http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uUhAjzNid4
This is a song by a Bangladeshi band. I suck at Bengali, so I can't offer a great translation, but the song's title -- rong -- means color. Actually though, color can mean something more like light. I really just love the idea of giving and taking color, so I thought I'd post the video/lyrics.
Rong
The Watson Brothers
Dress it up beautifully
Get inside my heart
Eyes full of white and black
Why do I say, why do I say
Patience is sweet
After the rain come the colors
You give color, you take color (from me)
June, July, August, September
In my heart the color is always there
Winter, monsoon, late summer, fall
Your affection is late
There’s a lot of obstruction in the way of this love
Sing it beautifully
Color this mind of mine
Get lost in my heart
Inside the house is where I live
Where did you find so many colors
Sing it beautifully
Color up my heart
Get inside my heart
Color me…
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
our changing times...
Cool article!
A Survey of Mobility: Homo Mobilis (The Economist)
Last night, as I sat in my house simultaneously gchatting, facebook chatting, skyping, texting, and listening to music -- all while painting, or rather, attempting to not spread too much acrylic paint on my keyboard -- I couldn't help but wonder about the impact of all this technology on my life. I've got to say, I have mixed feelings. While I love that I can have a "face to face" conversation with my cousins on the other side of the world, I resent the flakiness that The Economist's article points out; it seems that technology has created a culture of tentative plans that allows us to easily cancel arrangements and choose whatever better options arise at the last moment. It also can make it really difficult to focus in on whatever task or experience is at hand, and sometimes I think it makes it very hard to fully appreciate the current moment. Of course, on the other hand, it enables us to connect with the people, ideas, and causes that we most identify with, and I can't argue that that is anything less than empowering.
Ultimately, this stuff is here to stay... I think we just have to learn to make it work for us!
A Survey of Mobility: Homo Mobilis (The Economist)
Last night, as I sat in my house simultaneously gchatting, facebook chatting, skyping, texting, and listening to music -- all while painting, or rather, attempting to not spread too much acrylic paint on my keyboard -- I couldn't help but wonder about the impact of all this technology on my life. I've got to say, I have mixed feelings. While I love that I can have a "face to face" conversation with my cousins on the other side of the world, I resent the flakiness that The Economist's article points out; it seems that technology has created a culture of tentative plans that allows us to easily cancel arrangements and choose whatever better options arise at the last moment. It also can make it really difficult to focus in on whatever task or experience is at hand, and sometimes I think it makes it very hard to fully appreciate the current moment. Of course, on the other hand, it enables us to connect with the people, ideas, and causes that we most identify with, and I can't argue that that is anything less than empowering.
Ultimately, this stuff is here to stay... I think we just have to learn to make it work for us!
Friday, November 19, 2010
Rediscoveries
Recently I was discussing with a friend the idea of emergence. He's a bio major, and in that context emergence is the creation of complex systems through relatively simple inputs. Forgive me if that's a terribly un-authentic description, but it really made me think about a theory on art that I developed in high school.
I had developed this idea about what art is, what music is. True art and music were when the sum of individual parts added up to something much greater. A true work of art was something that was more than the sum of pencil scratches on paper and a true piece of music was more than a collection of sounds. And it was, in turn, this greater sum -- these expressions of true beauty -- that were, to my mind, evidence of God. Evidence of the magic that sparkled, waiting to be reveal itself, under the surface of everything on earth.
It has been a long time since I have thought about that idea, mostly because I have spent the past few years with my nose buried in stacks of textbooks and very little of them experiencing the things that brought so much joy to my life when I was younger: art and music. But I find myself seeking out these experiences again, bit by bit. Expressions of beauty, in whatever shape they take, are essential to my life. Not only because of the joy that they bring me, but because they afford me a feeling of wonder towards life and all the possibilities that glimmer, just noticeable under the surface if you look carefully. And what could possibly be more essential to life than that sensation of wonder.
I had developed this idea about what art is, what music is. True art and music were when the sum of individual parts added up to something much greater. A true work of art was something that was more than the sum of pencil scratches on paper and a true piece of music was more than a collection of sounds. And it was, in turn, this greater sum -- these expressions of true beauty -- that were, to my mind, evidence of God. Evidence of the magic that sparkled, waiting to be reveal itself, under the surface of everything on earth.
It has been a long time since I have thought about that idea, mostly because I have spent the past few years with my nose buried in stacks of textbooks and very little of them experiencing the things that brought so much joy to my life when I was younger: art and music. But I find myself seeking out these experiences again, bit by bit. Expressions of beauty, in whatever shape they take, are essential to my life. Not only because of the joy that they bring me, but because they afford me a feeling of wonder towards life and all the possibilities that glimmer, just noticeable under the surface if you look carefully. And what could possibly be more essential to life than that sensation of wonder.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
childhood memories
For some reason, this fall has been like a return to childhood. I don't really know why. Maybe it's that this I missed an American, East Coast fall last year, or maybe it's the fact that this is my last "real" fall as a student -- my last fall as a college student, at least. Maybe it's that I've been playing intramural soccer on Sunday afternoons, and it brings me back to after school practices under the weak light of October late afternoons, and all their concomitant orange leaves, shin guards, water breaks, and crisp, fresh air. Or maybe it's that I'm reading all about fractal geometry for my thesis, and it's bringing me back to that other kind of geometry (Euclidian) and the math that I did growing up. (And remembering how much I love math, and how good I was at it, and how different my academic pursuits might have been.) Maybe it's that I'm too tired of reading for school to pick up an actual "grown-up" book and have instead been perusing my monumental junior fiction book collection that still resides in my bedroom. (I'm currently reading "Walk Two Moons" for perhaps the seventh time... I could write a whole other post on that. Maybe I will.)
Whatever the reason or reasons, this fall has been a bit of a trip through my past. I knew that I had changed a lot in the past year, grown up a lot, but I guess I didn't realize how much until I started being able to look back at the person I was growing up, and until I started being interested in doing so. It's fascinating to look back at your life with eyes that now see so much more. It's fascinating to look at geometry for what I thought it was and what I now know it to be. It's fascinating to reread books and marvel and how much I understood and how little I understood. It's fascinating to think about all the assumptions I had about people and the world, and how right they were, and how wrong they were.
I guess you know you're grown up when you can look back at your younger self, and instead of feeling disdain for your mistakes and your naivety, you feel tenderness. I guess you know you're grown up when you feel like your own mother.
Whatever the reason or reasons, this fall has been a bit of a trip through my past. I knew that I had changed a lot in the past year, grown up a lot, but I guess I didn't realize how much until I started being able to look back at the person I was growing up, and until I started being interested in doing so. It's fascinating to look back at your life with eyes that now see so much more. It's fascinating to look at geometry for what I thought it was and what I now know it to be. It's fascinating to reread books and marvel and how much I understood and how little I understood. It's fascinating to think about all the assumptions I had about people and the world, and how right they were, and how wrong they were.
I guess you know you're grown up when you can look back at your younger self, and instead of feeling disdain for your mistakes and your naivety, you feel tenderness. I guess you know you're grown up when you feel like your own mother.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
I was looking for a fall fling and instead I fell in love with fractals
... having been poking at my thesis, and I'm beginning to wish I were a math major.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Sunday, August 8, 2010
palabras guardadas
De estas palabras cuelgan memorias de vos. De palabras que me dijiste y cosas que hicimos, de tus historias y modismos y tu acento tan único. Y aunque trate de reclamar tu idioma como algo mío, no sé si podré. Es tuyo y cuando lo hablo me siento la persona que fui con vos. Y cuando lo hable en el futuro creo que voy a seguir sintiéndome tuya, tuya y de nadie más
Friday, July 9, 2010
Experiments with Extroversion
Somehow, the more I get out of my own head, the more I feel I can trust myself. Does that make any sense?
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
On Writing
So in recent weeks I've had indication that maybe I'm not just writing to a empty void. Maybe? Perhaps? Not that I really was writing for the audience, but a few conversations have left me with the urge to write again. That and, let's be honest, it's been a bit of a rough time for me. This and that, and you know. What I would like to say is that I've been feeling inspired recently - just to live and feel alive - and I think my inspiration to write is coming back with that.
It was especially sparked the other day when, sorting through the mess that is my bedside table, I found this typed sheet of paper, entitled, "What matters in writing?" It was in an old notebook that I had been using to compose lists in. The notebook was from high school, my second-semester English class senior year. It reads as follows:
"Writing forces me to notice things, usually ordinary things, to notice them and give them my attention. Putting things in words - objects, events, experiences, thoughts, emotions - sometimes shows me aspects of the thing in question of which I had not been aware before. In that sense, good writing can make more of something.
Good writing can also lead to the sort of sincerity Cixious describes as 'never speaking from an idea of yourself.' Subjecting my thoughts to the process of precise articulation often shows me what's false in my thinking - which phrases, sentences, and ideas are meant to seduce a reader rather than speak a truth. Hemingway once said that all a writer needs to do is find one true sentence, and then others will follow. It feels better - truer - than anything else I can do by myself, except possibly pray.
I think one can also read from an idea of himself - that is, insincerely - and what I value most in reading is interaction with a text that forces me to read from myself rather than from my idea."
It was my English teacher who wrote this, but I couldn't have agreed more if I wrote it myself. Writing is prayer, writing is therapy. So despite the frustration that it bears, I seem to keep coming back to it. One way or another, I always find myself again at this same place: hunched over a pad of paper, or a laptop, scribbling or typing away furiously and hoping that once the words have been spilled, the world will make a little bit more sense.
It was especially sparked the other day when, sorting through the mess that is my bedside table, I found this typed sheet of paper, entitled, "What matters in writing?" It was in an old notebook that I had been using to compose lists in. The notebook was from high school, my second-semester English class senior year. It reads as follows:
"Writing forces me to notice things, usually ordinary things, to notice them and give them my attention. Putting things in words - objects, events, experiences, thoughts, emotions - sometimes shows me aspects of the thing in question of which I had not been aware before. In that sense, good writing can make more of something.
Good writing can also lead to the sort of sincerity Cixious describes as 'never speaking from an idea of yourself.' Subjecting my thoughts to the process of precise articulation often shows me what's false in my thinking - which phrases, sentences, and ideas are meant to seduce a reader rather than speak a truth. Hemingway once said that all a writer needs to do is find one true sentence, and then others will follow. It feels better - truer - than anything else I can do by myself, except possibly pray.
I think one can also read from an idea of himself - that is, insincerely - and what I value most in reading is interaction with a text that forces me to read from myself rather than from my idea."
It was my English teacher who wrote this, but I couldn't have agreed more if I wrote it myself. Writing is prayer, writing is therapy. So despite the frustration that it bears, I seem to keep coming back to it. One way or another, I always find myself again at this same place: hunched over a pad of paper, or a laptop, scribbling or typing away furiously and hoping that once the words have been spilled, the world will make a little bit more sense.
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