R: “Hey.. look over there, thats Beauty!”
N: Shrugs.. “you’ve bestial tastes pal…”
R: hah.. “Well.. maybe you got it wrong, but then her real name is Beauty”
N: hmm “theres still hope for you…”

following this conversation, I (R) happened to meet with a videographer who is into local tv serials, but direly aspires to be a world class movie maker. it was a day with a topic on beauty

rak is a great fan of movies, not for their smart alecky wit nor masala item numbers(lar.. stop grinning), but their ability as an art form that can capture life to be relished by more than one sense organ

have a life! quite a common pre-abandonment signal.
bull apart, there are some interests or rather traits of an individual that makes him stand out as exceptional. Some persue art for the soul, and some to be pedantic, taking pride in their retention.. our videographer pal in context, sees movies as a form of art. Being in the showbiz he must’ve had lot to answer to a general passerby, about the ego and life of the top players, about the unsung heroes of inspiration, about the travelogues, about the promiscuity of heroines, about the self proclaimed accomplishments. the question to him was rather simple, for we asked for his best movies and role models, against which I now possess a rich list- or rather his very soul.

beauty is perceived by many at angles that are outside the periphery of consciousness of many others. outside because of lack of awareness of the more subtle realm. he despises block buster hollywood for they just try to be technologically pompous. much like if da vinci attempted jaconde in photoshop :P he belives that movies has to be about simpler yet profound aspects of life such as in french, iranian and german art flicks. the expression is most celebrated when seen capturing such beautiful aspects of life and being empathized by the larger minds. much like one of his favorite movies quote “no man can rightly call himself a perfumer, unless he has proved his worth in that hallowed place”

Let me quote from the movie

Dewey Finn: Give up, just quit, because in this life, you can’t win. Yeah, you can try, but in the end you’re just gonna lose, big time, because the world is run by the Man. The Man, oh, you don’t know the Man. He’s everywhere. In the White House… down the hall… Ms. Mullins, she’s the Man. And the Man ruined the ozone, he’s burning down the Amazon, and he kidnapped Shamu and put her in a chlorine tank! And there used to be a way to stick it to the Man. It was called rock ‘n roll, but guess what, oh no, the Man ruined that, too, with a little thing called MTV! So don’t waste your time trying to make anything cool or pure or awesome ’cause the Man is just gonna call you a fat washed up loser and crush your soul. So do yourselves a favor and just GIVE UP!
Dewey Finn: [on sticking it to "The Man"] Yes! But, you can’t just say it, man. You’ve gotta feel it in you’re blood and guts! If you wanna rock, you gotta break the rules. You gotta get mad at the man! And right now, I’m the man. That’s right, I’m the man, and who’s got the guts to tell me off? Huh? Who’s gonna tell me off?
Freddy: Shut the hell up, Schneebly!
Dewey Finn: That’s it Freddy, that’s it! Who can top him?
Alicia: Get outta here, stupidass.
Dewey Finn: Yes, Alicia!
Summer Hathaway: You’re a joke, you’re the worst teacher I’ve ever had!
Dewey Finn: Summer, that is great! I like the delivery because I felt your anger!
Summer Hathaway: Thank you.
Lawrence: You’re a fat loser and you have body odor.
Dewey Finn: …All right, all right! Now, is everybody nice and pissed off?

Pretty confusing as it may seem, Dewey is trying to define to little kids, what Rock music is all about. It’s a mental unleash of frustration to the Man. Some like Buddha might go crazy and run away to a forest nearby for “answers”. But Rock music expresses pretty much the same. It’s a form of art that is more explicit and verbose that many people from all walks of life can appreciate and correlate to. Again, this form of art apart from getting you larger from being expressive, guides a larger part of the, say western youth, into taking things more sarcastically and ironically, thereby nurturing a more tolerant civilization.

This is where Bengali rock comes in. Many of the Indian and Bangladeshi bands have been trying to create verse in Bengali. This might seem funny for some, but try to zoom out. Apart from the few elite among us, who are privileged to empathize expressive art forms like western rock and the crap that I’m writing among other things, imagine how many of the general population of India lack such capacity. That’s a huge number with so many digits. If a nation is about its people, and not the land :P, then I’d like you to evaluate the effect of localization of rock music! I’m not talking about translation, we aren’t that desperate. India like any other populace has a great pool of poets who can sing better in their native tongue.

The king used to cry imagining Auto Rickshaw guys in rock persuasion. Now that is radical? Ah… It’s already happening. I think its really cool. Now one might say, ah crap… we’ve our own forms of art, like erm… Hindustani and Karnatic? Well, maybe, but then there are two forms of art. One appreciated by the trained and ardent and the other appreciable by the general public. The general public is defined as people, who don’t have a literature or art degree, nor can afford extensive amounts of time in scaling complex forms. So the latter, is simple and has greater penetration. Such is Rock music. Artists who aspire to inspire fellow contemporaries, revolutionaries who wish to awaken the nation, visionaries who wish to surrealistically present complex ideas piecewise etc, can do so with greater reach and faster effect with such forms of expressive art.

In the words of AC/DC: We roll tonight… to the guitar bite… and for those about to rock… I salute you.

He was basically referring to life’s difficulties and that the wings of wax symbolizes our hopes, our aspirations, the dreams,the illusions; and we search for the sun. That is the truth. But the irony is that, if we ever actually find the sun, the wax will melt and we fall like Icarus, but we still are on that quest. Icarus represents the metaphysical rebellion within us, like he himself put it.

However I find this a pessimistic approach to take resort in such philosophy during hard times. This modal represents the “no point” desperation of individual entering life’s realities. Installing philosophy in this perspective is sheer misuse of biological processing/imagination. That is, to think that life’s all messed up and desperately trying to think above the system. Desperate because others around us cant think in our shoes. They seem not to get the point, our “point” rather. Philosophy apart… why didn’t Icarus be smart enough to get down, get a proper wing made and try flying higher? Like Wright brothers! :P We are thinking using complex systems. Instead get down to the basics. If you can analyze… our “thinking”, feeling of “aham” or the feeling of “me”, comes from the processor called the brain. The brain is an organ system, if interconnected neurons. Neurons are simple basically and its their complexity in wiring that makes “us” intelligent to “think”. Getting down… We realize that its nature at play. In this respect… go back in history. Why did simple cells decide to evolve into complex systems? Or why didn’t they, in some other way? Why didn’t they get desperate and philosophical? Because that wasn’t just the right way to do things! Nature… “selects” to the right way of doing things automatically . It’s like Lego building blocks that snap in place only one way! So my point is, the human psyche is just another of nature’s chaos seeking order. We are still evolving or permuting towards “order”. It’s wiser to move on… and try something else… and be cautious in the tread or be selected out. Just like cells are nature, thinking is nature… society is nature.. “life’s difficulties” are natures challenges. So.. Icarus died… Because he couldn’t adapt. Stories of Icarus are pointers to lessons that have to be learnt so that similar mistake is not made again. Stories of Icarus do NOT describe “no point” whine, but rather tell us to be wiser in our endeavors.

So where should one place philosophy? The thing is philosophy is not about sitting and whining. It may help you understand about social difficulties , about the social fabric or the non existence of it, about the pretensions and all that. It’s just that sometimes, some things inspire people. They see stuff in stuff and come out with stuff. That’s why you have artists and painters and poets. That’s how you have culture. But sometimes philosophy is needed to understand things and to find a way out of it. First you have to define something and why that is… before u can find a solution. Actually there are a lot of things that defy human logic.