Masala Inc #21 - Forgotten Experiments

Old experiments, summer music, poems, books and art

Oct 22, 2022

Hello friends,

The Arctic front has taken us into a tight embrace the last two weeks. I always forget how winter feels like until it comes around once again and takes me by surprise.

I put together a few videos and cartoons I made in this newsletter. I was lost the last few days reviving a ten year old mac, christened Thiruvanmayur

, with a fresh install of Linux. Like winter, the joys and heartaches of Linux is just as easily forgotten. It does bring me satisfaction thinking about how Thiruvanmayur is going to live along happily for another couple more years. Thanks to tireless work of countless people building a world of open software.

I was a thought, a dream, a fish, a wing
And then a human being
When I emerged from my mother's river
On my father's boat of potent fever
I carried a sack of dreams from a starlit dwelling
To be opened when I begin bleeding
There's a red dress, deerskin moccasins
The taste of berries made of promises
While the memories shift in their skins
At every moon, to do their ripening

Joy Harjo, An American Sunrise

Stumbled on some of my old experiments. A Jonas Mekas inspired daily vlog. Some experiments in making cartoons
My old experiments got me back to doodling. Nothing like seeing graphite branding itself on paper.
I haven't been listening (or, logging) to music as much as I used to. But, I got curious the other day and this is a snapshot of the Summer . 🐣K. Loves Riz Ahmed's music as much as I do.
Woolf, Thoreau, Nabokov and map of maps.
In Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, a music composer would drag an orchestra to the middle of the Amazons to make music. For how impressive the movie is, the documentary of the making of the movie is breathtaking. Only an artist with grit can pull is off. Here are the rules of filmmaking according to Herzog
My need to build a library that is insurmountable has a word in Japanese - tsundoku
I reviewed Joan Miro's, I work like a gardener before. This is a deeper look at how he works, his roots in folk art.
Ocean Voung on making art for ourselves

There's a legend about a Chinese painter who was asked by the emperor to paint a landscape so pristine that the emperor can enter it. He didn't do a good job, so the emperor was preparing to assassinate him. But because it was his painting, legend goes, he stepped inside and vanished, saving himself. I always loved that little allegory as an artist. Even when it is not enough for others, if it is enough for you, you can live inside it.
I saw Andy Goldsworthy's Rivers and Tides on a sleepy afternoon in middle of an art workshop in Kolkata. His complete surrender to nature's whimsy, ambition of his art and his understanding of the eventual decay in play jolted me awake.

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You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

poem in mary oliver

yesh // oct 22 2022

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My second laptop, Harrington, is quickly approaching its sunset years. I wish I could completely break away from proprietary software. But, I don’t think I can do away with Adobe’s Lightroom yet.