Notebook
Writing, observations, and notes on creative practice.
Browse by topic · Original archive
Chickenfoot
I met a friend this week over coffee to discuss a tiny project we have been planning for a while now. But over the next few weeks, we are planning to actually get the ball rolling. So as this conversation went on, I started to go off the rails. I started getting concerned over…
Escape thy Education
For the longest time, I never saw myself as someone who had adopted creative living. I saw myself as only a fan of the arts, at best. Yes, external validation can help with the labels. But I’ve never cared much for it- nor should you. As James Cameron once said: “Pick up a camera, shoot…
It is okay to not know
To learn anything in life is going to demand a lot of patience – haven’t we heard some version of this statement before? It’s quite easy to put it like that though, isn’t it? But what does patience even mean? Because by itself, patience is just a word like every other word. Going deeper, it…
Because this is War, baby. And War is Hell
To learn anything in life is going to demand a lot of patience – haven’t we heard some version of this statement before? It’s quite easy to put it like that though, isn’t it? But what does patience even mean? Because by itself, patience is just a word like every other word. Going deeper, it…
In praise of the Amateur
Because of what it means today in culture, the word, ‘Amateur’ can seem like a pejorative term to a lot of us, especially when we are starting out – in any creative endeavour. When someone calls something amateurish, they are generally referring to the quality of that particular work- lacking technical finesse and so forth.…
New York, New York
A photograph by Brooklyn based photographer, Billy Dinh. At the outset, let me say it- I am a lousy traveller. Sure, everyone likes the odd break from routine and change of scenery- I do too, especially with good company. But I think I am a little thrown off by this idea of backpacking and nomadic…
Look Closely and Slowly
While at school, we hardly ever understand what it is to learn something or what learning really is. As we all know, education is different from learning. Education is getting a degree while learning is not. But when I got the difference, I just wanted to jump forward and skip all the boring parts- the…
Read like No one’s Watching
During my second year, I flunked class and the penalty was to repeat the whole semester. I was mentally prepared for it but to my surprise, I was somehow pardoned and assigned to spend the summer in the library instead, assisting and arranging books. I believe this was my foray into reading because that was…
Walk, Don’t Run
One of my adolescent fantasies has always been to go into the woods, think about transcendentalism, find my own Walden pond and live there like Thoreau although it is a common misconception that he lived in isolation. It suited my introversion well but if I wanted to start somewhere, I would have started with the…
Artist and Trade Secrets
When I was doing my internship in Auroville, I remember attending a seminar with my colleagues by this ‘expert’ who practised alternative building techniques. After the seminar ended, during the Q&A session, a student asked him a very basic question, to which he smiled and answered, “I don’t know”. Can you believe it? After an…