I just watched Hamilton and am left breathless -- what an experience this was. I'm so glad that Disney decided to release it digitally worldwide so that the people world over can witness the extravaganza. There were so many moments when I was singing and swaying along or sitting stunned in my seat mesmerized. No doubt, the live experience would be many-fold grander. But there's no chance in hell I would get to see this show live ever. At least, I can appreciate now why it is praised so much by anyone who has been lucky to experience this live.
I never knew I would enjoy a Broadway Musical so much. This makes me wonder what else have I missed. Are there any such great shows that are available to stream? I do want to explore and watch more from this form of art too.
Give me liberty or give me death? In response, the Pandemic leans forward with a big grin full of rotting teeth. Why not both?Go out! Have some fun. You’ve been cooped up too long. You deserve this.
To all who hear me, you deserve something far better than a fun holiday weekend. You deserve a long and happy life. Tell the Pandemic to get bent. Stay close to home, and cheer our nation’s beginning from your backyard or living room.
I wish more people world around listened to Cheri Baker. I do not stay in the USA. But even when peeking from outside, the attitude of "I live my life on my terms, the world be damn" is pretty clearly evident among Americans.
It's not cute when you see a child struggling with a magazine because she thinks it's an iPad; it's sad. Give the kids books and magazines to play with before you give them a smartphone or an iPad. They will grow more better.
I am making sure I stay sane, healthy. I am spending time on, for and with myself. I am taking care of myself to the extent that I never did before.
What else could I do?
I am making sure my family stays safe. I am sharing stories, laughing a lot with them. I am playing with my daughter. All her games, without judging them. I go on an unplanned date with my wife right at home every now and then, spend a cosy morning with her in the balcony with a cup of hot tea. I am spending time with my family to the extent that I never did before.
What else could I do?
As I go outside, I always wear a mask. I do not have or present any justification to not wear one. There can't be one. I try to enlighten others, closed ones and those that aren't so, the importance of being responsible once outside of homes.
What else could I do?
Well, there is so much more that I could do. I do not openly express my anguish looking at the adverse situation the impoverished lots are going through. I do not stand for the rights of minorities world around as much as I should. Or contribute towards changing the clearly imbalanced societal status quo.
Or speak up openly when I see a gender bias in play. I haven't yet told that one guy to not keep saying "guys" in a meeting with many of my female colleagues. It is wrong. I cringe every time. But I could also speak up.
“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” -- Mother Teresa
Change doesn't always need radical corrections. I could bring the minor shifts in my behaviour and make my surrounding a fair place for all.
So, what else could I do?
Well, I could not ask that question because I know there's so much that I do not do. Let me make an effort to be a better version of myself because there's no doubt that I can never be perfect.
Facebook and Zuckerberg. And I think even the big publications all round, the likes of Wired and NYTimes, need to stop writing about the issues inside Facebook. They call their edits "exclusive", tag them as an inside look at what transpired behind the tall walls. But that hardly matters - nothing ever changes at the crazy place. Because the people who can bring the change, don't want to. For some reason that is hard to fathom to outsiders, they all are conflicted within.
Apple and Google. Too much is said about everything big and small about these companies. It piques interests in readers and so every publication has something to report about them. I can't add anything more to what has already been said, that too by minds a lot smarter than mine. I don't want to add to the noise.
Politics. Talking about the doesn't help my morale. It rather makes me a lot angrier than I need to be. And to no avail.
Meta rants about Blog. Not my writing workflow. Not the minor tweaks I keep making every now and then. Not the struggles I go through to get things exactly right. Just write and edit what I wrote. Keep the place the way I like to see it. Hear what others have to say about the place, the workflow, tweak it if needed and forget.
Things I need to do. Announce them when ready. Instead of writing about it, start doing it. Get started.
The secret of getting ahead is getting started.
Mark Twain
You know, ultimately, we all have to believe things we haven't seen. As rational as we are, as committed to intellect as we are. Innovation, creativity, development come not from the ideas in our mind alone. They are also fueled by some conviction in our heart. And it's that mind-heart connection that I believe compels us to not just be attentive to all the bright and dazzly things, but also the dark and difficult things. Vaclav Havel, the great Czech leader, said, 'When we were in Eastern Europe and dealing with oppression, we wanted all kinds of things, but mostly what we needed was hope, an orientation of the spirit, a willingness to sometimes be in hopeless places and be a witness.'
Bryan Stevenson
Yesterday I managed to get all my subscriptions into a single place to check how much I was spending on services. Boy, I was in for a shock. My subscription for media services has grown two-fold. Lockdown is, of course, a cause. So, I will let it float around till normalcy returns outside.
I always had my media and productivity services balanced, of course, it was never intentional. But I guess the addition of a HEY subscription might bring things again in balance. I still have 5 days to decide.
Speaking of tracking subscriptions, I used an app called Bobby while I was on iOS and I sorely missed it since I shifted to Android. However, I've found a brilliant app called (of course) Subscriptions. The app has one job and it does perfectly.
The second issue of Slanting Nib & A Keyboard is out and should be in your inboxes if you'd subscribed. I hope it caught your interest and hopefully brought a smile to your face and some thoughts in your mind.
If you haven't subscribed, you can read it online. And if you do like it, please subscribe. I have also published a page that spells out why I started the newsletter and what you can expect from each issue.
I am pretty excited with this side project -- if nothing else, it has made me discover some gem of essays from minds way smarter than mine. I hope the zeal stays on.
Words, being pre-eminent, have the potential to engross you for hours; beyond that, they have the power to mould your personality. Yet, they are ethereal when they come from the accomplished masters of the art form.
Khaled Hosseini said during one of his interviews, “there’s always something to be learned by reading another writer”. That is exactly what this second issue is about, some words of wisdom from authors well-renowned.
Why I Write, the essay of George Orwell. First published: summer 1946. A fascinating look at Orwell’s early life and what made him the writer that he eventually became.
It is his [a writer’s] job, no doubt, to discipline his temperament and avoid getting stuck at some immature stage, in some perverse mood; but if he escapes from his early influences altogether, he will have killed his impulse to write. Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose.
All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane
Dustin Illingworth Eavesdrops on Flannery O'Connor, Susan Sontag, and More. “Few literary artifacts remain as consistently enigmatic as the author’s journal. It seems to me that the more we read of them, the more elusive their provenance”
Over the past few months, I have lived within the journals of heroes and strangers, compared daily word counts with Virginia Woolf, trembled before Alma Mahler’s social calendar, pitied Kafka’s lovers. I’ve read pages and pages with interest and empathy, with boredom and more than a little shame. But having traversed that stack of lives, what remains more than anything, tingling like a phantom limb, is a sensation of stillness: the journal as the eye of the writing life’s storm.
“In the journal,” Susan Sontag wrote, “I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself.”
Jhumpa Lahiri recounts her relationship with her sentences. A fine way to look at how a story or a novel, what she refers to as forest, is conceived - “one in front of the other”.
Constructing a sentence is the equivalent of taking a Polaroid snapshot: pressing the button, and watching something emerge. To write one is to document and to develop at the same time. Sentences are the bricks as well as the mortar, the motor as well as the fuel. They are the cells, the individual stitches. Their nature is at once solitary and social.
Even printed, on pages that are bound, sentences remain unsettled organisms. Years later, I can always reach out to smooth a stray hair. And yet, at a certain point, I must walk away, trusting them to do their work. I am left looking over my shoulder, wondering if I might have structured one more effectively.
Cheri is an author with a brilliant mind. She has published some fine cosy mysteries that would be very valuable in these moments of isolation and social distancing. Besides, she is an astute reader of events going on around and shares her thoughts openly and regularly. Here’s an excerpt from a recent entry on her blog about her forced time in quarantine.
In a way, this moment feels like the morning after a storm. You go outside and check for damage, counting broken windows and dangling power lines, wondering how much it’s going to cost to put everything back together again. Only the thing that’s broken isn’t a house or a neighborhood, it’s the entire economy. And without a vaccine ready there are likely to be more storms rolling in. Still, even knowing that, I’m relieved to discover tiny moments of reprieve. Like a brief chat with a barista while they pull a shot of espresso, or twenty minutes sitting in the grass in a park.
Do purchase and read her books. And do follow her words.
Featured Tool - Freedom
You need a good word processor to begin writing; one powerful editor was featured in the last issue. But once you are staring at the blinking cursor inside that editor, it is staying focused, distraction-free that is absolutely necessary. Freedom helps you with exactly that. It blocks all the distractions for you to lend you a productive session of doing what you want to do. It can block apps, websites and even complete Internet access on your machine. It can sync sessions across all your devices, so you don’t go running to your smartphone when your laptop is locked down.
Freedom has saved me many hours from getting wasted. I am sure it can for every writer out there. Take it for a spin for the free trial run of 7 days.
One Final Inspiration…
Shout out to everyone writing thru the weekend:
“First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice"//Octavia Butler
