Visual India
Last weekend, I joined with some friends for a night of Indian food and a screening of the Criterion release of The Darjeeling Limited on blu-ray. It was a fun night all the way around.
After traveling to India several times, (always working, never for simple tourism), I've become very attached to Indian culture. I'm certainly not an expert, but I enjoy the food, the art, the history, and most of all, speaking with the people there. One is hard-pressed to find kinder, gentler and more interesting people than those who live in India.
India has become popular in America over the past few years. I think that mass notice of Bollywood and its surrounding culture has had something to do with that it. Personally, Bollywood song-and-dance films are [very] far from my favorite genre of cinema, but I do enjoy the energy they convey. India is incredibly well-suited for such an indigenous film industry, because the country is so amazingly visual.
The visual beauty of India almost belies the poverty and grittiness of what everyday life is really like there. The people are so colorfully arrayed, the landscape is so varied and the traditional architecture is so nuanced that it is harder to attain bad imagery than good imagery in such an environment.
I think that its sheer visual beauty has led to many Americans falling in love with the idea of India without ever facing the country itself. I said as much to a German backpacker I spoke to at the Delhi airport earlier this year. She was going home after several weeks in Goa, and she said to me "I don't see many Americans traveling in India. Why do you think that is?"
Given the amount of business we do in India, I was surprised that Americans seemed underrepresented in a vacation hotspot like Goa, but I could understand why, and said as much in my response.
"I think that most Americans like the idea of India--the colors and the food. They just aren't too crazy about the smell."
Possibly a harsh thing to say, but I still feel it to be true on principle. India is a shocking country to visit upon one's first arrival into a nation where the air smells like burning cow dung as much as it smells like cinnamon.
But the sheer beauty of the country, and the beauty of soul which shines out of the eyes of its people, will charm any visitor into submission. I was reminded of this while watching The Darjeeling Limited last night. It made me excited that Best Exotic Marigold Hotel opens in American theaters this week. It made me ecstatic to return to India myself later this year.
The beauty of India can almost be called a gateway drug to the culture. There is poetry in its harsh landscape and simple country dwellings. India's cultural fabric is a frenetic tapestry of crowded streets and heart-stopping traffic; shouts of the street vendors, passive-aggressive inquiries from beggars and blindingly white smiles from inquisitive children. The paradoxical contrast and cohesion of all these elements make it a country which lures in the curious and claims them for its own. Whether by force of charm or the underlying mystery which such a culture presents to outsiders, India is an experience.
The principal characters in The Darjeeling Limited are so representative of how visitors are affected by the country. That's one of the reasons why I love the film so much.
Francis (Owen Wilson) goes to "have an experience," but his purposeful strides from temple to temple, punctuated by side-trips for power adapters and painkillers hold him back from actually experiencing anything until he abandons his control issues by the end of the film..
Jack (Jason Schwartzman) distracts himself with his girlfriend in Europe and a temporary fling with a train attendant. He allows his more carnal impulses to distract him from the larger picture of what is going on around him. He allows the specific to totally detract from a full perspective.
And in the middle of it all is Peter (Adrien Brody), who seeks out novelties like a child, all the while resisting the responsibilities of being a father which await him at home. He matures by the end of the film, but one wonders how he ever expected to get a cobra through customs.
As an American, it is my responsibility to represent my country and my fellow Americans in a positive way. After all, we have set ourselves up as the guardians of world democracy, and it's the least we can do to be pleasant and teachable. We cannot allow inconvenience, different or expectation to hold us back from visiting countries like India.
The world is huge. Just think about it! Consider the varying climates and cultures in India, China, Egypt, Germany, Britain! And many people are content to spend their entire life living in one city, considering travel to be "for other people;" perhaps to be reserved as a reward given to one's self when too old to fully enjoy the experience.
Never settle for the sedentary life. The world is there for a reason. See it. And visit India first.
True accomplishment.
It has always been my firm believe that entertainment and advertising reflect culture, and are not the root of it. Causation is hard to prove, but the correlation between films and television shows and the eras in which they were/are produced is never a coincidence. The entity known as Hollywood has a long history of providing escapism during wartime, asking questions of society during periods of cultural shift, and providing a creative outlet for those on the margins of society.
Then there's advertising. Right now, smartphone advertisements seem to be the clearest indicator of what people associate with social power. This ad in particular makes my blood boil with annoyance:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzTy9_xS1yA&feature=youtube_gdata]
What does this commercial say? How do the characters relate to each other?
- A hierarchy exists wherein the better individual is determined not by what they do for others, but by how fast their phones receive information.
- Notice also that fast access to information does not spur them on to do anything with the information except hold it over the heads of their neighbors.
- These individuals are recipients and consumers. They are not action-oriented people. Their usage of technology does not signify any real accomplishment on their part; they use the scientific advancements made and maintained by others as the basis for a misguided sense of superiority.
This is probably an unnecessarily reactionary response, but smartphone and wireless carrier advertisements seem to sum up where we have arrived as a culture. We do less, we move around less, we think less and read less. Our smart phones and back-in-a-flash data plans give us near-instant access to a literal world of information via the internet, but if pop culture is any indication, we use that access for little more than looking at kittens on youtube. Like the man and woman in the commercial above: we stay in one place, we receive and we consume.
We have lost touch with what it is to accomplish things that are meaningful and real. We don't produce. We don't wield as much interpersonal influence as we should.
Technology and mass communications are supposed to be tools for culture, but they have themselves become culture.
“We need to know who we are and if we have what it takes. What do we do now with the ultimate question? Where do we go to find an answer? In order to help you find the answer to The Question, let me as you another: What have you done with your question? Where have you taken in? You see. a man’s core question does not go away.”
- John Eldredge, Wild at Heart
My favorite meal.
I'm a man of simple taste. I might not eat wheat any more, which rules out all derivative products such as pasta and most fried foods, but I still crave me some soul food now and again. And it just so happens that my favorite feel-good meal is the perfect post-workout spread.
And what do I love so much? Eggs and a sweet potato! The eggs are usually fried, and the potato is always split down the middle with a shake of cinnamon and a big pat of butter in the middle. I augmented my eggs with some homemade guacamole this evening. My plate was a playland of protein, healthy fats and good carbohydrate. So, so satisfying.
The meal was especially welcome today as it was my fast-breaker after a semi-unintentional intermittent fast lasting around twenty-eight hours. I finished out the day with a ninety-minute martial arts workout at my home dojo.
I'm writing again about fasting because I also just wrote a "just the basics" Hub on the subject. If you want to help me make some money, I'm trying to get back to India this summer, and every click counts:
April in review
I am thoroughly addicted to Instagram. You can find me there under the name bologray; a name which word processors feel the aggravating need to space out whenever typed. I've decided to start a monthly roundup of my I'grams; mostly because I think it will help me to look back and see what really mattered to from month to month and help me decide how to best use my time in the future. I guess that makes me a narcissist, I'm done with school so I'm running protracted studies on myself. Hm.
One thing that is obvious from day one, however, is the food. I eat and live according to the Primal Blueprint, and since becoming much more judicious in the foods which I choose to eat, I have taken a much greater interest in recipes and food preparation. When I have the time, there are few things I enjoy more than getting in the kitchen for an hour or two, turning on some old episodes of No Reservations on Netflix, and cooking up a storm with meat, fresh vegetables and the spice trove which I brought back from my last trip to India.
Good food, good friends, good movies and good books. That is a good life.
Daniel - headshots for a Pensacola actor.
Shot some headshots and portfolio stuff for a buddy of mine at UWF the other day. Daniel is a theatre student at UWF, an happens to be a world-class gamer who elevates Team Fortress 2 to a level resembling art. He also happens to be an exceptionally nice guy. I wanted to make sure that he had a nice range of shots which reflected his quirky personality as well as his emotional range as an actor. I think we succeeded.
