The Prestidigitator

The planet is fine. The people are f*cked.

-George Carlin ( 1937-2008 )

Eleven years ago, after mercilessly tormenting our father, we had our monolithic 386 PC replaced by a Pentium II ‘multimedia’ machine. Needless to say, at the time it was a pretty big deal for my brother and myself. We’d finally gotten a CD ROM drive and there was this one CD; presumably a freebie thrown in by the reseller — Fleetwood Mac: Greatest Hits.

I recall the two of us falling in love with the music. It was refreshingly different from popular music the likes of MTV bombarded us with and very upbeat too unlike brooding lovesick 19 year olds. The music remained buried somewhere in my subconscious until ‘Rhiannon‘ played through the broken speakers at a Pizza Hut outlet in Coimbatore during the final days of college. Predictably, I got a little too excited and one particular gentleman went so far as to say that I was making up band names. A couple of weeks back, a local band at a pub here did an amazing cover of ‘Go Your Own Way‘. Armed with a sense of nostalgia, I went hunting for the CD and found it in the bargain bin of a decrepit music store here in the city this morning.

Listening to it, I’m reminded of sounds, events and even smells long forgotten. It’s amazing how a forty year old band can bring back strong memories ranging from the texture of the carpet at our home back then to our two year old baby sister dancing to ‘Everywhere‘.

The rush is brilliant.

As I write this, I’m listening to the new Coldplay album and still can’t make up my mind as to whether it’s a masterpiece or a tad underwhelming (like Narrow Stairs, the latest Death Cab album). Coldplay’s success in many ways has been a curse of sorts; critics, elitist as they are tend to distance themselves from popular music. To top it off, Viva La Vida isn’t exactly the groundbreaking title that the band’s been touting it to be.

However, the album is still very very good. There are strains of Arcade Fire, Radiohead, Keane and U2; U2 (early 80s U2) being the most predominant influence. There’s less keyboard this time, some neat guitar riffs, awesome stadium choruses and even a bongo drum. Lyrically, it isn’t too different from the usual sappy ambiguous stuff but still far superior to X&Y (Fix You anyone?). A little more political, a little more pedestrian, still very affecting. My favorite tracks as of now are Lost!, Yes/Chinese Sleep Chant, Life in Technicolor and the overplayed Viva La Vida.

Thanks to Brian Eno, this is a shiny packaged-for-the-masses product but it’s still art nonetheless. This is an album that 20 years down the line will be as fondly remembered as The Joshua Tree is today. Or not.

But to put something in context is a step towards saying it can be understood and that it can be explained. And if it can be explained then it can be explained away.

The above lines are uttered by a somewhat socially inept homosexual Jew student when the Holocaust is discussed in class. The History Boys is a film filled with ideas and yet turns out to be the funniest film I’ve seen in ages; it treads that fine line between irreverence and seriousness and manages to come off unscathed.

Two teachers — the young Tom Irwin who believes history should be taught objectively (”Looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground. We don’t see it, and because we don’t see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past.”) and Hector who possesses a slightly more subjective and emotional world view and cares deeply about how knowledge (no matter how useless) is applied to life — vie for the hearts and minds of a bunch of brilliant yet rowdy students destined for the likes of Cambridge and Oxford. The movie is an excised version of the award-winning play of the same name and almost all actors reprise their roles brilliantly.

The History Boys is not cinema in the classical sense but an occasionally long-winded discourse on the importance of education and knowledge and the differences between the two. To top it off, it turns out to be a lot of fun in the process and not at all tedious like one would expect. There is something about British wryness and self deprecation that exudes a sense of intelligence and class, something you’d be hard pressed to find anywhere else.

The film portrays Hector, a closet homosexual who occasionally gropes his students (and ruefully exclaims, “The transmission of knowledge is in itself an erotic act.”) in a rather sympathetic yet slightly parodic light. Almost all the characters are caricatures of people you’d come across and everyone has at least one redeeming quality. Character flaws are merely human failings that are to be accepted and not changed. It isn’t everyday you come across a film that stresses more on individualism than social conformism.

The performances are downright brilliant, the energy is infectious and the score, peppered with tracks from the 80s adds to the fun. Even if some of the literary and historical references went over my head, this is a film I’d highly recommend; one that gets better with repeated viewings.

Since this tag requires minimal intellectual/physical exertion and because the tagger Rads is one of those truly incredible people, this tagee shall oblige.

• Pick up the nearest book.

• Open to page 123.

• Find the fifth sentence.

• Post the next three sentences.

• Tag five people, and acknowledge the person who tagged you

Page 123 of Atomised has some pretty explicit stuff and since I desperately need the readership of my prepubescent fanbase, I’ve decided to post something a bit more PG13.

Thus Spake Zarathushtra by Friedrich Nietzsche. Yes, I usually am this pretentious.

Here hangs its web: touch it and make it tremble. Here it comes docilely: Welcome tarantula! Your triangle and symbol sit black upon your back; and I know too what sits within your soul.

The profundity got lost somewhere but anyway, there it is.

Most of the people I know have already been tagged so, I’ll just go ahead and acknowledge Rads. Rads is one of those people who never ceases to amaze me. She’s smart, nay brilliant, creative, articulate and probably the coolest mom I know. This is how you acknowledge somebody right?

Talk about religion and you’re bound to get me all worked up; not that I don’t appreciate a good argument, just that a good argument is non existent when it comes to backing faith or the the existence of an omniscient and benevolent creator who has time to answer your petty prayers but blithely ignores starving children in Africa. 

These days, creationists and right wing retards have a new ace up their sleeve. Piggybacking. Despite the Church’s open disdain for inquiry and exploration (over the last few thousand years), they seem oddly content using art and science to explain God and his mysterious ways. A few years ago, I was told that the God of the Old Testament asked for circumcision not merely as a sacrifice but (also) because of health reasons. Sadly, Mr Yahweh forgot to list out naturally occuring carcinogens and deadly viruses.

Now, the Anglicans are looking to appropriate the Doctor Who mythos to ‘explain’ to young people facts about the Bible that would otherwise seem ‘difficult’ to understand. Brilliant. So then, Jesus was a Time Lord right?

One day you distance yourself from Harry Potter and The Golden Compass because they’re well, satanic and the next day you embrace a character (immensely awesome as he is) who espouses the need for questioning and rejecting dogma. All this is probably a sign of the Curch’s waning influence. But then again, we live in a country where almost 70 percent believe in reincarnation and another sizeable number hope to get it on with 72 virgins in the afterlife. Bah.