Exhausted. Have not the energy to be creative. To conjure. So I’ll describe.

It’s a cool Tuesday night. The ground’s still damp from the monster storm that passed through 5 hours back. Am at the open air stalls 4 stone throws away from the house. It is rather late but almost all the tables are occupied. Am in my own bubble though. I have “I love the way you lie” piped into my ears. I must have listened to it like 500 times already. Don’t really care for the song’s meaning. Sometimes you just get tired of searching for meaning. I think the song, the way it’s sung, simply ignites a feeling aligned to how I think I should be feeling. Not sure if what I just wrote made any sense. Very little makes sense these days. Hmmmm! Of late, I think I’ve lost my direction.  But you know me. I’ll bounce back. Right?

Not in the highest spirits as I pen this. Have been beset by a feeling I can’t quite describe. I think, though, that it can be summed up by the question currently hanging in my head: “What if me enlisting everything… is not enough?”

Tryad is a pop music project, one where music is collaboratively composed on the internet. I used a piece of theirs, Beauty, in the first commercial I ever art directed. That song has been stuck in my head for 3 days now, and is set on loop on my iPod.

Beauty carries a certain elegance, a steady poise, that I find very soothing. And it has helped restore some calm in this turbulent period.

Beauty is one of the rare songs I’ve chanced into where the lyrics can’t quite stand alone beyond the realm of the song. When spoken rather than performed, the words take on a different manifestation, conveys a different meaning. When read on the page, the lyrics comes across as a poem of undying love, but when sung, you kinda sense a patient longing that is haunting, almost painful…

There are bits of the song that are beyond my grasps. Actually, the song’s overall message still escapes me. I would love to meet its creator to ask him or her of its true meaning.

Of this I’m fairly certain. That in its essence, you will find beauty, and a certain dignity…

>>Listen to the song

Beauty
horizon swallowed you by
and i was no longer home
a sip, a sin, and a sigh
and we slow danced alone

you smiled somewhere
and our lives changed
i found i could share
the things i never could say

someday
you will find me
and i’ll follow you
endless

together we’ll be
green light across the blue
don’t run
though i’d run anyway
for this love of ours

at peace
shining silver or grey
i’ll join you in the stars

i will find you
ton corps cache
metéore illumine

i will find you

I would push, and urge you to dedicate your life to your craft, but you know, deep inside, I don’t even know if that is the right thing to do. Sometimes I get so absorbed in my own fairy tale that I try to get all my friends to take this same leap of faith with me. The thing is… this is a perilous journey and I think I’ve hurt a lot of people along the way, maybe even damaged ties that time may never be able to repair. Publishing a great work, in my real opinion, is not the end all. In my gut, I feel that there is more to life than that, that your existence here should not merely be summed up by books you’ve written or art you’ve painted, but more of the type of person you have made yourself to be.  Sometimes I’ve even wondered to myself, if the world, if mankind, deserves all that we are capable of.

In college, I was really huge into Marxism. I was known by my peers and teachers (even the principal) as the Young Marxist. This Marxist quote, I’m not sure who it was by (some no name fella), has stuck with me till this day, and to me is the core of all Marxism. It goes, “the ways in which man choose to grapple with the urgent necessity of their survival will determine all that they do.”

Writing has never been my life. And it never will be. Writing this book is merely the mode I’ve elected to urgently grapple with my survival, the vehicle I’ve assigned to bring me closer to the things I really love (my family, travel, learning new languages, learning the piano, helping others, helping others achieve their dreams… I have a whole laundry list) My point is this. I think you merely have to find the most tolerable way to get you to where you’d like to go. And most people don’t do that. I believe that the real journey lies in finding your calling. Once you’ve found it, everything just falls into place. In a Paulo Coelho sort of way, the universe conspires to get you there. Maybe I’ve picked the right path. Maybe not. Only time will tell I guess. Enjoyed the journey though. And that’s what matters.

It started as an idea, that became a movie script, that flared into a book, so that it could be turned into a movie. Will this go down as a wasted year? Maybe, but the fruits of it shall not. All I know is this, that once the book is published and out of my hands, regardless of whether it’s successful, it is out there… for someone to pick up and say, hey, this could be made into a great movie. For every breath forth, maybe even to my last, this book of mine, my baby, shall be to me, my favourite maybe.