The day the finger tappers took over the world

The other day while posting an entry on my blog, John Lennon’s Imagine was playing on the Cadence Amayas, and a freakish vision appeared – Mr Lennon’s apparition magically manifested from the electrostatic panels and asked me “Imagine a world which has been taken over by WordPress!”, but before i could offer an opinion, he vanished and was off to sign autographs in some remote parts of the andromeda galaxy.

Hmm … world domination by WordPress, a scary or welcome thought, depending on which way you swing. For the sake of not monopolizing the creative space, I leave the description of life on earth in such a scenario to a future George Orwell clone to think it up in another book like 1984. But using my immense powers of prediction, I can safely bet that following will be the national anthem for this new world.

Warning – The following may sound outright cheesy, stupid or funny to you, but remember beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder :-) …. For best results, sing along to the tune of ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon

Imagine there’s no conversation
Its easy if you write
No sounds surround us
Around us only words

Imagine all the people blogging for today
Imagine there’s no telephones
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to speak or hear for
And no shouted arguments too

Imagine all the people
Blogging away in peace …
You may say I’m a blogger
But I am not the only one
I hope some day you’ll blog like us
And the world will read as one

Imagine only muses and observations
I wonder if you can
No need for ears and tongues
A bloggerhood of man

Imagine all the people
Reporting all the world
You may say I’m a blogger
But I am not the only one
I hope some day you’ll blog like us
And the world will read as one …

I think we might soon come to this. The following cartoon convinced me.

A penny for your thoughts …

The weirdness of you

This started off in my head as ‘The nearness of you’ (A famous jazz tune from the forties made famous by The Glenn miller band, and more recently vandalized by the likes of Norah Jones). I heard faint traces of this tune in the background score of a documentary made on Salvador Dali. By the time the documentary ended, the phrase “the nearness of you” had morphed into “the weirdness of you“. So fittingly Dali, i thought, and could not resist the thought of penning it down (or as in today’s world – keying) it down.

If you have seen Dali’s paintings (see them in real life, photos do not do justice to the life they contain), one cannot  help but wonder what was the source idea that he started with it and what did it morph into by the time he had finished with it a few days, or in some case a few months later. My favorite one being his ‘Soft self portrait with grilled bacon’. My (non professional) take on that painting is as follows –

Dali 'Soft self portrait with grilled bacon' Image courtesy http://web.sbu.edu

The idea probably took root in head as he was waiting for a fried egg with grilled bacon at his breakfast table. Instead he received an indescribably mutilated and disfigured piece of coagulated albumin with rashers of grilled bacon adorning it. His life flashed by in front of his eyes and he saw a melting distorted image of himself. He flung aside the plate, grabbed his bread roll (of which he famously said – “Bread has been one of the oldest objects  of fetishism and obsession in my work, the one to which i have been most faithful”) and dashed off to his room to frantically start painting his self-portrait.

But to call his art weird is an insult, he is usually referred to as a ‘surrealist’, which some people think of as a polite name for weirdness (there … we coming back to this word again and again). But why should you take my word for it? Shun all your other holiday plans, buy a ticket to Spain, take a bus to his hometown Figueres, grab a breadroll from a local bakery and while munching upon it, feast your senses in the  museum. Did i call it a museum? In Dali’s words – “The museum should not be considered a museum. It is a giant surrealist object, everything inside it is coherent, there is nothing that escapes the webs of my understanding”. Heck … you don’t even need to enter, the outer walls adorned with giant eggs and bread-rolls will convince you of his vision

… breads off to you, O’ great weird one.

The Dali museum Figueres, Spain. Image courtesy Wikipedia