Observations #1

Forty-seven minutes past eight in the morning. I’m late but I’m there, and that’s a relief. I have a few moments—precisely thirteen—until the grey-clad security personnel start wanting me out. I must hurry, but I must also slow down.

I must practice what I preach I will practice.

The heart’s heavy or loud. On second thoughts, maybe it is fast and loud. The cut-out shirt, one size too small, clings on to my skin through an interface of a mixture of salts and water. It’s black and has the outline of three pairs of bipeds etched in grey.

I had picked it up from a table littered with same-sex merchandise. In exchange, I had parted with two currency notes, maybe three. The other stuff was too loud, like my heart is now. The people were loud too, relatively at least. Some would say they were just expressive, they were just free, they were just liberated. But all of this is only within the  walls that surround the table and the people. Once they walk out, they become quiet; they become subdued and suppressed. I too will walk out, but I will not be remarkably quieter.

Once you are at the bottom, you don’t have the drive to dig any further.

Not to forget the cycling shorts that confine my modesty. They are black too but no grey figures adorn them. There is a neatly cut out cushion sown in, to not let the hard seat dig in too far. Funny how when not on a bicycle, someone like me is supposed to look forward to hard things being dug in. Not too far because then won’t fun anymore. Until it gets to be fun again at least for one of the two.

My mind’s racing. The parts of it that have gotten lost somewhere must have made it light and nimble. But my mind is always heavy. Okay, a bit of hyperbole. Not always, but most of the time. That’s why I’m here trying to slow it down. The brisk jog must not have helped, but then the mind is not the heart even though hundreds of poets might have tried to convince us otherwise.

Focus. Look ahead.

I’m surprised to realize that my eyes were open all this while, but I hadn’t been seeing things. Not to imply that I’m blind, which I am not. I can see longer and clearer than I ought to, something I lean on to distance myself from my lineage, many of whom indirectly brought food to the tables of the families of optometrists. The first signs of the eventual submission to the ravages of old age have made their appearance as evidenced by blurring of gigantic signs planted far away. The psychological barricade that seems to install itself between the optic nerves and the temporal cortices seemed to be fueled partially by this optical loss. The cycle might be vicious, but my frontal cortex is up to scratch.

Observe and record.

Five types of palms, the names of which I’m not sure of, are probosces of varying length sticking out of the freshly watered lawn. One is a Chinese fan palm and another is a date palm, thanks to lessons lent by the lover during past lolls. The names of the other trees are even scarcer, but not those of the avians resting atop their branches. A family of flying rats dispersed across five trees, with a solitarian grooming itself, its grey outline sufficiently contrasting with the light blue sky. The nebulous army seem to have declared a ceasefire unlike its counterparts in Myanmar and Russia. Three black crows and a mynah are also in the party that did not require RSVPs.

Good going, but check back on your heart. Nothing in there or so it seems. Not even the loudness in the ears. Did I lose my earphones? Phew! I hadn’t, because I would be even more blind thanks to the noise.

Now let’s look at some mammals.

Unfortunately, not even a single quadruped one available for observation. Among the ones that are, one is learning to not use his two longer limbs for locomotion. He is on a skateboard, wobbly at best, sticking close to the median, propped on either side by his friends. A couple walk slowly past them on the far side of the road skirts the garden, lost in conversation. None of them have masks on, by the way, maybe as a sign of protest to the authorities.

Wait a minute, do I have mine on? No! Mine is on my neck, but then again I was alone and I had just finished a run. My excuse is better, at least until I get the dreaded virus one of these days.

Back to the road.

The most elegant posture. On a pink bicycle about thirty seconds behind the trio with the skateboard. The woman on the saddle seems to be the only one at peace with the world. She is wearing pink too, what a coincidence. A gentle brisk pace, maybe nine kilometers per hour. I know because I ride at thirteen when I’m not trying to race.

Now that she has gone, I need to find something else to look at.

I’m sitting on a wooden garden bench, and across me is another. Too close to each other, placed awkwardly toward the center of the ramada without much thought. Or maybe too much thought for the pair of security guards to nap during the day when no one’s looking. There is even a cast iron bolt that sticks out from the front where it shouldn’t have been left. If someone were to draw blood around where I am sitting today, they would be somethings and have four legs.

I think I have looked enough. Time to close my eyes. Making myself physically blind again, but now without the chorus of the heart in my ears. It’s time to try mindfulness and grounding.

So much to say

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.