Delusion Angel

Daydream delusion, limousine eyelash
Oh baby with your pretty eyes
Drop a tear in my wineglass
Look at those big eyes
See what you mean to me
Sweet cakes and milkshakes
I'm a delusion angel
I'm a fantasy parade
I want you to know what I think
Don't want you to guess anymore
You have no idea where I came from
We have no idea where we are going
Lodged in life
Like branches in a river
Flowing downstream
Caught in the current
I carry you
You carry me
That's how it could be
Don't you know me?
Don't you know me, by now?

- David Jewell
From the film Before Sunrise

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Trying to work out my thoughts enough to cobble together a post on what the film explores; self-fulfillment and self-discovery through a significant other. Would be interesting to see how that turns out, if that turns out...

Utopia, of a kind...

A long, late night drive from Noida to ITO along wide, empty roads (the chrome yellow of streetlights throbbing dully on the slick, tar-black roads) got Aby and me to SPA for Utopia, a couple of nights ago. It was really the best counterpoint to an otherwise uneventful weekend, recreation-wise.

Now SPA is a charming, old world type of institution and Utopia, its annual cultural fest is supposed to be one of those much awaited affairs, where anyone off the streets can walk in and partake of the revelry, only no one actually does. There are only, ever, a few handfuls of people in attendance- all of them students, most of them undergraduates, with far too much time on their hands to let an evening of music, weed and booze just go by.

So Utopia turns out to be charming and old world, much like the host institute, where everyone knows everyone and the music's mostly good, the booze mostly free and the weed... Well, the weed's just weed, isn't it?

And I realised, as I stood there semi-headbanging to (mostly) passably thrashed out metal played by young, amateur bands that made up for their lack of virtuosity with their abundant energy and enthusiasm and generously sprinkled doses of cuss words in the lyrics of their self-styled compositions, that this is, precisely, what I love about these gigs- the fact that everyone knows everyone, and that everyone's there to have a good time and there's booze and weed and good-natured banter, and there's music too and it doesn't matter if those guys on stage aren't the best in the business!

No professionally organised rock show, with top bill artists, can ever hope to evoke the same kind of magic. The bonhomie is, almost always, missing. And though the music may be good, nay- the best, its still not quite the same thing...

Perhaps that explains my frequent visits to CityPulse, when I was in Ahmedabad, to listen to Purple Flower playing their stock repertoire, weekend after weekend. I mean, yes, no one plays CCR better than CCR but then you wouldn't get to sit down and share a smoke and trade a few laughs with Fogerty right after he's finished playing Proud Mary, would you?

So that's the clincher, really- the sense of belonging. And even though the cops turned up at around 10.30 to put a stop to all the loudness and noise, people still hung about and chatted and smoked up and caught up on each other's lives. I'd like to think everyone had a good time, all things considered, and that's really all that matters, isn't it?

The medium IS the message!

This pretty little video reminds me somewhat, in a poor-man kind of way, of the early, pioneering work on pixilation by Norman McLaren. More importantly, to me, it highlights Marshall McLuhan's famous claim from the 1960s that forms the title of this post.

I Put a Spell On You

On the right kind of day, CCR is the only rock band worth listening to! Apocryphal, perhaps, but so true. There's something about how the deep bass lines, tinny-lilting lead riffs and the strained, gravelly vocals all come together that creates music that's quite unlike anything else.

Today's one of those days and all morning has been a long, unbroken chain of
SuziQFortunateSonHeardItThroughTheGrapevine
PutASpellOnYouBadMoonRisingLodiGreenRiver
DownOnTheCornerHeyTonightSweetHitchHiker

And, on the right kind of day, I shouldn't have to say any more than this. Do I hear the crowd say Aye? Do I?

Dance all night to this DJ

So we went clubbing the other night.

Just the four of us- Aby, Om, Ben and me. Saturday nights are usually complete write-offs for stags in Delhi but there are times when you just have to get right down and jiggy with it. This was one of those times.

Earlier in the evening we'd done The Village Cafe- good place for metalheads and classic rock fans, and, one of the few places in Delhi where they'll still let you smoke away to glory, or death- as the case may be, and we'd slummed it out at Al Bake and stuffed our faces on some of the best schwarma this side of the Yamuna. The point being- we were four very satiated beings on the long drive back to Noida, looking forward to a night of Beer-ing and Weed-ing, until Meeoow happened! Meeoow being the sole reason we still, occasionally, tune in to FM in Delhi.

Methinks its hard not to sing along when the theme for the night is cheesy-singalong-songs-from-the-80s-and-90s. So sing along we did. All the way. From New Friends Colony to Southex and up and down the numerous flyovers and over the DND in to Noida. By the time we got off the DND we had this irresistible, almost primal, urge to go dancing to cheesy numbers all night!

So we went clubbing that night.

But, as I said, Saturday nights are usually complete write-offs for stags in Delhi. So mission one turned out to be hunting down a club that would let in four delirious stags singing cheesy 90s numbers at the top of their voices. We finally found one. It had a dance floor the size of an average Mumbai bathroom and a DJ called Harkirat-Singh-something-or-the-other. But, and these are the good bits, it was packed to the rafters (something like that, anyway) with nubile bodies of the female persuasion all writhing to the cheesiest, desiest dance numbers ever, and they threw in bottles of beer into the bargain!

So we went clubbing that night.

We got right down and jiggied with it. Just like that. Thanks to the Molotov Cocktail of 90s pop, writhing women and good old spontaneity the night turned out legen - wait for it - dary!