my face, and the night wanders past in a lullab

Elegy of Two Paper Plane Pilots

On the night or morning (call it as you will) of the 26th of March, 2-3 a.m. an incident occured. I will not go so far as to call it an accident. The life of one boy ended and the lives of numerous more remained, irrevocable altered for all time to come.

In a fast car rash stoppage, not meant to be, the lights were turned out for a friend's friend. I did not really know him. His name was...it doesn't matter to me what his name was. I couldn't spell it even if I wanted to. But a life ended, and that is important.

No one can claim to say that he is in a better place now (for it may not exist), or that it was just his time (who has the right to judge?), but I can say that it is done, and no amount of remorse, guilt or grief will alter that fact. Death does not take a curtain call.

So let us not look inward.

So let us not take time.

So let us not heal.

Let us be.

He had a few good friends. They knew him. I just happen to know them.

One of our mutual friends shared a happier part of his life with him and for that I have reason to be grateful to him. The elegy below, is written by that friend of mine, dedicated on behalf of another of their mutual friends. The insanity of the attempt to elucidate anothers thought is as insane as the act of bereavement itself, so for those purposes it shall do.

Written by : Noah

On behalf of Rajs to the memory of Babloo

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Elegy of Two Paper Plane Pilots

we were 2 eagles with gigantic wingspans
looking down at black clouds

thinking they looked like great domes

too lazy to fly,

we were just gliding our way home

we were 2 drunks on the k-block terrace

looking up at black clouds

mouths open

wondering if the've come from paris

2 kids playing football

2 friends in a swimming pool

always cracking stoopid jokes

sometimes cracking good ones too

(hehehahahuhu)

we were two 20 year olds

getting high for the first time

2 fools crashing scooters,

and giggling like monsters

at 3's and 4's past midnights

and playing roadrash

to find answers to life

in that world,

where we walked back from school together,

where i broke beautiful ashnara hearts

and taught them to come back to life

and jet airways sucked

and you made sups work half-time,

there was only

babloo avenue

and rajstruck airlines.

and most of all

(and through it all),

we were 2 idiots

flying over white clouds

over little floridas n romes

in paper planes

that we had made at home.