The Business Of Criticism

This is Behind The Gare Saint-Lazare by Henry Cartier Bresson. A lot of people say it is the greatest photograph to be ever taken.

Someone who looked like a big expert / critic said this on a BBC show.

For some people its the picture of a guy jumping over a puddle. There is that sort of generic European Jewish name on the poster, there is the guy jumping into the unknown, the broken hoop. The first thing probably man ever made was a wheel. This is a broken one, and throughout history people have referred to the broken hoop and the wheel that cracked and so forth that must have been for hundreds of years; for thousands of years the biggest disaster that could happen to anyone is if your wheel breaks. He was the Nostradamus of the early 30s that predicted what would happen to Europe in that one single image. Europe jumping into the unknown. Its a great great photograph for that reason.

Yeah right
Why do these things have to be put on this stage of afterthoughts and reasons. I guess beyond a point even the sustainability of a piece of art depends on protecting it from individual judgment. May be thats why these artsy types feel compelled to appear wiser than they actually are.

 

America.

Ever since I came here there was something immensely disturbing about the visuals in this country that I have been unable to articulate with any clarity. The vast empty parking lots, the lines on the road in white and yellow, faces in shopping malls.

I came across this from the Journal of Andrei Tarkovsky’s where he wrote about his American sojourn.

Hamlet — or a portion of it at least — should be filmed in Monument Valley. It’s astonishing that in places like this, where one ought to talk to God, Americans make westerns like John Ford used to do. Quakers. A village. Superquakers. Girls in long skirts. Vast spaces, roads on which it’s impossible to get run over by a passing car. Emptiness. Tiny towns and a wonderful prairie. Poor Americans — with no soul, no roots, living in a land of spiritual riches, a land they don’t know and don’t appreciate. New York is terrible.

Its not the same thing. But close.

 

Longevity

Fifty seven years is a long time.
Yet for him, nothing was more dreadful than the split second after the words left him and before earnest appeared in her eyes.
When she finally knew, she looked away.
Then he became old and died again.

 

At home.

T.V is not great fun any more. When a dear friend asked me how that could be, I couldn’t explain it to him. Somewhere in the last five years my mind has stopped running in circles. Instead it has leaped forward, so much so that I had stopped noticing how far. Before I came home ten days back I hadn’t known about this change, and now I’m amused at how different I have become.

Raining Outside. The monsoon only snares now. At evenings if you look from the beach you can see the darkness over the horizon. It is as if the rain clouds are waiting to unleash their fury in a week or two.

Mornings are beautiful out here. I have woken up to see drizzles in the last three days. Little streams of water are getting thicker along the sides of the roads. The landscape slowly turns mossy green. Since last week taking an early morning jog has felt a lot little less painful. I see a few other men taking a run around the place. Such a thing was unthinkable ( only for the folly of it ) for someone like me who left this place 5 years ago. We feel funny when we look at each other; yet whenever I cross a fellow jogger, I feel obliged to share the embarrassment in that eye to eye moment with a wry smile.

As the morning gets old the sun comes out. By ten I’d have dropped my father in the office and had breakfast. Suddenly there is nothing to do. The weather is still good but just the slowness of life makes you too lazy to step outside. The car stays at home thanks to my dad’s dislocated elbow. There are so many places I could go but I end up going only to the beach in the evening, or to the small lonely suburban railway station near my house when I feel like taking a smoke. This station is always quiet and lonely, and the track curves through it. A little away from one side of the track lay houses of quiet people who live where the smallest of roads end. On the other side of the track there lies a narrow streak of wilderness that looks totally out of place. The trees and the thickets breed small animals and mosquitoes and other creatures of the night. In the evenings if you sit by the tracks a little away from the platfrom as the wind blows you almost wish that a train passed by and brought the place to life for a fleeting second.

Boredom. Useless thoughts.

Seriously. There is something wrong with life outside 4th wing.

 

Peace and Nothing Else.

To know oneself is not only difficult but impossible. For once that is done, there would be little else left to do. I think it is a sense of anxiety that pushes man to do things the way he does. It is the consequences that man respects. Or fears. Our doctrines warn us from a frantic pursuit of fleeting pleasures.

But why is not worth to live for moments ? Among the dull vasts of nothingness in my memory is strewn a string of brilliant photographs. Powerful moments, instants of magic that never fail to inspire. To these I lose my yearning.

Now I have nothing to do but look, and add to my little collection of photographs. May be some day I’ll own my dreams. Carpe Diem.