Grey.

Overt schmaltz perhaps, a story of hope, or love or hate or consumerism or communism or all of the aforementioned woven intricately into the autobiographical recapitulation of the life of old-lady-with-three-cats Mrs. Pinto and her objectophillic obsession with a particularly pretty digital clock. Imagination fails me. The clear dichotomy between yesterday and tomorrow. Between The Before and The After. Today, right now is the thin white line that separates the two.The exact second when the dark tresses of night break into dawn. That grey area inspires.

The Lady of Shalott will tell you that for a writer, reality must be divorced from life. That to be able to imagine, he must shut himself off in an ivory tower and avoid the transgression from the mind to the mundane, that the political and the aesthetic must be kept separate. We all construct ivory towers. Mine's bricked with The Shins, steaming black tea, torrential rain and William Blake as of now and that's precisely where the paradox emerges. My dilapidated ivory tower finds reality's cement. It transports, isolates and engages, as it lies corrupt. My psyche, it languishes in the greyness. "Four grey walls and four grey towers."

Another conundrum I struggle to unfold is the poetry of everyday life. The luscious mix of conversation, nicotine and walks around North Campus. That's art right there, not divorced, not independent but snugly knitted into the fabric of platitudes that constitute my 19th year.

The assessment leaves me restive. The mind remains shackled within the confines of Life and its bromides. Unsettling, disturbing, consuming. To produce a work of literature from the viscous, brown mass of inexperience, immaturity and a chained imagination.

Or if your glass is half full? To produce art from dried paint.

Torrential rain, a steaming cup of black tea, Hello Saferide and eyes made of sleep. Every six months or so, motion forces planted in my fingers guide me to type the living shit out of my keyboard and the blog normally bears the brunt of what results. The last half annum has been.. compelling. You know how every birthday you wake up and wish you felt older and you don't. There are those times and then there are times when every inch of metaphysical growth is tangible, when you can feel your maturity flourish, when you pass a finish line or complete your thesis on 16 century poets. Or listen to the rain interrupt the Swedish twee pop that's going to kill your ipod in two songs.
The clear division between yesterday and tomorrow. Between The Before and The After. Today,right now it's the thin white line that seperates the two. I'd like to pretend I have something consequential, revolutionary to write about. Heh. Overt shmalz perhaps, a story of hope, or love or hate or consummerisim or communism or all of the aforementioned woven intricately into the autobiographical recapitulation of the life of old-lady-with-three-cats Mrs Pinto and her objectophillic obsession for a particularly pretty digital clock. Imagination fails me.
So I'm just going to tell you about this fun thing that happened to me day before. Person A (who would probably castrate me( oo parantheses within parantheses oo! anyhow, in brutal, tribal ways) if I told you who he is)

Haze.

Every shining fortnight I leave my new, nebulous life in north campus behind and return to the seemingly inanimate life of rural confines. Seemingly. There's something that holds me here, snug and warm. My own little dream world that I escape into every two weeks when college becomes too real. A dream world that took four years to construct, to adorn, make it homely. Less gray, less ivory, less cold. Less tower, less wall. More home, less house. Music. My personal little cubby hole. Most people would regard this.. reverence.. for music as juvenile. In more hipster terms? Wannabe. Needing to be cool, a part of it. A vehicle that carries my leo trait of ostentation? Most people would be wrong. Its something else. Something different, perhaps, something stronger, shakingly stronger than the normal, healthy respect most people harbour for melody and harmony. Reverence. Gratitude. There's something very tangibly identifiable about indie. About Gibbard and Mercer. It takes possession. And it's hardly normal. This blind-eyed.. losing. Transportation. Losing. Dissolution of reality. My personal fire-exit. Like the earth is not a cold, dead place after all (and if you point this one out, I'll consider marriage =) ). Like the first breath after coma (hah, yes, repetition). As I type this out, I have a sinking feeling I'm not doing the adulation justice. To put it simply, after a whole year of losing touch with this one best friend, these voices, these pieces of melody, it feels good to be back. Like therapy after withdrawal. Or like the rush of adrenalin after you first inject in the drug after a long period of restraint. A frenzy begins. A chaotic, all-consuming pandemonium that expresses sheer bewilderment. "Wow, how did I stay away for so long?" Music. The word doesn't do justice to everything it encompasses for a small town girl. When reality doesn't offer you the fluctuations in emotion and feeling that you crave, when you're 18 and in Faridabad. You turn to other people's higher experiences. To live a little, vicariously. And that's what music is, really. My feet planted in underground New York and my ear an inch away from Kevin Drew's guitar. Acoustic and easy. Heady and relieving. Most of all? This.. intoxication.. gives me reason to believe my made up world could be real one day. Because its made by real people. They're just a few continents away. But it's their world. And it could be mine.