Destructive Distillation

Two sides of a coin for me this week have been Metallica's Fade to Black and Frank Capra's Its a Wonderful Life. Be it James Hetfield's passionate vocals or James Stewart's enchanting acting! Kirk Hammett's lead and rhythm or Frank Capra's master story telling, I just cant get over both of them. Both excellent pieces of art and soulful to the very core! They deal with two opposite takes on life and yet somehow, so close and interwoven.

Life it seems will fade away
Drifting further everyday
Getting lost within myself
Nothing matters.. no one else..
So starts Fade to Black after the stirring and pensive guitar. Touching a deep chord within me is the angst of a guy who sings about the hell he is in; with no visible solution to his problems. He is fading into the darkness of death. The ensuing guitar play gives you a rush as he is about to say goodbye and you can do nothing about it.

In Its a Wonderful Life, George Bailey played by the great James Stewart (Rear Window, Vertigo) is a high spirited youth who takes all the cruel blows of life on his dreams. He doesnt understand the significance of his life and is ready to give up. The guardian angel shows him (and us of course) how wonderful this life can be. He realizes his folly and gets back to his kith and kin and what happens next is .... i say is a scene to be written down in gold in the annals of movie history. You just cant stop loving life if you have seen it the way i did. It pulls my heartstrings now and again.

I am sure if George Bailey had heard fade to black when he was down and had given up, he would have know it was written for him. May be it is just past such situations when we really understand the beauty of life. All we have to do is keep our heads or have someone to help us hold on till the dark cloud passes. Nothing is more joyful than living, regardless of however painful life is!

I enjoy being in a group and having lots of fun roaming around with friends. I love scrambling for tickets when we have just decided what movie we are going to watch and where. I love lazing around with friends, whiling away time at a quiet place with some interesting conversation. I think I am a fairly social person. It doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy doing things alone. I love spending time with myself and am happy to say that.

I cant understand the constant craving for company for everything one does in life. When we used to do it as children so happily why cant we do it now. If you are spotted alone at a mall or an eatery, they act surprised and give you those weird looks. If you are spotted at a cinema, take my word you are a goner. You are considered as a freak if you hang out alone. Whereas deep down the line everybody has his own education, career and whims to tend to and everyone leads separate lives. Then why the false garb of not being able to live without the umbilical cord. You haven’t really learned to live if u haven’t learned to live alone.

Whatever the reason maybe, moving around on your own can be so much fun. I enjoy it as much as I enjoy good company, because I can give myself good company. It is certainly much better than hanging out with those people unsure of what to do and whose conversation is dull. It is the people who feel insecure when alone who cant roam single. Else it must be the immense social pressure against doing it. Some insecure fellow long long ago must have started it and lo! It has caught on as blight.

I wouldn’t deny the fun there is in hanging out with friends or family, but travelling alone has so many advantages. I can go wherever I want, no polls needed. I can linger around admiring a cool watch however long I want, no one pushing me around. I can go to whichever movie I want, no more asking friends when they are free. I can basically do everything I want to. Given a chance I would travel the world carrying a backpack (a huge one of course) and would prefer doing it alone!

What do you do when you feel you are going crazy, you cant hold a stable thought, you cant focus on a single act, you feel restless and you feel insecure. You are freaking out and you don’t know what to do. But what if I were in a similar state and knew why?

Sometimes days like this at home could be hell. I don’t know if an idle mind is a devil’s workshop but surely it is one black hole of happiness for me. Any prolonged period of inactivity sucks the gaiety in me and I turn into this twisted, perplexed troll having random thoughts, swaying dangerously and moving aimlessly. I feel, a cure to this could be talking to someone. But in the process I don’t know what I might end up saying, making totally unnecessary statements sometimes bizarre. And consequences to such things could be alarming so that is striked out. Another cure might be roaming around, but the whole point of it is nullified by the fact; if the roaming around is aimless, it would actually be a more mobile form of vagueness and insanity I already harbour. I think I can cure this by taking up some mind numbing activity like watching a movie or tv series, which in turn makes this wound of not being consummate larger by portraying things I don’t have but wish to, like adventure and a girl to love. By this time I have gone so deep into the pit that anything which could assuage this situation becomes impotent. I end up sleeping off those days in gloom and heartburn hoping to wake up for a good day. This happens once in a while and each time the insanity is carried over to the next bout.

But not today! Not now! I shall fight this off by doing what I like the most.