Portrait

on the 21st of march, two years ago, i made this post. and this was my first post ever. a year ago to the date, indi celebrated the Kottu evolution and we had our first, and only since, blogger’s meet up at barefoot. i went to it feeling like this, and woke up the next morning feeling like this. what can be said, except that it was truly life altering.

so i’ve been around for 2 long years now, long enough to feel old, but certainly not long enough to have gotten bored. i don’t blog regularly anymore. i admit, the novelty of having a blog, has, over the two years, worn off, very slightly. i still love blogging, i enjoy it and it inspires me. but i don’t always have something to say. but even then, even during the long spells of silence on my part, rest assured, i am still lurking in the shadows and watching out for interesting posts. i am always around.

so i forgot to make a post on the day itself. but to hell with it. here it is. cheers, and happy birthday.

ps - ah good old change. for instance, i now hate rob thomas and chad michael murray but still love iromi. the only reason i was so harsh on myself that night was because it was one in a string of so many other retarded, drunken nights, one of which i haven’t had since and seem to have grown out of. luckily. and little did i know then, that i didn’t know much about being in love at all. the deal only got sealed, coincidentally, that very night. and now i know.

last evening we headed down to the cheers pub to watch internationally popular, critically acclaimed british/jamaincan performance poet benjamin zephaniah.

charlotte tells me his real name is obidiah iqbal, and also that he is really 48 years old. this is shocking as i placed him at no more than about 35 years of age, and kept laughing everytime he would make a reference and then say ‘for those of you that aren’t as old as i am’ because i thought he was being cheeky.

other than this, it was a really energy packed and inspiring experience to be in his presence. his poetry itself is really well written, witty and youthful, making it interesting and light, even though he often speaks about subjects that are deeply rooted on politics and other such dark things. this, is apparently, the whole point; to make poetry an accesible and enjoyable experience, and not esoteric or severe. he himself said ‘i started writing poetry because i didn’t like poetry’.

between each poem, he would talk for awhile, familiar and comfortable with his audience, clearly the characteristics of someone who is used to performing in front of much larger crowds. the majority of last evening’s audience were british themselves, and this perhaps helped zephaniah feel more at home, since he constantly kept apoligizing for some very british references or jokes (which really weren’t that hard to get at all).

the best thing about him for me, besides the truly enlightening poetry or the wonderfully upbeat and rhythmic delivery of it, was his sense of humour. he approached many serious issues with a tongue-in-cheek swagger that made everyone roar. his extremely straightforward left-wing wit gave him the ability to laugh at things, instead of wallow in them, and showed the audience a way to look at the world around in optimism instead of despair.

the best poem of the evening for me was one titled ‘what’s that gotta do with me?’ and was about the people that dwell amongst us all, that are just content to live in a bubble so long as it’s good to them. i am regularly infuriated, particualrly with people my age, who just don’t seem to know, or care, or want to know what’s going on around them. it seems so simple to point fingers and say ‘oh, it’s their war’ ‘it’s their problem’ and easily detach oneself in order to live a life that doesn’t involve you in the mess. what we fail to see is that its most often everyone’s mess. global warming, for instance, is everyone’s mess, and it’s going to take everyone’s involvement to fix it.

i urge everyone that didn’t see it last evening to go and watch him at 5.30 pm today at the british council, and be inspired to use art to change the way people think, because that’s truly what a man like him has the power to do.

i’ve been following the debate on groundviews about sam de silva’s film, circles of violence. tulsi’s post about it has generated interesting discussions and comments.

however, through reading most of what was said on groundviews regarding the film, i found myself highly disillusioned by the so-called educated adults of our community. everyone seems to only want to put forth over educated, pedantic, analytical theories. the true feelings, the opinions, are all lost in a sea of big words and pseudo intellectual bile.

sam’s film for me, informationally, was nothing new. as someone who has kept my eyes and ears open to the world around me, and also living in a household like mine, i am well aware of the tragedy that has engulfed our people. i don’t need a film to skim over the headlines of the past 50 years in order to learn that. but i refuse to forget my most initial, instinctive reaction to it. it tugged at my heart strings. it made me dwell on our country’s history of violence and conflict, it made me fear greatly what sort of fate we are in store for. surely, sam made this film as someone who hadn’t stepped on sri lankan soil since childhood. it was a personal journey, as he keeps insisting, and not an objective, political commentary on the uregency of the current situation. viewing it from the perspective of someone who was only armed with a camera and a curiosity, a near-foreigner who returned to the country of his parents to discover for himself what sort of place it was, i think it accomplished what it sets out to do.

someone says on groundviews ‘I did not attend the screening, even though I knew about it and was in fact invited by a friend of the film-maker, mainly because it was held Barefoot’. you did not attend the screening of the film? then clearly, this is not the discussion for you. the discussion on groundviews was about sam’s FILM, not the location at which he chose to screen it.

some might say that i inhabit barefoot an awful lot and therefore i am obliged to defend it. it’s not like the individual who left that comment does not enjoy the luxuries of a financially well-off life. just because one does not go to barefoot, it does not make one the symbol of sincerity and social equality. in the same way, just because one does go to barefoot, it does not make one a head-in-the-sand capitalist fuck.

barefoot, besides being a nice, outdoor location, is run by two of the few people in colombo who support local intiatives by young sri lankans, mostly involved in the arts. dom and naz are two of the few people someone like sam can go to and know that he is amongst support. dom and naz are two of the few people who would give bloggers a space to meet (as they did last year at no cost). although barefoot does often exhibit work by foreign artists (i don’t see what’s so wrong with this anyway, it is educating if at all, and is a good chance for people in colombo to get acquainted with the work of many wonderful painters and photographers who aren’t in the limelight of the mainstream, whose work is offbeat and unusual that no one else here exhibits) they do very often support local artists and are open to many interesting, novel ideas. ask tracy holsinger of fringe theatre company, mind adventures, or indi who organized the meeting for kottu bloggers last march. barefoot is a liberal, free space where many interesting people meet and many interesting conversations take place.

what someone like sam needs is genuine criticism (preferably from someone who’s seen the film). not a garbled mess of pretentious, insincere thoughts. many of those that left long comments on groundviews don’t seem to have truly examined what they really thought about the film. what do you really think? what was your first reaction to the film? this is the stuff that’s important.

although a lot of people seem to think that this film is useless for sri lankan citizens and is only good to show overseas, i beg to differ. as i said on a post on groundviews, i think this is a good and important film to show teenagers and school goers in colombo. you will be alarmed at what a bubble some people of my age group live in. what better way to give them atleast a hint of what’s going on than to show them a 45 minute long film?

despite having minor issues with the film, i give sam a big round of applause for simply trying.

thanks to indi for photo.

its international women’s day. i’m not sure what that means exactly, and i don’t know what it means to me personally, yet, but i suppose the fact that we have an international women’s day on the calendar must mean that this world needs one.

when henrik ibsen wrote ‘a doll’s house’, it was what we call an overnight sensation. nora leaving her husband and children and embarking on a journey of self-discovery has become one of the world’s most talked about and controversial theatrical conclusions, and to this day remains so. but are characters like torvald and nora’s father merely obscure reminders of the way the world used to be? or are they symbols for people that do in fact live and act and think that way, ever prevalent, even in today’s so called modern day? do we not find husbands that treat their wives like dolls, not because they are malicious, but simply because that is the only way they know how? do we not find men to whom women are simply ornamental and share no part in the family’s and society’s decision making process, not because they are cruel but simply because they are ignorant? do we not come across men who don’t beat their wives, but cause an equal damage by disallowing equality in repsect and control?

may there be a world for people. not for men or women or the rich or the poor or the powerful or the helpless. may there come a world for everyone. may there be a world for us all.

‘the wizard of oz’ was one of my absolute favourites as a child. i am the kind of person that can still remember all the words to many of the songs and the exact green of the wicked witch of west’s pointy shoes. who can resist a little judy garland, after all?

tracy holsinger is in many ways a genius, and ‘the wiz’ is the wonderful, jazzed up version of what we know and love as ‘the wizard of oz’. so, why would anyone miss this show?

i was just telling flanni about what i got for my birthday this year, and i just though ‘why not blog it?’ so here is the paragraph, unabridged. (well ok, slightly abridged.)

what prezzies did i get for my bidet? asvajit gave me lots of things…he got me these awesome fridge magnets of all the beatles album covers, i let him take the abbey road and the yellow submarine ones but that’s all! the new bob dylan album and a prince album (I HEART PRINCE)…3121? and this dr seuss book called the lorax, that was really good, and the 6th season of the simpsons! wow no? and then i got some clothes…nice clothes. and i got some dance wear which is cool because that stuff is so expensive to buy…and shannon gave me a
thousand rupees! how perfect. and i got this great book called good omens which is co authored by terry pratchett and one of my favourite writers in the world right now, neil gaiman. oh and this cool truth or dare jenga set. you know that game, where you build this column with little pieces and you keep moving them to make it higher and higher without toppling it over? arun gave me a book i unfortunately owned already, but its the thought that counts, and as he pointed out, the earlier one didn’t have a message by him on the inside. how pawesome eh?

ok anyway…can someone buy me a troll next year? please. no, er, really.

my god!

i, for one, love getting older. i think its very exciting, and a lot of fun on the whole. i’m not sure i will feel the same way about it a few years from now (even now, there are instances, just seconds though, of rising panic where i feel a little bit scared at how everything changes, and i stand there getting nostalgic and grasping at straws), but hopefully i will. change is great. it is, above all, essential.

big love, and thanks to everyone who makes my life worth living.