Florence Library: The Place of a Thousand Stories and Where My Story Began (A Guest Post by Kunal Bhattacharya)

 Kunal Bhattacharya is a dynamo of a kid I met in Bookline one day just by chance. We struck up a conversation and I was immediately impressed by the maturity in him. He was silent and he was listening, while me being me, I was blabbering.

 Since that day, Kunal and I have struck up an uncommonly rewarding friendship, whereupon he and I talk on a regular basis and have been moderating rooms on Clubhouse on weekends.

 Why should you care about Kunal? Let me show you something he wrote back in the day, that he nervously shared with me via WhatsApp. Let him speak, and let me step aside.

 The Bilge Master

 If there is one place that has shaped my childhood and made me into who I am today it would be the Florence Library in Alabama USA. I remember how my mom would drive me to the Library every Saturday and Sunday in our beat-up Plymouth Voyager. It was my only real source of entertainment since my dad was a struggling student and couldn’t afford a TV or a cable connection and our neighbourhood wasn’t the best for making friends, especially for a scrawny Asian kid who looked like a white boy. 

 The library was a magical place for me. You think you know the beauty of a library, but let me tell you that no library in India that I have visited can even hold a candle to Florence Library .

 The entire library floor was coved with carpets and for my 4-year-old self the shelves seemed impossibly tall. There was a special smell around the place, a smell that made you feel like this was where you truly belonged. My favourite part however, was the reading corner. There were massive indoor trees (artificial as I would later realise) under which were beanbags of every colour of the rainbow. They were a collage of greens, blues and reds which may seem garish to the eyes of an adult but to my 4-year-old self it was simply perfect.

 I would sit under the warm yellow light that the library seemed to be suffused with and lose myself in the world of Franklin the Turtle, Green Eggs and Ham and Bob the Builder. 

 When it was finally time to leave, I would beg my mother for just a few more minutes, clinging to her legs and crying. Sometimes she would give in and we would spend another few minutes that would turn into hours in that book filled utopia. 

 My love of books can be traced back to those hours spent in the library every weekend for 5 years. It must also be said that without my mother I probably would never have gotten into reading. While she had a hundred other things to do, she would always make time to drop me at the library every weekend. She would borrow 15 books every week from the library (the librarian undoubtedly bent a few rules to allow us to borrow that many) and over the week would read to me during breakfast, my evening soft boiled egg, dinner and right before bed. At that point my mom was pretty much supporting our family all alone since my dad would be in college most of the day. My mother still found the time to read to me.

 These daily sessions were undoubtedly where my bibliophile tendencies sprung from and they hold a special place in my heart. One of my greatest wishes is for me to one day be able to visit Florence Library again for it is a place of a thousand stories and where my story began.

 

You Only Hear the Music When Your Heart Begins to Break

 My Chemical Romance are back and I could not be happier. I was listening to Danger Days and I have to thank Anwesha for introducing me to the album properly. One song from that album that I adore is The Kids from Yesterday. I like it because it reminds me of the times I had and the line that makes me almost weep is the line in the title of this post.

I grew up surrounded by books and music. I grew up sheltered and  protected and as I grew up, my innocence left me. I lost my grandmother. I never knew my grandfather. Life hit hard and my heart kept breaking. But despite that, I found people. I found friends. I found family not related to me. Sometimes I found them in books, hiding in text. Sometimes I found them at the end of a song, because a person I met on the street liked Romeo and Juliet by Dire Straits more than me, for different reasons than me and we talked and we talked and we talked.

They say that the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb. I've found that is very true. My mom used to say that sometimes strangers give you more love than family ever can.

So this is for the covenant. This is for those people I think about when life gets a bit too much to take. This is just me knowing that I will suffer heartbreak and that you will pick up all the pieces, put them back together and maybe smash them...until such time that my broken pieces allow me to be whole.

And to the people I am going to meet, to the relationships yet to happen, to the tears yet to be shed and the jokes yet to be cracked...well, let's shed em together, lets crack em together and lets make a film about the ghosts together.

At least that is something to look forward to when your heart breaks, some music to let in, some healing to do and some strength to draw from.

To the people who made music when my heart broke, to the people who never gave up on me, to the people I don't say thank you to enough...I am glad that you make being a kid from yesterday bearable. One day, it will be one of the last rides I take, and I'll hold on tight and not look back! 

The Bilge Master

Haunted Houses

 It has been sporadic to say the least, because I was away for a while and took a vacation. You can find the details of the books I got on the trip here. 

The reason this post is titled Haunted Houses is because I just found out that the Porcupine Tree song Lazarus from their album Deadwing is about a mother who comes back from the dead, in the form of a specter to take her son with her to the place where people go when they die. You can check out my brief review of Deadwing here. Funnily enough, I am reminded of the lines from T.S. Eliot's poem The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock as I type this. 

So the thing is, I have been having some issues with mental health recently and I always take to pen and paper when I feel like this, so here I am back again to irritate you all, just as Lazarus came from the dead to say something to us all in the Bible and in Eliot's poem. I kind of feel like Lazarus myself right now, having renounced (or being in the process of renouncing) certain thought patterns, realizing certain habits had made me toxic and feeling overall a sense of guilt and shame. I had always bragged at the top of my voice that my mother never deserved a son like me. It was just the other day that I thought to myself for the first time that perhaps I could have been a better son, a more understanding son and suddenly that thought process has made me suddenly feel like a big weight is off my mind. I sort of feel like there is a lot for me to unlearn as opposed to learn, that I know very little of the people in the country that I live in and have lived as a national of for almost 30 years.

I do know that I do not want to enter my thirties with this kind of energy. And if you've got this far, allow me to quote from Cohen a little, when I say that 

"You see I'm just another snowman

Standing in the rain and sleet

Who loved you with his frozen love

His secondhand physique
With all he is and all he was
A thousand kisses deep"

 Now plenty of people tell me that there is a process I must adopt, that steps must be taken, but I am reminded of the saying that charity must begin at home and therefore I wish to focus on this unlearning. I do not want to be angry anymore, or scared, or insecure and I want to accept that I am not alone anymore, not really. 

And now you see why this post is truly titled Haunted Houses because the ghost is me, the house is my mind and the exorcist isn't coming. So perhaps, I must be the one to clean up my own messes and stop holding myself back, something that Zaraki was taught by Unohana.

I  had YouTube open as I wrote this and the song that's currently playing is the song my mother and I used to dance to when I had just discovered rock music properly- Queen's Radio Ga Ga.  

 Ma, I don't know where you are right now and I hope Chuni is with you and all the others you must have lost in your life, but hey I want you to know that I want to stop blaming you like I did all the time and I want to be a better human. I won't let your memory die, Ma. And so this last song that just came on, is for you, from me. Rest well, Ma

The Bilge Master

P.S. As I was typing out this post, somewhere in Romania, a close friend was tying out her first post on her blog and when it is ready for the Internet, it shall be shared on the Facebook page of this blog for all of us to enjoy! I just got reminded somehow that the Internet is so many things and I could feel her excitement in the texts she was sending me. Can we wish her a cheerful few pints of luck for the journey she is about to embark on please? 

Maus by Art Spiegelman: A Review

We've all read about it in history. Some of us have tried to sweep past it, because physics was more interesting than learning about what one man could do. I mean to say so many individual people in the world of physics and engineering have given so much and sacrificed so much for the world's good. 

However, I feel that the subject I'm about to broach is one that reminds us of what a human being does to another and how, after committing such an act, can the human being be called human anymore? Or is it that the human being is human, in all aspects a thing of beauty that makes the beauty of the humanity in him too much for him to handle, resulting in him sinking to inhumane acts, to stay sane? What I mean to say is, was Lucifer right when he pointed out to God that perhaps humans were flawed creatures? 

I recently (this morning infact) finished reading Maus by Art Spiegelman. What follows is part book review and part honest horror at what went on in the concentration camps of World War 2. We've read the books, watched the movies and shows and we've debated the issue many times, but where Maus shines is that it paints a picture in the first volume of how harsh the life of a Jew in war torn Germany was, even before the war started.

Maus is a tale of humanity. It shows us both sides of the coin- the darkness embodied by the Nazis, who are cats in the world of Maus and the Jews (mice) and Poles (pigs). While on one hand you expect torture and barbaric acts from the Nazis, actually seeing them illustrated in black and white does something to you. On the other hand, the support Vladek Spiegelman shows and is shown in the book sort of keeps the balance in check. Vladek's moments of senility also bring a touch of humour to what is otherwise a very dark book I was reminded of the film La vita è bella while reading the novel. 

The art is thought provoking and brilliant. I saw similar art in the novels of Craig Thompson (I suggest reading Blankets if you haven't yet). 

There is nothing "typical" about Maus. It is just the truth, told to a son by a father. A very problematic father, but nonetheless a father. Maus makes you realize a lot of things you'd prefer be not kept in the light, rather be swept under the carpet. Not only does Maus break your heart, it shatters it to smithereens and helps you rebuild it. But as we all know, broken hearts are seldom mended and a small sliver of your heart will never be the same again. 

Maus is a novel for adults, but it is as if a child is narrating it. The prose is lucid and flows freely and at no time is the narrative boring. The use of simple words and the use of two tones of ink is what has it working best. There is no need for more than two colours in Maus. Using just two colours, a sketch of something horrific comes into being.

The book seems to remind us, lest we forget.

While Leon Uris' Exodus and Mila 18 and Thomas Keneally's Schindler's Ark also tackle the subject with brilliance, Maus is that one novel that is hard to read and even harder to forget.

Maus by Art Spiegelman- Rated 4/5 stars 

Last Rose of Summer

I don't know how to start this and the title is just the song that's playing now on YouTube as I write this. I'm reading Maus by Art Spiegelman and marveling at what people are capable of. I'm just at the bit where Auschwitz is about to be introduced, Truth be told,  I am scared of proceeding further. I mean, sometimes the visuals are so striking that it just makes me want to puke. 

There's a war going on in the world now, as I'm writing this and I wonder who invented war and why. It is inhuman. I come from a country that kicked the British out and that in itself was a war of sorts. We've seen 'Nam. We've seen the second one, the war to end all wars and yet it marches on, like an insatiable machine guzzling oil and belching out misery and murder. That's all war is actually, glorified murder.

And I'm reminded, as the last notes of the song fade away that a certain man called Nietzsche stated that 

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music"

I am also reminded of the fact that the world spends trillions on defenses and if that money were redirected somehow, perhaps we wouldn't need to defend ourselves.

I made a YouTube video about this which you can check out here  on my ScrollStack and see for yourself what my feelings about war are. I'll shout this from the rooftops if I have to, but if war is the answer, ou're asking the wrong question.

 

And so, although Maus is uncomfortable, tear jerking and horrifying...I will finish it. I will finish it because I want to know that the human race is capable of doing this to itself. I will also finish it and remind myself that I am a member of that race and I will remember the novel, and hope that one day I do not turn in to such a monstrosity.

And isn't it fitting that Half the World Away by Oasis is playing, which has this line, whose poster version is uploaded below? By the way, the poster is one I designed myself...(shameless self promotion, on a corner of the Internet that is mine and also yours and will remain so)

The Bilge Master
 

What I Took Away From Daytripper by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba

I first read Daytripper by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba at the age of 22. At the time, I still had a mother, I was in college and I was revisiting metal for what must have been the umpteenth time. I read the book in one sitting and most of what I read made little sense to me.

I read Daytripper for the second time today after a text from my book club admin revealed she was reading it too. (DM paperbacks.n.backpacks on Instagram to join). Six years have passed since the revisit to metal and now I am not exactly listening to metal but I'm also not not listening to metal. It is complicated. I no longer have a mother and I am no longer in college.

Perhaps the fact that six years being a long time and change is practically sacrosanct is what made Daytripper hit some different chords this time on the musical instrument that accompanies me and I call thought. 

It is difficult to sum up Daytripper. I feel it analyzes the fickleness that is life. We walk in the shoes of a man called Brás de Oliva Domingos, a man who writes about death everyday. He is employed by  a newspaper and he is in charge of the obituaries.  Sensing that he possesses a certain flair with the pen and an understanding of the fact that his obituaries give closure to a sect of people who have lost a loved one makes Brás de Oliva Domingos take his job seriously. However, the narrative changes frequently as we shuttle between different stages of his life. 

The twist is, each chapter of this unusually crafted graphic novel ends with Brás dying. Fabio Moon would perhaps be considered a bit macabre for imagining varied scenarios in which his main character dies. I believe the obvious message to take away is that life is fickle and can be snuffed out at any time, at any age (for in one scenario, a very young Brás meets his maker while still a child) and thus life is something to be enjoyed and lived. 

Concepts of loss are explored immensely well in this tome and so is the concept of carpe diem and living without regret. Although it may seem a tad nihilistic to some, it is actually a profound look at the importance of being happy and structuring your life with small moments, which in turn add up to a bigger picture that you, the one living your life is painting. We have often been told of that statement that we should look at the bigger picture. This novel tells us to paint the bigger picture using all the tools we have at our disposal, so that someone may one day come along and look at the picture of a life lived. Perhaps this is what Moon and Ba were intending when they wrote this novel.

I came away from my second read of this book with the resolution to make the most of the fact that I am at this moment on a rock made of stardust floating somewhere in space, inhaling an invisible compound consisting of multiple gases. 

I think Daytripper serves to remind us that we could die at any time. 11, 41, 21, 76. It reminds us that many die each day and that some die sooner, some later and some before taking their first breath. It reminds us that the life we are leading now is the unrealized dream of every stillborn child, that loss is inevitable and that Death is as much a part of living as the sun is a part of the Milky Way.

I wrap up with some panels from the novel, one of which is on my wall right now.

Daytripper by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba. Rating 5/5

(All images are the result of a Google Search)

The Bilge Master

 

Notes From the Underground Cults

 You all thought perhaps I had disappeared into the ether never to be seen again did you not? I had indeed taken to other roads, for as Tolkien has said, 

"The road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began

Now far ahead the road has gone, and I must follow if I can

Pursuing it with eager feet, until it joins some larger way,

Where many paths and errands meet, and whither then? 

I cannot say"

There have been some changes in the content I am creating these days. I have more or less shifted entirely to vlogging via Scrollstack. My profile is hyperlinked here and you can feel free to check it out.

And now, to arms! 

Doors and roads span out before us every day of our lives. The ones we take are the ones we follow, or sometimes not, for as Robert Plant reminds us,

"Yes there are two paths you can go by

But in the long run, there's always time 

To change the road you're on"

I'm sorry, I have not sat down at this editor and written for some time so this post is taking some time to get started. 

I was at a metal gig yesterday with a very special person, who was a Facebook acquaintance and has now become a grandmother. I never knew the love of a maternal grandmother, nor was I one of the fortunate people who meet their paternal grandfather, but Maya di has been a bridge over troubled water in the two years I have known her- scolding me, embracing me, holding me, putting the broken pieces of my psyche back together through deed and through the mad world of social media.

So, I was at a metal gig with Maya di and the people there were young. Maya di blended into the crowd, danced, jived and grooved and even screamed and growled. She's a 64 year old woman, and she is goals. When I am 64, I have only one wish...that I can be Mayalakshmi Rao. 

And now I've finally understood where this is going...so ONWARD! 

Pain and sorrow are expressed in different ways, one of the expressions being music. Hope and strength are also expressed in the same way, through music. I remember being influenced by an image I saw on Facebook back when I was a teenager and I've found it again using the tool of excellence that is Google and I now see it is a song so I shall link it below...

Yesterday the event saw me connect with a lot of people society would call damaged, people society would be afraid of, people society would say were taking risks , that their hobbies were something that the older generations would not understand. I was reminded of this line from Dylan,

"The old road is rapidly aging,

Better get out of the new one if you cannot lend a hand

For the times, they are a changin''"

Yesterday, I was shown a side of humanity. I saw a 20 something touch the feet of a 64 year old, I saw a 64 year old be properly protected by a gang of youngsters. I networked with a lot of people, dressed in black, but with liquid fire in their eyes. Some of them even recognized me even though I did not recognize them. I was humbled. The rage I had been carrying for aeons was gone, the metal was pouring out of the sound system like a clarion call....

And when Dreadhammer (one of the acts) took the stage and started playing a medley of Black Sabbath, what could I do but yell till I was hoarse? 

Welcome to the underground cults who think a little different from you. Entertain your preconceived notions about these people. Trust me, they do not care. They are too busy having fun! 

And as I wind up this article, a line from Cohen strikes me,

"For less than a second, our lives will collide 

The endless suspended, the door opened wide"

I've gone through the door. Follow me?

The Bilge Master