Sad Poems

"All life is a struggle in the dark."

— Lucrecius, 98-55 B.C.

(Roman poet and philosopher, De rerum natura)

Freedom (Part 2)

Some of you may remember the ribbons from my video, LIFE that I posted some time ago.

Happy Birthday Little Tramp

Happy Birthday Sir Charles Chaplin.

I think I owe you this one, after all you've given me enough inspiration and laughter to last a lifetime over the last couple of months.

Freedom (Part 1)

This is a series that I've been wanting to do for sometime now. 

It's a tribute to being young, free and crazy. 

April

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain. 

—T.S. Eliot (The Waste Land)

Somewhere In Time

I did this drawing about a year ago one lazy afternoon. I was listening to some jazz records while I was working on this - Sinatra and Nate King Cole; always puts my mind at ease when I'm working. 

I watched the re-release of James Cameron's Titanic in 3D a couple of days ago and it's been stuck with me ever since. The first time I saw the movie was back in 1997 and I was just six years old.  Anyway, since it's April and it's 2012, I thought it would be appropriate to share this to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic and pay a special tribute to the tragedy that took place in 1912...although for me it's just a celebration of Kate's beauty.

P.S. I know this has got nothing to do with the real Titanic, and I also know that it's got everything to do with the James Cameron movie, but this is the best I can draw/think of at the moment.

And oh! if you're reading this and haven't seen the 3D release, please go see the movie, it's worth it.

My Morning Muse

I've been collecting Art books for some time now. So far I've read about the life and major works of Van Gogh, Constable, Monet, Renoir and a few other fine artists. I'm reading Courbet right now. Here's a sneak peak into my daily morning routine.

Le Sommeil (The Sleepers), 1866 (above) was painted by Courbet for Kahlil Bey, a wealthy Turk. Whistler’s mistress, Joanna Hiffernan modelled for one of the lovers, whose lost innocence is symbolized by the broken strings of pearls.

Visual Analytics

I've always wanted to study the difference between a color photograph and black and white photograph. This picture was taken on one sunny day, early March this year. I was just aiming for the roof of the football stadium when the two birds flew in just moments before I released the shutter. I was a divine intervention. The picture looks a lot more alive now.

I cannot say that one is better than the other, both have visual magnetism. I don't want to go into technical analysis either, in fact, I don't know much about it myself. I just want to make a point here - what the black and white lacks (i.e. colors), it compensates by bringing out one significant dimension - emotions. I look at the color photograph and I see a beautiful scene, a beautiful picture. I look at the black and white photograph and I see a complete story.

F-stop- f/8,Exposure-1/200sec., ISO-100

F-stop- f/8,Exposure-1/200sec., ISO-100

LOLITA Ya Ya...Posters On The Wall

Spent the weekend putting up posters on the wall. I'm a big fan of LOLITA, both the novel and the two movie adaptations. Collecting classic cinema posters has become my latest addiction.

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea."

                                                                                          — Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, Part One, Ch. 1

Homage To My First True Love

This is no April Fool joke friends. I've decided to read all the great poetry of the past 700 years this month. I'm going to start  with 'The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám', of course.

I was fourteen when my father first introduced me to Omar Khayyám. One summer night, after dinner he took out one of his old dusty anthologies, I think it was Louis Untermeyer's 'A Treasury of Great Poems' smoked a cigarette and read it to me. Edward FitzGerald's beautiful translation, the rhythm of the rubaiyats, the wine, the grapes, the roses, the potter - I fell in love with them all. 

 

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,

A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread--and Thou

Beside me singing in the Wilderness--

Oh, Wilderness were Paradise now!

— The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám