The Whispering Wind.

Will the wind ever remember
The names it has blown in the past
And with his crutch, it’s old age, and it's wisdom
It whispers "No, this will be the last"

~Jimmy Hendrix (The Wind Cries Mary)

The Lord Of The Ring

All the birds have flown up and gone;
A lonely cloud floats leisurely by.
We never tire of looking at each other -
Only the mountain and I

- Li Po (Alone Looking At The Mountain)

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

My latent Cyberdelic tendencies came to the fore before my recent peregrinations to the Himalayan mountains of Uttarakhand which lasted for over two weeks across the New year and Christmas break. Will upload the trips photographs (on my flickr stream)as soon as I have recovered from the journey and its aftermath (more of which in later posts)

Took these a couple of months ago in a whole series of shots and experimentation with water and oil droplets (mostly shot in industrial settings during visits to some chemical factories in Gujarat producing effluents in the manufacture of industrial dyes and paints)

I rather enjoy the leeway and scope of experimentation while composing Macros as the only real limit is the scope of one's own imagination and ability to "visualize" a shot in the most mundane of settings and objects.



Creatively I find it more satisfying than other genres of photography where scale and composition experimentation can be rather limited in lieu of the bigger picture.. This telescoping down to the microscopic level is really fun and always reminds me of one of the joys which initially attracted me to learn Photography as an art form.

~ ~

It's interesting to explore how the mind associates different influences and events asscociated with memory. How unrelated themes can intermingle in the most unlikely ways &

places



Inspiration is that most tenuous of things.. never know when it comes a calling and where it may spark the engines of creativity to come to life..Two random thoughts which collide somewhere inside our smug wooly cotton brains in its infancy

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The title is inspired by the pshycedelic colors and the fact that I was shooting this in Acid Bath and it seemed most apt..

The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test was originally a non fiction novel by Tom Wolfe and attained a cult following not unlike " Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintainece" by Lou Prisig in later years

It was released in 1967 featuring the travels of author Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters as they drive across the USA in a DayGlo painted school bus dubbed "Furthur," as well as the Acid Tests, during parties several of which had early performances by The Grateful Dead.

*(Ken Kasey was the author of two benchmark novels the most famous and my personal fav of them being "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest ";and "Sometimes a Great Notion".

He was also a counter-cultural figure who, some consider, was a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s(or Beatniks as they are more popularly known ~Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac) 'and the hippies of the 1960s.

Distant Ships On The Horizon

Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,
Only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness.
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another.
Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence.

- - - -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Tales of a Wayside Inn. Part iii. The Theologian’s Tale: Elizabeth. iv

And soon, too soon, we part with pain,
To sail o’er silent seas again.

Thomas Moore: Meeting of the Ships.

Fly High O Freebird.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach.

It is about a creature of high intelligence who was not appreciated by his flock - a gifted outsider.

A sensation when it was published years earlier in 1970, it features a seagull who breaks away from the flock and learns on his own to become an individual. He experiments with flying techniques in ways that seagulls would never do and, in that experience, finds freedom to fly in his own pattern. He risks disgrace, failure, and ostracism to go his own way, and in the process discovers experiences that the others could never know or enjoy.

Jonathan is no ordinary bird; he wants more than the other birds do. They're content to just do what they need to do to survive, but Jonathan puts his efforts into the glory of flying. He feels pressured by others - even shamed -- to conform to a more mundane way of existence, but he refuses.

He's utterly alone in his ambitions and experiences, especially when he learns to fly in the dark. Seagulls supposedly never do that, but he explores it and finds that he enjoys it. He brings his fear under control and sets out to break through the limitations imposed by the rules of the flock to become something entirely new to his species. It doesn't matter how lonely he feels; what matters is that he has become something amazing. The others view him as irresponsible and even dangerous, but Jonathan continues to go his way alone, content in being an outcast.

Eventually other outcasts join him, and they return to the flock to try to wake up the younger generation. Jonathan's guiding idea is, "You have the freedom to be yourself, your true self," and "Whatever stands against the freedom must be set aside." No limitation should be accepted. In the end, Jonathan is a Christ figure, both revered and reviled, and altogether misunderstood. He gives his message to a young disciple, who sees things as they are and prepares to pass on the wisdom.

Alpenglow

Mountains to me are more then rock and ice, they are the repository of my dreams, aspirations and ambitions.

Upwards they soar in a valiant attempt to breach the umbrella of the skies, and sometimes the clouds in the sky are brought down to shroud the mountain in mist. Adding mystery, aura and amazing views into the already perfect picture.

The sun rising and setting seen in the mountains is very unique as not all the landscape is lit up at the same time, if you are high enough you see patches of other peaks which glow golden and the skies which do a brilliant dance with the colors lighting it up.

There is nothing quite like it in the world to view and stand in stunned awe, mesmerized by it all.
It's also such a humbling experience as only when you stand close to them, can you really appreciate their massive size and girth which photographs can never truly convey (I've been trying for years to get their majesty down on film but as yet have never succeeded in their true portrayal - foreshortening can be such a bitch!!!) Its an ongoing quest which someday I hope will come to fruition .. till then I'll keep trying.

I am happiest when in their midst...And to the mountains is where I shall always return, no matter what.

White Limbo

This life of mine, if life I can call it, has become a strange affair, a kind of a metamorphosis in which every thing has changed.

Oliver Wendell Holmes once said that it was required of a man that he should share the action and passion of his times, at peril of being judged not to have lived, and for most of my early life I've followed this percept with uncommon faithfulness.

But now of late (the last decade or so) I find myself entangled in a web of days, time passing in a kind of a slow motion, yet seemingly the years flit by and I remain in the same place, unable to flog up interest in the world around me or the people who inhabit it..

I'm much like a meandering river still searching for a sea to unload itself of all that water.

This sort of detachment and apathy sometimes scares me.. but still I doggedly stick to the path
But to what purpose? What end?

I see myself upon the grim mile
The past hunting and future escaping
What was shall not be
Forever shall I thicken this belief