I have this tendency to behave in a certain way when I am reading something. A latent behavior of Acting, though I am in no way an actor of any sort. I think its an exaggerated version of the experience of reading a book or even watching a film. You are so taken in, flown away into the stream of what you are experiencing, an out of body experience, that you just don't want to come back into your body and who you are for quite sometime. Its a freeing experience, like suddenly you have no identity and no sense of self, you are a blank canvas. You can fabricate and be whoever you want to be. You can be a pirate, a Jack Sparrow, a vampire with the flowing long coats and boots, and the swagger and the wayfarers, and a cigarette dangling off your lips as you walk down the street, and nothing can touch you. All that runs through your mind is that "I am Awesome."
That is just one way to have an out of body experience. The other things are more spontaneous. Its like what the government thinks will happen to impressionable minds when they watch violence and debauchery on screen. Shah Rukh Khan smoking in Don, the eggheads fear, would inspire children and people who love him to smoke too. It doesn't matter that they smoke anyway, as a right of passage. I know. I used to be a fourteen year old not too long ago. Its the pull of the forbidden. You're not supposed to do it. The scary experience of being kids and going to a booze store and buying really horrendous vodka, and hiding it in very conspicuous ways and consuming it in filthy little corners of a house empty and presenting a golden and perfect opportunity. Buying the damn things isn't hard, not in India. The scary part is the fear of who will walk by and notice, especially acquaintances of parents, and God help you if the cigarette guy is the same guy your dad buys from (This happened to me). Anyway, I feel a compulsion to do the same kind of things that the character in a book I'm reading does. Put on the same pretensions as they do.
For example, if I am reading of a writer, who constantly talks of his/her art and expression and thought, I want to write too. If I watch a film of an artist who keeps a journal of fantastic illustrations as a form of a visual diary, I want to do that too. And I do.. I have a collection of notebooks and little journals, filled with one or more pages with illustrations I don't remember doing. And they pile up.
The impetus to write this post is me reading Henry and June ( Anais Nin), and thinking I too need to say something. But the eternal problem lies with what comes after the first step into creativity, i.e., opening a fresh journal, with pretty and colourful pages, and facing into the blankness. Blankness of the page itself and of the mind. I want to create, but I have no idea what. And there are no impulses. The blankness of the page immediately stops being liberating and becomes suffocating upon first viewing. And anything you force yourself to put on it becomes immediately hateful in your eyes.
These days, I can look at a blank and beautiful collection of papers and feel inspired a little. Its actually quite like premature ejaculation or the first experience of a teenage boy touching a member of the opposite sex. Its over as soon as it starts. Hence a journal of a hundred and fifty pages, remains untouched except for the vomit of excitement on the first five. Oh, the plans and the plans, that go down the drain the moment pen touches the paper!
Sometimes, as I am reading something, I get surprised at thoughts coming out of my mind. I am reading Anais Nin now, and after the urge to write was considerably under my control, I thought that it was amazing, I liked the language. Then I felt " This is So Pretentious!" A woman who lived entirely in a warm cocoon of herself, and people like her. That's all they talked about, apparently. Obsessing about every strand of hair on top of they heads, their eyes, their mouth and their skins. About how they felt, and how wonderful their feeling are, and how intelligent and intriguing and wonderful their minds were. They need no reinforcement from anyone else about their magnificence. But the strangest part of these observations is the sudden realization that "Hey, I'm actually thinking! My blank coconut shell of a head is actually not empty at all, it has a couple of straggly thoughts!"
Reading Anais Nin is actually a two fold experience for me. The first part appeals to the visual artist in me. The experience of the production values of the book, is charming. I love the publication design, and the cover, the texture of the paper, the consistency of it. I look at the print of text, and I notice that it is thick and a little runny. Probably a wrong or faulty print. But to me and my imagination, it looks like the story has been written in quill, by hand. Its got a hand made quality to it. And since the book is essentially Anais Nin's diary, the feeling of reading what she wrote in her own hand is reinforced. This is very enchanting.
The second part of the experience is a self exploratory one. As I am reading, I am running the same exercise every other reader of books go through. I immerse myself in the story, and she wrote well, with fluidity, so it wasn't very difficult. And as I do this, I also try to understand and relate to the characters. And I can't. They are so very different to me. The voice, the decisions, everything. What remains the same is the compulsions which urge her to write. It is the same in every creative person. What attracts and what distracts. In this I identify. But her actions I cannot. It is very jarring for me to face a character so unlike myself, yet so much the same in a book. It doesn't happen too often. And because of which I end up asking myself questions about what I would do in the same situations. These questions lead to much more specific and probing questions of what Nin wanted from her life, and what I want. And the answers become more clearer and lucid in my head, and there is a sense of closure that comes with finding a calm spot at the center of the chaotic tornado that is everyday thoughts and doubts.
That is just one way to have an out of body experience. The other things are more spontaneous. Its like what the government thinks will happen to impressionable minds when they watch violence and debauchery on screen. Shah Rukh Khan smoking in Don, the eggheads fear, would inspire children and people who love him to smoke too. It doesn't matter that they smoke anyway, as a right of passage. I know. I used to be a fourteen year old not too long ago. Its the pull of the forbidden. You're not supposed to do it. The scary experience of being kids and going to a booze store and buying really horrendous vodka, and hiding it in very conspicuous ways and consuming it in filthy little corners of a house empty and presenting a golden and perfect opportunity. Buying the damn things isn't hard, not in India. The scary part is the fear of who will walk by and notice, especially acquaintances of parents, and God help you if the cigarette guy is the same guy your dad buys from (This happened to me). Anyway, I feel a compulsion to do the same kind of things that the character in a book I'm reading does. Put on the same pretensions as they do.
For example, if I am reading of a writer, who constantly talks of his/her art and expression and thought, I want to write too. If I watch a film of an artist who keeps a journal of fantastic illustrations as a form of a visual diary, I want to do that too. And I do.. I have a collection of notebooks and little journals, filled with one or more pages with illustrations I don't remember doing. And they pile up.
The impetus to write this post is me reading Henry and June ( Anais Nin), and thinking I too need to say something. But the eternal problem lies with what comes after the first step into creativity, i.e., opening a fresh journal, with pretty and colourful pages, and facing into the blankness. Blankness of the page itself and of the mind. I want to create, but I have no idea what. And there are no impulses. The blankness of the page immediately stops being liberating and becomes suffocating upon first viewing. And anything you force yourself to put on it becomes immediately hateful in your eyes.
These days, I can look at a blank and beautiful collection of papers and feel inspired a little. Its actually quite like premature ejaculation or the first experience of a teenage boy touching a member of the opposite sex. Its over as soon as it starts. Hence a journal of a hundred and fifty pages, remains untouched except for the vomit of excitement on the first five. Oh, the plans and the plans, that go down the drain the moment pen touches the paper!
Sometimes, as I am reading something, I get surprised at thoughts coming out of my mind. I am reading Anais Nin now, and after the urge to write was considerably under my control, I thought that it was amazing, I liked the language. Then I felt " This is So Pretentious!" A woman who lived entirely in a warm cocoon of herself, and people like her. That's all they talked about, apparently. Obsessing about every strand of hair on top of they heads, their eyes, their mouth and their skins. About how they felt, and how wonderful their feeling are, and how intelligent and intriguing and wonderful their minds were. They need no reinforcement from anyone else about their magnificence. But the strangest part of these observations is the sudden realization that "Hey, I'm actually thinking! My blank coconut shell of a head is actually not empty at all, it has a couple of straggly thoughts!"
Reading Anais Nin is actually a two fold experience for me. The first part appeals to the visual artist in me. The experience of the production values of the book, is charming. I love the publication design, and the cover, the texture of the paper, the consistency of it. I look at the print of text, and I notice that it is thick and a little runny. Probably a wrong or faulty print. But to me and my imagination, it looks like the story has been written in quill, by hand. Its got a hand made quality to it. And since the book is essentially Anais Nin's diary, the feeling of reading what she wrote in her own hand is reinforced. This is very enchanting.
The second part of the experience is a self exploratory one. As I am reading, I am running the same exercise every other reader of books go through. I immerse myself in the story, and she wrote well, with fluidity, so it wasn't very difficult. And as I do this, I also try to understand and relate to the characters. And I can't. They are so very different to me. The voice, the decisions, everything. What remains the same is the compulsions which urge her to write. It is the same in every creative person. What attracts and what distracts. In this I identify. But her actions I cannot. It is very jarring for me to face a character so unlike myself, yet so much the same in a book. It doesn't happen too often. And because of which I end up asking myself questions about what I would do in the same situations. These questions lead to much more specific and probing questions of what Nin wanted from her life, and what I want. And the answers become more clearer and lucid in my head, and there is a sense of closure that comes with finding a calm spot at the center of the chaotic tornado that is everyday thoughts and doubts.
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