Writing and Dilemmas

I love writing, and I've loved it for so long.

Wait. I should correct that. Let's be a little more precise, shall we?

I love the idea of writing, of fingers swirling in their own peck-dance on a keyboard, of eyes distant and bleary, and pulse racing in the throes of composition. That's a dream and fantasy I keep quietly locked away, and at times like these, when I wonder what the big picture is, what the future is, I look back at that fantasy. And marvel at how real life and fantasy are so different.

It's the damn routine, I tell myself. And it is, make no mistake about it. There's just no time for writing in my life right now, except the occasional scribble. Even now, I have a monster of a report due tomorrow for my final class project. I've spent both days of the last couple of weekends at work, scrambling to get things done. After you come home wiped out after a long day, the last thing your caffeine-addled brain wants is for you to flip open that laptop and make it work even more.

And so time passes. Seconds turn into days, which turn into months. You start counting your moments in summers, lost in a frenzy of trying to dig through the mountain that is your to-do list.

And then after a long time, you say, man, I'm actually free for a bit after such a long haul! Y'know what? I'm gonna write now. And so out comes that laptop, and as the cursor starts blinking and you reach into the cookie jar for an idea, an inspiration, anything fergodssakes, you realize there's nothing there...not even crumbs. Somebody's wiped it clean, and the culprit is time itself.

At moments like those, a voice cackles inside my head. I think it's my muse. "What did you think, that you'd be able to write for life, sonny? That you come back to me after days and months and years, and I'd be waiting like a mongrel on a leash? Nothing's for free!" I listen quietly, and I know what he's saying. It reminds me of the doting father who spends all his time working, who spends each moment thinking ahead to the day when he'll actually be free enough to give attention to his family, and when that day finally comes, the kids have grown and y'know what, having a good ol' tete-a-tete with their till-now-absent father is the last fricking thing on their agenda. No sir, pater can go piss in Lake Ontario now for all they care...where the hell was he the first twenty years of their life?

With each day I spend doing something else, the dream tucked away in a lock-box is fading like a polaroid. Pretty much soon enough, I suspect there'll be nothing left of it if things continue the way they have been. Nothing but a shitload of rust.

If you feel the same way, there is one hope. An organized effort. A deadline, say one month. Lots of friends writing in the same period of time, trying to meet the same deadline, trying to meet the word count, working on their own stuff, but with the knowledge that they aren't alone, that there are others also crusading against the endless non-idealities of practical life.

Whatdoyasay?

Ooty, playmate of my childhood years, you for one had better say yes before you leave Pakistan!

Black

Well, a friend of mine has done it again. This time, he's got me hooked on Pearl Jam. I heard One, their first album, in his car and got so hooked on it that I went out and bought their greatest hits album. Now I'm a believer.

Black is an amazing song. It start off on an acoustic, almost bluesy, and then the discordance kicks in...and before you know it, the tempo is somewhere else all together. Take this excerpt:

Now my bitter hands
cradle broken glass
Of what was everything...

Grunge definitely was something, wasn't it? There was a raw power to it that felt like being socked in the gut. Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam...all of them were grunge gurus, creating masterpiece upon masterpiece. The pinnacle of grunge came in the 90's, and then pretty much just died out, eerily similar to the way some of grunge's main frontmen did (Kurt Cobain shot himself...I believe the lead singer of Alice in Chains also decided it was better to burn than to fade away).

But enough of that...lemme tell you from a musical standpoint why grunge is so awesome.

Grunge is awesome because it has discordance. In the chords and notes of the song themselves.

Most traditional rock songs might have blazing guitar riffs and screaming vocals, but from a musical standpoint, they mostly play it safe, staying within a key, or shifting keys in sometimes almost textbook ways. Things harmonize together in traditional rock. With grunge, things are different. Grunge is rebellion...rebellion against tradition, and against the technical brilliance but at times emotional barrenness of rock shredding. Nothing about grunge is proper, and yet everything is. It defies existence, but continues to exist.

That's what I mean when I say that grunge has discordance within it. Different parts of the song push at each other, and are strung together only by the tight cord of emotion that runs through the song, so tight it almost thrums. That's what gives grunge such power...emotion begets the song and keeps its heart beating, cradling it from falling apart. Of course, this means that the composer had better know what in hell he's doing, or the song won't instill any emotion apart from the urge to roll down the window, throw the cd out, and watch in the rearview with satisfaction as the cd get shattered beneath the tyres of the car behind.

If you fold your arms and say no to grunge, it might be because you find it depressing. I won't try and argue with your there. All that discordance, that emotion is definitely going to take its toll if one becomes a grunge junkie, so listening to such music should definitely be a once-in-a-while thing. Like at the gym, where you can use the aggression instead of letting it build up.

But if it's because you've never given it a chance, don't be so hard on it. Give a listen to some mainstream hits. Black or Jeremy by Pearl Jam. Rooster by Alice in Chains. Plush by Stone Temple Pilots. No matter what you think of it, methinks you won't deem it empty....