"An honest confessional, with a sprinkle of humor and opinion, of an academician/musician seeking happiness"
Find me now on https://enagyginglife.wordpress.com
It is so easy to let frustration build up. You never really know where and how it started. In fact, I don’t even realize that it has started until it sets in.
I get frustrated when I hear sounds that I don’t want to hear or when I heard things that I don’t expect to hear. These can range from mobile phone buzzes and notifications to Blu meowing to attract attention. It can be the next-door neighbor’s kid screaming or it could be the fight between two women from the slum behind my building. It could be the sound of the air-conditioner malfunctioning or the drip from a faucet that is not closed properly.
One of my wishes is to be in an environment where sounds are absolutely under my control. Almost like have a mute or a kill-switch button for everything that could possibly create sound. Something like a sound-proofed studio for a living environment. I guess I am still okay with ambient sounds, even those that are characteristic of a city like Mumbai. But they have to be nondescript. Something that can be figuratively swept under the carpet of my fucked up mind so that I don’t feel accountable righting the things that are wrong.
As a musician, feeling frustrated with technology seems like a given. I am also starting to feel like I’m getting old enough to feel like an older man who finds any new things in the environment frustrating. When I’m working on a song on my digital audio workstation, I get frustrated when I’m unable to achieve what I want quickly. Because I haven’t had formal training in audio engineering, it is easy to get lost in the maze of parameters and controls and lose sight of the art that I’m trying to create.
I get frustrated when I make typos. I’m increasingly making typos in whatever I do. I fee like my dexterity on the keyboard (for typing) and my ability to pick errors that I have made are waning. It is such an embarrassing situation when someone who has had over 20 years of touch-typing experience and over a decade of experience in academic proofreading and copyediting make mistakes after mistakes after mistakes.
These are some of the sources of frustrations that I have. Right at this very moment, at least the noise and typo frustrations have set in. Blu is begging for food after being fed and J is on the phone in the same room, getting some work done. He has moved out into the other rooms a couple of times, but he still starts conversations in my auditory range.
Maybe I should work on this pervasive frustration issue with my therapist more than anything else.
One of the hardest things that I have had to do is to give an honest
critique about a piece of art to someone who I like/love but with whom I
do not have kind of relationship that befits such and exchange. As an
artist myself, I’d like to hear from others how my art can be made
better, sandwiched between thick slabs of comments about what is it that
I got right in the first place. This seems be the most important lesson
that they the staff at Berklee School of Music teach their students!
The recipients of such an exchange can be classified (in a gross oversimplification) into two.
There are those who give you the freedom to express yourself—not
necessarily only harsh, but more open. Those people make it clear at the
outset that they don’t think highly of themselves but do care a lot
about the piece of art they created. The others are cagey and probably
just want to hear from you that they are doing absolutely great.
Sometimes, these people might actually benefit from not hearing
something harsh, especially if they are already doing quite well.
For the latter, some of the struggle lies in the lack of vocabulary
and tact in expressing and receiving opinions. I find it easier to have
these conversations happen over emails and long messages than
face-to-face conversations. This gives both the parties enough time to
process the responses, avoiding the awkwardness of one’s facial
musculature giving almost everything away. Even when you have go easy on
people, one could always pass on the good to them. That should still
help and technically help build the relationship that you need to switch
to the healthy one where you don’t need to parse the praise from the
critique.
As a recipient, I still will fall into the latter bucket. Does that
mean that I need to work on my relationships more.? Maybe. Or maybe that
the people who give me feedback need to use the right lexicon and tact.
As a critic, I am currently in a self-revelatory exchange with a
close friend of mine. I call him Blummer and he’s someone that I have
done a lot of travel with. He’s currently in the middle of writing a
book about the most important characters that influenced him and made
him what he is right now. He has shared a few chapters and had requested
my thoughts.
I thought he fell in the latter bucket when I started these
exchanges. However, I feel that we’re slowly moving into the former. His
way of expressing the fact that he felt that I was holding back helped
me overcoming my inhibitions to share with him what I felt.
The relationship that I have with him are one of the few that could
qualify, based on the duration and quality our friendship, to justify
the open-critique. I have only a very few where I can be open like that,
and I regret to say that I don’t yet have such a healthy relationship
with my band mates. Maybe we’ll get there some day.
There is a lot of that I feel like saying. I don't know if I will be able to say them all. But I feel like I should give it a shot.
Over the last several months (during the COVID-19 lockdown), life has changed for me. Some for the better, some for the worse. I'll start with the better before moving on to the worse.
I have learned so much more in music production. Finished a course and I'm just starting my last in the series. Wrote some songs, produced several others.
I upgraded my home studio setup. I got myself a powerful laptop, monitors speakers, a good electric guitar, and a cheap MIDI controller (that's not working too well).
My home studio setup
My new guitar
I have at least two active projects, both of which might end up releasing songs to the world soon. I have been working on songs for close to two decades, but haven't ever released something substantial in a trusted platform. I had a couple shots at it -- one solo and another with a band -- but both didn't quite materialize the way it did.
Now, with about 50+ full songs in the bag, about 300 more rudiments that could be fleshed out into full songs, and the ones that I could write moving forward, I think I could start the process of releasing them consistently over the next several years.
One of the projects is with a band, the members of which are part of another band that I love dearly. Over the last several months, we have been working on these songs remotely and some of these are starting to come to life.
The journey forward is challenging for me because I think I will be exposing myself to social situations where I'll need to spend a lot of time working on this music as a producer and engineer for this band, which I think is not my strength. Plus, I'm decidedly an introvert at the core, and spending long periods with people (even if they are my friends) will be extremely taxing.
So overall, this seems ambitious but I think it is doable. All I need to make sure is that I should not burn myself out, which I have a tendency of doing.
I have watched a lot of quality content, both movies and TV series. These are the things that generally inspire me to be creative, and I have conceded to the fact that they are not merely entertainment for me. These things make me think in ways that other forms of communication and media don't.
Among these, I must mention my dive back into the wondrous world of Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis, and the charm of good-quality Malayalam cinema. I still remember the time that I started watching Stargate with my friends and work back in 2014 or something, and they ended up finishing the series (the whole pantheon) in a year or so, where I languished in SG-1 for several years until I picked things up earlier this year.
I have rediscovered my love for gaming. I have started off with explore Xbox Game Pass on my Windows PC, but I think I am headed the way of purchasing an Xbox console when I can.
But I haven't been able to read too much. That's something I want to fix. I'm still stuck in Judas Unchained by Peter Hamilton. I have managed to read a few hundred pages in the last few weeks.
Amazingly, I started this book on New Year's day in 2018. I haven't read much other than a few non-fiction books and comics then. I want to finish this off before I start something new, something that will inspire me.
At work, I have gone from the manager of a team to someone who is primarily involved in creating, ideating, and troubleshooting. I'm currently in the last phase of creating an online training course for copyeditor trainees who join my company. This involved a lot of creative processes (with a lot of opportunity for seeding, farming, and harvesting self-doubt, which has more or less brought be back to a phase of full-fledged depression and anxiety.
To add to the mix is the work pressure and stress. I love working but I seem to have a problem with taking care of myself. This sort of thing has been happening at work for over 3 years now, and I have contemplated quitting or seeking other opportunities (less stressful). With my music revenues drying up during COVID-19 lockdown, with very little hope of things getting back to how things were before, I need to have this job to sustain myself and to work on my music.
Working from home might be easy in the sense that I don't have to travel or meet people. But it is difficult to plug yourself off the grid. Plus, after a 10 to 11 hour day of tiring work, I have to spend time to do the household chores. Then there is the music work. This leaves me with not enough time of rest, relaxation, sleep. I am trying my best to achieve that balance by trying to take short breaks to do some chores in between my work tasks.
The one aspect of work that is challenging but sufficiently rewarding to balance the negative effects of stress is the talks that I give to students from various universities about the academic publishing industry and related topics. These tend to be the highlights of my otherwise productive, but stressful and self-doubting, weeks.
I have had a relatively steady state of therapy sessions over lockdown, and I have decided to step up the fortnightly frequency before to a weekly one, considering that I almost fell apart in the last few weeks.
During the lockdown, I spent a LOT of time holed up in my apartment with my partner J. Before lockdown, I never thought I could comfortably spend more than two days with anyone, especially J. We had a stretch of about 4 months together. We were with each other night and day without any breaks!
We were both surprised to find out that we could hold out for this long. Of course, we had fights and arguments, but we also had wonderful shared moments, with lots of wonderful food and shared TV/movie experiences. We regularly had our evening tea on the balcony, with the backdrop of mountains and clouds (on good days) and the cacophony of avian noises at dusk.
For this duration, however, I lost my sense of personal space more and more, and that also has contributed to my triggering of stress, anxiety, and depression. My apartment is tiny by world standards and average by Mumbai standards, and I need the space for my music and to feel free that I can do things I want to do when I want to do. When I am with people, I give away all my space to them. They become the primary beings of the shared space. This is probably why I could never be with people for over a few days.
During the lockdown, I gave up my bedroom and desk to J for most of the day, which limited my access to my recording setup. He might do the cooking, but the cleaning responsibilities were harder and took longer. There was less quiet overall, and J was more or less in charge of the auditory environment.
When I'm alone, I usually have a variety of states where I'll play loud music or have absolute quiet, and I listen to podcasts and talk radio when I am not concentrating on text-based work. This world is shattered when another person shares the space with me. I don't feel like I should destroy their peace by auditorily invading the shared space, which is something that I don't usually get reciprocated for. This builds the tension and anxiety of losing control of the space. I don't know how to get out of this or have the feeling of a truly shared space.
I have finally started finding YouTube useful, especially to learn more about technology, music production, and my niche interests. I often dive into the YouTube maze and come out with learnings and best practices. This also happens with podcasts. In fact, the fact that I'm writing this post is because of the simple strategy that a songwriter espoused on a podcast.
They recommended starting the day and working on something creative. Maybe listening to music or writing. Writing songs or prose.
Because of the work-from-home situation, and because I want to try and finish my work as soon as possible, I end up starting work as soon as possible, which leaves with less creative energy at the end of the day. Today, I wrote some lyrics for a song that I'm working on, recorded a scratch version of it (both for the course), and I felt like writing this blog post.
Some of the lessons that I learned from the things that I read or seek out is how to do music production better. But the problem with knowing more is to find it difficult to get more done with less time. You tend to get lost in what you think you should do instead of what you should do. I used to wrap up demos in hours. Now, that has gone to days, if not weeks. That's not good and I need to figure out a way to make things manageable in terms of time. The latest course that I'm doing has an exercise that mandates that you set timelines for finishing a project. I will try to implement that moving forward.
My therapist tells me that I should try and stare out at nothing (or something pleasant) for short periods during the day. During our sessions, I found out that this activity made me feel like a heavy weight has been lifted off my body. My eyes started feeling relaxed and I felt like drifting off to sleep. This morning, I did that by staring at the mountains for a bit. I need to make it a point to do this more often than I have been doing.
I have been finding it difficult to fall asleep at night, especially when I am with J. I don't know why it is that. I tend to feel sleepy if I'm reading something or watching something, but the act of needing to switch off the TV or put away the book and switch of lights wakes me up.
One of the reasons could be the anxiety/stress overall, but I think the frustration of not feeling like I have done anything meaningful in the day is a constant contributor. Thanks to my wonderful upbringing, I have a tendency to feel I'm not good enough for anything or that I haven't done enough to merit existing.
This is both for things at work as well as my music. I know that I'm doing good work, but I always feel like I am not doing enough or that I could have done way better. At work, there is hardly a system where such anxieties are considered and taken care of. Many have left the company because of the unaddressed issues, with more leaving soon. I feel for them, as much as I should be feeling for myself. But as I said above, I need this job at this time.
Over the last year or so, I have more or less pulled out of most social media. The only thing I check occasionally is Twitter. I have also stopped sharing photos. In fact, the joy of photography has somehow been sucked up from inside me. I guess I should treat this as a phase too. Or maybe it is because I don't get to get out of my house anymore.
I am planning to switch of 8-year-old Nexus 5 to something more modern. Something with a decent camera and photography software. I'm not sure if I should go for Pixel 4A or something more expensive and flagship (like the OnePlus 8T or some version of the iPhone).
During the lockdown, I have rediscovered my interest in writing (physical, literal writing) with fountain pens. I have refurbished the ones that I have and I have purchased a couple of good ones. Now, I can even write lyrics paper with real pens!
My not-so-good handwriting
One of the unsettling aspects of lockdown has been finding out that I relate and empathize with the heinous characters in some movies. These characters show psychopathic characteristics. They are murderers, cannibals, and sadists. I don't think that I have any of these characteristics, but I have the sociopathy. What they say about human beings, their sufferings, and how things should end resonates with me. I'm talking about Dr. Hannibal Lecter (played by Sir Anthony Hopkins) and Jame Gumb (Buffalo Bill, played by Ted Levine) from Silence of the Lambs, Tavis Bickle (played by Robert DeNiro) from Taxi Driver, and the young woman (played by Jesse Buckley) in i'm thinking of ending things.
Dr. Hannibal Lecter
Jame Gumb
Robert Bickle
The girl in i feel like ending things
I haven't talked much about Blumenthal. She is as pretty as ever. As I write this, she has gotten under the covers after having had her mail meal for the day.
Blumenthal in all her glory
So that's where I will end this for the moment. This was fun. This was refreshing. Maybe I'll follow my own advice and do this more often.
I wrote about photography earlier. Since drafting the post, I added some photos to it. These are the ones that I feel I should share or I should have shared.
What is it that you chase that seems to move farther away? It makes you feel that there will be something at the end. Something that you hope you will have wanted all along and will continue to exist in a state of being desirable. Yet, with every passing day, what was once desirable becomes inconsequential. The chase seems to be here to stay.
Maybe we are excruciatingly dumb, infantile physical vessels, hosting embryonic minds caught up in algorithmic urges while trying to make sense of the why's. The carrot chasing will go on forever. Those you grab will get devoured or discarded. And you start all over again.
If you don't see a carrot, you will try to imagine it. Imagined ones can metamorpihize to creations if you try hard enough. You may even give the physical representations by inserting reminders into your own environment.
Because carrots are ubiquitous, everyone will have an opinion about them. Some will tell you that carrots are good for you. Some others will want you to forget that carrots existed. Both sets of people would sound right and wrong depending on how hungry you are for the carrot.
The occasional state of satiation, often fueled by inebriation or hormonal supersaturation, may last for a day or three. The hunger will return, and you will go back to drawing, creating, and chasing carrots. Until the time that either you lose sight---not just of carrots but of perspective---or when you realize that carrot chasing has left you dissatisfied.
Maybe we should stay above ground while the carrots remain below. Or maybe we need them carrots so as to not lose sight.
It's been a long six months. Six months since the last time I wrote here. Six months since I thought things had changed. They indeed have. The world is not what it used to be. I'm not what I used to be.
COVID-19 is here to stay. It has changed the world. It's been almost four months since lock-down was first imposed in India and in Mumbai. We are still working from home. Possibly forever in some way or the other. Walking around without a mask, commuting for leisure, going to the movies, performing and watching live music, dining out, and vacations/travel all seem so unattainable. Maybe we'll never go back to how things used to be. I don't think my plans to pursue higher education will ever materialize. I don't think I will be able to move out of Mumbai/India.
J has stayed over at my place most
of these four months of lock-down. It started as a regular weekend stay
over at my place. Then came the lock-downs. Initially, we both struggled to come
to grip with sharing spaces with someone else, with both having lived by
ourselves alone most of our adult lives. It took a while for us to settle into a routine. The
routine itself was fun, sans the arguments and stress. We watched a lot
of good stuff, the best among which was the sensational TV drama The Wire.
He had so many wonderful meals. On most days, we had tea on the balcony
with the backdrop of a cleaner, quieter, and greener Mumbai. During
these months, J did help me put together a lot of things that have
improved my workflow, both for editing/writing related work and for
music.
Work-from-home just means more actual work hours than ever before. At work, I'm working on creating a course for junior editors. This means that I never feel I have done enough. This coupled with the fact that I am trying to put in a solid 3 to 4 hours of music or related work most days and have almost 2 hours of cleaning housekeeping to do every day, I am sleeping less and I'm more stressed and wound up than I have ever been before. Maybe it is the stress of having lived together with someone for so long after so long. No matter how much ever I seem to be doing better, I just seem to get more an more unhappy and unsatisfied with what I do. As my friend put it, I will never ever be happy. I'll always figure out more things to worry about and feel unhappy about.
I got back to some of the Berklee courses for music production that I have been meaning to finish. I have also invested in some good quality gear for my home studio. Finally, I am learning more (from better quality sources) regarding music writing and production. All of this means that I am writing better music than ever, and I'm getting better at production and mixing. Hell, I'm even getting better at singing. And yet there is no certainty in when I'll be able to release the music that I have been writing. Just before lock-down, things looked promising. My close friends who I write and perform with for a project had finalized on a producer/engineer, who was excited to be working with us. We were expecting to cut several EPs starting in May 2020. Considering the way things have turned out, nothing is certain. Maybe this is how things will be. Or maybe I need to figure out getting even better and release some music of my own. All-in-one and DIY.
It's been over a year since my Mom passed. Two years since my father did. I thought their passing would make things more straightforward in a very selfish kinda way. I won't have to worry about them falling ill or needing to reschedule things to be with them. That sounds so wrong, and yet so right. Even though I winced while I typed this in, I long for a clear path (the home run) to my immediate goals, and I thought not having the added responsibility of taking care of my ailing parents would make things easier. It might have but I don't feel it one bit. Life seems to be more challenging than it has ever been.
My sister started writing for fun. Not a book or a blog, but simply writing to express herself. It started with a piece that she was expected to write for a college reunion. She did the drafting and I did a substantive edit on it. It was fun for me to read her thoughts expressed in the way that only she could, especially because they were vivid memories from my childhood and adolescence back in Kerala. These days, I don't get to talk to her much, and the occasional communications that we have are around these micro-journal entries that she shares with me, often in Malayalam.
I have been working on text generated by two of my travel mates and close friends. Blummer is writing an autobiography, and the couple of chapters that I have had the pleasure to read were such windows to his remarkable life! Mickles3 has sought my help in putting together a chapter for a scholarly publication. Both of these, along with the experience that I had with my sister, make me want to start writing again. Maybe I need to aim higher than a blog. Maybe a book or two? Maybe.
Along with that...
I have fallen in love with fountain pens all over again.
I feel inspired to write Bowie/Depeche Mode type music.
Blu(menthal) is just gorgeous but is an arsheole.
I'm not young anymore.
I want my sister/friends to know that I want a do-not-resuscitate order if I get severe COVID-19.
When I saw the poster for A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood on BookMyShow, I thought that it looked funny. Throwback color schemes, Tom Hanks looking overly a in a light red sweater, and the words neighbor, icon, friend in an oversized font.
The movie was one of the three running last week that seemed worth watching. Judging by the relatively sparse listings, it was also the most "indie" among the three. Unlike most passionate movie-goers, I don't do much research on movies before I go watch them. Because it is the Oscar season, I generally end up having even better experiences by immersing myself in something that seemed to have happened more by chance than by meticulous planning, which is what my life seems to be more than I'd like to admit it is. And this is why I decided to try and gobble the movie up as the first chance I could, despite the scheduling gymnastics that I needed to do.
The movie began with an '80s looking shot of Mr. Rogers--the character Tom Hanks plays--sounding and looking funny. It was fairly obvious that his intended audience was not people like me. I guess the director wanted people like me to feel just that because I fell for it hook, line, and sinker. I guess I ought to clarify that I had no idea what I was getting into. Mr. Rogers was not a thing in my childhood, which technically started in late '79 and must have ended in the early '90s. My household was without a television until 1987 and without cable television until '94. The first thing that I remember looking forward to watching on TV was Giant Robot and Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman, that too on the national broadcaster Doordarshan. Since then, almost all of my non-sporting leisure time was usurped by the once-great MTV once I had cable.
In other words, I was an absolute virgin for Mr. Rogers and his famous TV show for kids. In fact, the movie is about a character--the jaded journalist Lloyd Vogel--who was pretty much in the same headspace as I was at the beginning of the movie. Lloyd is a cynic/critic who writes harsh articles about celebrities in Esquire, who, when given the assignment of writing a 400-word flattering piece on Mr. Rogers, reacts with a mixture of shock and disappointment. He thinks Mr. Rogers is just a TV show host putting on a fake character to get fame. I might have felt like Lloyd at the beginning of the movie, but by its end, I was like Lloyd's wife Andrea, who cherished the show and had uplifting moments in her childhood because of the show.
Lloyd is an interesting character--from my perspective--himself. His cynical self is probably a result of a troubled childhood/early adulthood thanks to a traumatic relationship with his father. Lloyd is still recovering from the trauma of watching his mother succumb to cancer after a painful terminal phase. He feels betrayed because his father Jerry wasn't there to support the family during this phase. Jerry, on the other hand, seeks help from other avenues of support while grappling with the loss of his wife, ends up in a relationship with a woman (too soon for the likes of his son), and eventually marries her. Lloyd also has an elder sister with whom he shares a complex relationship. Lloyd is married to Andrea, a grounded woman with a different upbringing, and is now coming to grips with the responsibilities of a father.
It is at this phase when Lloyd's employer assigns this task. Over several interviews with Mr. Rogers, Lloyd begins to unravel the mystery of the charm behind Mr. Rogers. At the same time, Lloyd also gets perspectives on his life, his relationships, and his responsibilities, thanks to the sagely insights that Mr. Rogers offers. Lloyd loses the cagey skepticism about Mr. Rogers and also about such people in general--the people who find a way to be empathic to others no matter what the situation is.
Mr. Rogers was/is everything that I wanted/want in my life to set things in perspective. He seems to have a bottomless well of kindness and is a master at making people he meets and interacts at ease. He is someone who can talk about something and would make sense to both children and adults without making either group uncomfortable in the way they are being talked to. The body language, the expressions, the choice of words, the tone of voice--everything seems to be perfect for an empathic connection. On top of all of this, Mr. Rogers is an actor, performer, musician, composer, songwriter, and much more. The topics that he addresses are dark concepts like anger, jealousy, death, hospitals, friendship. And yet, the words and the phrases that he chooses to use in his songs are available for everyone.
Fred Rogers seems to have been every bit what the poster said: a neighbor, an icon, and a friend. Mr. Rogers, through his show, its characters, its songs, and its conversations would end up educating children about the mysterious, difficult world that they were being ushered into without much preparation. This is the sort of thing that everyone needs, regardless of the time they are in or the age they find themselves in. Like Lloyd, I felt like watching clips of the show and learning more.
There is nothing more in the world that I seem to want than someone like Mr. Rogers in my life. Someone to help me find my empathy and lose my eternal cynicism.
Some of my most cherished moments in life are set in movie theaters while watching movies. Most of these times are when I go to watch movies on my own, but that could be because most of the time I go to movies without company.
In fact, I think that watching movies alone is the best way to watch good-to-great movies. By that, I mean that I have a lower threshold than most movie connoisseurs (or critics) for what I consider as high quality. Strangely, I have a high threshold for people who I consider as quality, and to be honest, an extremely small number of the people that I know have made the cut.
I am very often overcome with emotions--mostly positive--while watching non-blockbuster movies. For someone who struggles to find anything meaningfully moving in life, these are precious.
Today, I went to the movies with J to watch Ford vs. Ferrari. This was one of the few movies that we end up watching that we both badly wanted to watch. But we couldn't figure logistics out to watch when it initially released. In such cases, I'm the one who regularly checks listings for movies that pique my interest on my IMDB browsings.
Thanks to the locality that I live in, which features within walking distance three of the best movie theaters in Mumbai in terms of the variety and show options, we were able to get ourselves to the lone afternoon show.
I'm not too much into cars and automobiles. So I wasn't too chuffed to have finally managed to get myself to go watch it. Well at least until the movie started. Each time Ken Miles and Carroll Shelby overcame the odds and adversities, I cried. Must have been four or five times.
The last time I cried in a non-movie setting was about 2 years ago when the ambulance with my father's corpse rolled out of my sister's apartment building complex and my sister and mother started wailing. I was strong and I was able to get a handle on my tears in a few seconds.
Side Notes:
While I was writing this post, I realized that there is a pattern to these. I started having such momements around the time my first official depression episode. It's almost as if my depression puts a cap on my emotions which is popped open only when I find myself in an immersive state of watching/reading well-enacted/well-written powerful stories with very little "trim-the-fat" requirements.
J wonders whether my lack of empathy and inaccessibility to regular emotions is because of antidepressant medications. Unlikely, because I'm on a mood stabilizer that does not seem to have such side effects.
I want to move out of fucking Mumbai. To the middle of nowhere. Where there are less people and there is less noise. And I think I'll be at least less unhappy in such a place. The only thing that I'll miss Bombay for is the movie-going luxury--that is if can't find this in where I would move to.
The movies that I have had such experiences that I immediately recall are:
12 Years a Slave
Article 15
A Star is Born
A Single Man
Babel
Bohemian Rhapsody
Brokeback Mountain
Capote
Crash
Gully Boy
Imitation Game
Interstellar
La La Land
Little Miss Sunshine
Midnight in Paris
Milk
Munich
Rocket-man
Sideways
Silver Linings Playbook
The Aviator
The Departed
The Green Book
The Theory of EverythingThree Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Pretty much everything ends in a disappointment. Happiness is a mirage for those who have figured out a way to set their expectations for everything at manageable levels. For themselves. For those who they surround themselves with. For things you do. For things you are supposed to do well.
No matter what you would like to tell yourself, the things that you end up doing and the things that you are supposed to do well is a mixed bag of things that you did not have much control over. You might be a lawyer or a painter. If you are lucky (read privileged), you might have been able to make this decision yourself without worrying about personal, monetary, and social security. I am sure you would like to think that you had a say in deciding that for yourself.
Sure, a lot of people (including me) had opportunities to make these decisions. But who is to say that these decisions are indeed independent.
What if I tell you that while making the seemingly independent decision to pursue a career, you were influenced by all the things that you have experienced until that decision-making point. And all of that is influenced by the place you grew up in, the people you shared your childhood with you, the stuff you read, the placed where you had your education, and shows you watched on TV, the songs you grew up dancing to, and so on.
For example, maybe if the six-year-old me had not accepted the invitation to play cricket with two grown men who lived in the house behind where I lived, I wouldn't have been a medical doctor or a musician. "How" is an interesting question. The house that I went to play in had kittens and cats and one of two grown men had a great music cassette/CD collection.
Getting exposed to kittens and cats, handling them, getting used to animals, having pets, liking zoology and botany, studying these, giving the entrance test for medicine, enjoy handling/taking care of human beings.
Getting exposed to music [being born in a family with musicians, getting lessons in Carnatic music], borrowing CDs of '70s/'80s/'90s music, listening to these on my hi-fi, meeting friends/neighbors who enjoyed similar music, wanting to emulate some of the music by playing drums on tabletops, picking up guitar after my sister forced me to, enjoying learning songs, feeling great about writing songs, recording/producing songs, moving to Mumbai and exploring a career as a musician, playing live music in Mumbai.
So many things had an influence. Now I am several decades past the decision-making stage. I am left with is a pervasive feeling of disappointment. At least, my life is something that I can see through the filter of disappointment.
I'm not disappointed with my decisions themselves. On the contrary, I'm proud of making these decisions. I'm even okay with the difficult decision of having to give up practice for pursuing music and editing. What I'm not okay with is the inability to help the people who seek guidance from me regarding their health problems. I can help them to a certain extent, but I don't have knowledge/skills and tools/resources to help them the way that I want.
For example, J wants a cure for the dozen or so ailments that he seems to have. I can't give him that. My sister wants a cure for the speech/learning disability that my niece has. I can't help her much other than reading up about some details that she shares. Even if I could have an opportunity to spend more time with my niece and may physically be around her to help my sister with whatever she needs to do for my niece, I can't because of my tendencies to need alone time.
On the other hand, with music, despite my feeling happy/proud of the stuff that I have achieved, I'm constantly disappointed with the improvements that I have not been able to make as a musician and the inability to release the tracks after professionally recording/producing them. When I try to write new stuff, I disappoint myself by not being able to come up with even better stuff that I can come up with.
A year or so back, I was absolutely excited about writing/publishing more music. I was also thrilled at the possibility of exploring higher studies abroad and settling somewhere nice. Around that time, I went out for drinks with a couple of friends. It was a farewell thing for one of the two moving abroad. Somewhere in the conversation, I had said that I thought I would be happier and contended if I were to move abroad and find a place where there are not so many things that annoy me like how Bombay does.
My friend had said, "No. You will find things to get annoyed by. You will find things to worry about. You will not be happy." I saw some truth in this at that time. Since then, I have done close to nothing to change my state of affairs.
Now, I am starting to realize that I'll never be happy. Whatever I do, I'll be dissatisfied with myself. Whatever, I get good at, I'll find ways to be more self-critical than I should be.
Situations could change but disappointment is a constant.
What does one do when the phrase "Happy New Year" sounds even more ludicrous than it has ever sounded? What does one do when despite being convinced about the sheer pointlessness of celebrating the turn of the year, one happens to have memories associated with the event that are attributed to the associated holidays, which coincide with vacations, and the relatively pleasant weather in the subtropical Northern Hemisphere at that time? What does one do when these memories are laced with people who once used to make sense to you—or that it made sense for you to inhabit the same space with them at some time in the past—who still want to make more sense with you when you are absolutely convinced that the sense that they made was more nonsense than anything else? What does one do when those people interact with you while being immersed in the sense of well-being that this phenomenon tends to bring about while one is bereft of such feelings? How does one stop being disappointed and stop disappointing others in these communications? What does one do when ever communication that you engage with is so loaded with the feeling how you fake it feels when reacting with a sense of political correctness and social righteousness? What does one do when, after spending the evening doing something that one thinks they ought to be good at, one is convinced that they aren't really good at what they think they are good at? What does one everything they look at or think about is loaded with memories of feeling of ineptitude and lack of self-worth?
I guess one thinks about make one's loved ones sit at a table and ask leave from them for life—to disappear somewhere and start over.
