When I Die

The End Of The World. The Village.

9th Stepember, 2004

This Is How The World Died, Son

-1-
Ashton sits right back up in his chair and loses all pretense of boredom when Pop says these words. "You mean," Ahston says, "you're really gonna tell me this time?" He's half-questioning and half-excited. Wowzee, this beats playing ball anyday.

"Yeah," Pop says. "'Bout time you found out." Pop sips a bit from his beer can, puts the can down on the rock they're both sitting on. "It's not nice, this story."

"Okay," Ashton says. Who the heck cares how the story is, anyway? Good or bad, he wants to hear it.

"Before that, do you remember what I told you about how we survived?"

Ashton nods. "Yeah, sure. We hid in the contamination chambers, right?"

Pop laughs. "Hell no, it was the containment chambers, kid. The contamination chamber's where the mutants are."

"Oh," Ahston says and whops a light fist over his head--his expression for screwing something up.

"Anyway, so all those who didn't hide in the chambers, those nanobots just blew their brains off."

"Nanobots?" What the heck were nanobots?

"Well, here's what...

-2-
happened.

Nanotech went global. That's what happened. Nanotech went mainstream. That's what happened. Everyone heralded a new era: the future of humanity, they said, is small. Nano.

Nanobots are teeny weeny molecular semi-sentient beings that act in a group or go solo and can be remote controlled to perform just about anything from processing your body odor into perfume to cleaning your teeth (for that extra whiteness™).

Nanobots could do anything, and everyone welcomed them with open arms, and open minds. Docs could use 'em as an alternative to surgery. Got cancer? No problem, nanotherapy'll get rid of it in a hurry, and all it'll take is one evening of slight nausea and a lot of money (but money's worth nothing if you're dead, right?™).

Nanobots could do anything. Cops could use 'em to knock terrorists unconscious.

You want a mind blowing, earth shattering, soul whirling orgasm? Try the new nanodildoes and nanovags today. It's all about pleasure™.

Nanobots could do anything. Now, if they could be programmed to heal a broken bone, they could also be...

-3-
"programmed to blow your mind clear off your skull, son."

Ashton thinks, Holy shit!

"That's what happened," Pop says, sips more beer. "Everything good has it's bad, son; except that the bad far outweights the good everytime. We've always invented things that fu--screwed us up. TNT, the atom bomb, and--" Pop actually giggles like Lina does. Lina looks prettier when she giggles, though. Maybe that's because she's a girl. "Never mind," Pop says. "So that's what happened."

Ashton tries to wrap his mind around what Pop told him, but it's heavy stuff. And he's just a kid, anyway. He'll get it when he grows up, he guesses.

Pop drinks the last of his beer, gets up and walks away from the rock.

Ashton sits, hands on his curled-up knees, chin resting on his forearms; he sits and he gazes at the concrete kingdom that Pop said once belonged to them. Them meaning human beings. He stares at the tall building which shadows the sun.

A chimpanzee pokes its head out of one of the broken windows of the building and it laughs at him.

<>

I thought I'd tell you what I wanted to tell you in a different way, so I told it like a story. But something I couldn't tell up there and I will over here: The day nanotech goes mainstream is the day we all start doing the death waltz. Mark my words. Write them down.

<>

-1-
Well, hello. I guess you've been with me long enough that I owe you a little respect. All of you who heard this little pipsqueak yammering about cosmic nonsense for such a long time, thank you. Thank you, and I also want to tell you you've got an amazing amount of tolerance. Here's looking to the future.

(Sarcasm is my middle name, but everything in the above paragraph except the last line is heartfelt, okay? That said, the last line is pure sarcasm. I mean, look at the story I just wrote for you, for Christ's sake! That one talks about the end of the world, and then I'm talking about looking to the future. Paradox, that is me.)

<>

-2-
Saw a man pat a fourteen foot King Cobra on its head. On TV. The man stalked the cobra for five minutes, and then, just let out and touched the snake's head for a second. It didn't do anything. The man called it a lifelong dream realized. I call it a fucking wonder.

And in case you're wondering, I'll repeat: It was a fourteen foot long Indian King Cobra, in the wild, poisonous, and hissing. I got a lot of guts, but I don't have that kind of guts at all.

<>

Art Talk
Let's talk art, shall we? Back in the 90s, when I was way too damn hectic for my own good, I heard a song called Shine On You Crazy Diamond. Sure, I'd heard songs before, but this song was different. This song got to me. Got to me in a way nothing else ever did.

What this song did was made me want to cough up my own stuff. Hearing that song--the way the sax just lolls in and out--was a revelation. How was I gonna spend the rest of my life? Why, creating music, of course.

The point of the above is simple enough: there's one thing that seperates an artist from a fan. A fan looks at a painting or a movie or reads a book or hears a song and thinks, That's cool, man!. The artist looks at the same and thinks, Can I ever do something like that? And after that: Maybe. Then: Let's try. What the hell.

It's the difference between watching the same dream over and over again and redirecting it yourself. The difference between loving it and doing it. Simple as that.

I didn't have a computer back then. What I did have was a very small, very old, very broken, but still function Casio keyboard. It had micro-mini keys. What I also did have was a tape-deck with a twin cassette player and one of thsoe players allowed you to record. What I also did have was a hand-held talkbook.

How I began is, I played a few keys and recorded them on the talkbook. Then played something else and simultaneously replaying the talkbook, recorded these two tracks on the tape deck. Lather, rinse, repeat. What came out was pretty much epic crap, but it did teach me something most musicians don't know early on: thinking in layers. The concept was simple: one sound, one layer. But so many amateur musicians (witness the www.propellerheads.se forum, where multitrack editing is akin to rocket physics) don't know this simple enough concept that the get scared and choose another walk of life.

After that, the one thing on my wishlist was a Korg Keyboard. Preferably a Triton. I had the desire; what I didn't have was money.

Computers changed that. When I got my P3-450Mhz, I was on cloud 9. Absolutely. I had a few free MIDI track layer software programs and a few software wavetable synths (in case you didn't know, what these thingies do is emulate hardware MIDI on a software wavetable. What's a wavetable? Search it on google; will take a long time to explain). I reproduced a few songs I liked. They were crude, no doubt; but I think I was way too happy in those days than I'm now, so it didn't matter. I did the theme from Mortal Kombat--The Movie. I did the theme from The Mast (trumpets). The drumkit of my soundcard's wavetable synth was pathetic, and the cymbals and bassdrums and snares all sounded like snores and farts. But still, when you're in love, your mind makes up what's missing.

I also did a straight copy of Planet Rock (which Paul Oakenfold remixed a couple of years later and used in Swordfish's soundtrack. And if I told you my mix sounds--or sounded--eeriely simliar to Paul's, you'd think I was lying), and that one was kinda the pinnacle of my Midi-wavetable programming days.

Cause exactly one week later (you always remember when such stuff happens, don't you? Like losing your virginity) I got Fruityloops. This ushered me into the mainstream happy-daffy lovey-dovey cheesy trance programming. I had a good working knowledge of layering and the basics, so working with Floops was a breeze.

Problem was that I didn't own a full version, and the demo I had didn't allow you to save any files. Constrained, but it taught me to work fast, and work efficiently, and work long. It taught me lots and lots of tips. Like, before doing a final mix of your song, hear it at half and twice the original speed. It taught me to work with softsynths. Floops was like kindergarten. And I loved every bit of it.

About five months after Amy left, I sat down to work on Floops and everything I made sounded like crap. So what I did is cut the tempo from 140 to 70 BPM, loaded a completely different setup, and went wild. The result was my first ambient song.

That was my second revelation. It was still cheesy, but it surprised me. A bit like never having opened your eyes all your life and then having someone cut your eyelids off.

I wrote somewhere that I believe in the old adage which goes: the wheel of time spins.

About the same time, I discovered Propellerheads Reason. Talk about a phase shift. This one was big. This one was exactly the kind of thing I'd been waiting for all my life. Reason eases up composition to the point of goofy idiocy. A layman can make a Fatboy Slim phat track in about five minutes. No kidding. You don't even need to know anything about composing/arranging/editing. This software's so simple my gramma could use it. Serious.

It's also powerful. The things you can do with this baby... let's just put it this way: if software were cars, this one would be a Ferrari. A Porsche. A Rolls Royce.

The Reason concept is so damn simple you wonder why no one thought of this before. This is how it works: one device, one track. Create as many devices as you want. You got samplers, synths, drum programmers, pattern sequencers, and the DnB geek's Viagra: Dr. Rex .rex file player. You mix 'em and match 'em, then patch 'em through some serious FX (yeah, kiss those hardware verb boxes goodbye) and you've got a studio quality mix on your hands.

Provided you know what you're doing.

If you don't, well, all you're gonna get is blips and farts.

If this sounds like a commercial for Reason, it is. I urge you to try the demo out at www.propellerheads.se. It's worth it. This Christmas, instead of buying that cartload of porn (I'm not saying you do this. No sir, and if you're angry, well, sorry) or that bunch of video games, try your hand at Reason. Who knows what you could cook up?

Besides, there's no such thing as too much good music, is there?

Bottomline is this: no art is really that hard once you have the right tools. Of course, this is considering you've got the talent, the patience... and most importantly, the desire to create. Someone said that give us the right tools and we'll create universes. Nuff said.

If Pink Floyd had the tech we have now, we can only imagine what they would've come up with. But then again, maybe we wouldn't have had a Pink Floyd in the here and now. Good art is much a product of desire and focused production as it is of Time and Luck.

If Stephen King had written his stories fifty years earlier or fifty years later, he wouldn't have been what he is. Art--good art--is timeless, but it is also affixed firmly in the present.

Tell me, how many of todays teens know who Sigma 6 was? How about Vangelis? How about Enigma, for crying out loud?

But ask them if they know Eminem. Oh, we know him, yo! He's the man, brother! He's just one cool mother, man!

(Now, let's set the speculation about whether Eminem's music is art or not for a later volume--as Neil Stephenson said--and consider this: ten years earlier Eminem would've been dismissed as a foul mouthed, self-centered wannabe--pretty much the same reasons why he's accepted now.)

At the same time, take a band like Pearl Jam. Derivative, sure, but they have their own style. They don't have the glam-rock excess baggage that Aerosmith carry. And most importantly their music is good. Even when it's repetitive or derived, it's good.

Good art is something that is copied over and over. When William Gibson wrote Neuromancer, everyone jumped upon the cyberpunk bandwagon. When King became rich, everyone wrote horror.

Good art is something that is copied. Bad art is something that copies from something else.

If you're wondering why a published author like Dean Koontz fucks it up so bad all the time even when he has all the tools to create great novels, the answer is simple: he's trying to copy someone else's style. And it doesn't work.

The thing these copycats don't realize is that there's nothing like doing something your way. If I don't screw around with the sonics of my songs, I just don't get off. Simple as that. If it doesn't sound good, I feel compelled to change it till it does.

Same with my stories. I write them the way I'd like to read them. (And this is borrowed advice. I read it at HWA. And it's true. Write what you'd like to read and how you'd like to read it. Do what you want and how you want it.)

Cause there's only seven tones in music and only 26 letters in the alphabet and three basic colors, and it's not so much what you use as how you use it.

Good art is original yet derivative. Familiar yet experimental.

Good art is about being in the right place at the right time and then having the guts to do your own stuff and having the guts to spread it to the masses.

Good art is...

satisfaction. Pleasing the reader/listener/viewer and pleasing yourself.

If you don't like what you're doing, chances are that nobody else will. Maybe no one will like your work even when you do... but that at least satisfies half the bargain, doesn't it?

<>

It's all a tape. It's all recorded. - Mulholland Drive

We're standing on the third floor of our college, leaning on the low concrete wall, the wind blowing so fast and hard my hair lifts up all the way from my forehead and flies back on my head.

Ash's sitting up on the wall, arms folded above her knees, chin tucked between them. Rishi's sitting on the wall with his legs dangling down. A couple of temporary nuisance guys stand next to me, olging at Ash and Seema and Priya.

Kawal comes round the bend and tells the two temporary guys that they've got practicals. The three of them leave.

Ash taps my shoulder and says, "Let's go in the classroom." She gets down from the wall and starts walking to the classroom.

It's cool out here, but I go in anyway, cause it's cool inside too. And Ash, when we're alone, usually has good stuff to yap about.

There are a lot of temporary guys and girls sitting in the class--I know them by name, but that's all I care to know.

We sit on the benches next to the walls. I prop my legs up on the bench and rest my back on the wall. She looks around a bit, then follows my example, sitting on the bench in front of me.

"I got three tickets for The Village's premiere," she says.

For a moment I have no idea what she's talking about.

Then it lights up my cranium like a nuclear blast. "The Puh-premiere?" I ask.

"Yeah. Had 'em prebooked, and I was gonna go with Arun, but he's got his exams so he can't come."

What I want to say is, "I want one ticket right now!" What I say is, "Who's Arun?"

"My guy," she says. Then laughs. "My cousin, silly."

"Oh," I go.

"You wanna come?" she asks.

Do I? I don't know, do Pearl Jam do rock? Does a bomb kill? Does a Ferrari move? I don't know, do I?

I nod.

"Okay," she says.

And I think, there's something else at work here. I'm gonna go watch Shyamalan's movie--I'm gonna watch it's first show in India. And it's all happened so casually it's unbelievable.

"You know I've wanted to see this movie, don't you?" I ask.

"Yeah," she says. "You make that stuff pretty clear all the time. What you want, that is." She smiles the smile which reminds me of a ghost.

"Who's the third?" I ask.

"Don't know, yet. How about Priya?"

And I think, yeah, great, one guy and two girls. Like I need that to worry about while I'm watching THE MOVIE.

So I go, "How about Rishi? Or Sid? Or Akash?"

"Let's think about that later," she says. Sometime later, she asks, "What's the name of the guy in the movie? He was there in Signs too."

"Joaquin Pheonix."

She nods. "Yeah, he looks a bit crazy."

"Like me," I go. Narcism: that's me.

"Nah," she says. "You look crazier."

So I screw up my eyes and talk like a duck: "How do you spell Cat, ma'am? is it T-A-C or T-A-C?"

She stifles a giggle.

"Or is it A-S-S-H-O-L-E? How about F-U-beep-K?"

"Shut up," she goes and I shut up. Then she starts laughing.

"My fadder was my mudder's brudder's sister's uncle's brudder's sister's fadder's grandfadder's bastard's mother's grandap's sister's--" I go on and on and on in my Forrest Gump voice and don't even hear the professor walk into the classroom.

Ash doesn't hear him either cause she's laughing. And again I wonder if she's laughing at me or at my stuff. Either way, I don't care. Some people are made to laugh and Ash is one of them.

the professor raps his duster on the blackboard and Ash stops laughing.

She looks at me, mutters a quick, "we're in the library meet us there," and rushes out of the room. In case you're wondering why that is, it's because she's not in my class. She's a year younger. She's my junior. And that sounds like so much shit.

So I sit for the lecture, drawing cartoons in my notebook, writing a few random phrases that catch my fancy ("At least everyone else smells just as bad in hell" and so on and so forth).

And I think about that weird thought I had: that something else is at work here. I don't know why I thought it, maybe it's a connection from Signs and Shyamalan's thought triggered it off... but I don't think so.

How many coincidences would it take that Ash has three tickets to the premiere, that she asked me instead of someone else, that she even knows me in the first place? How many? I don't know.

None of that matters now, though.

What matters is that I'm gonna go see that movie.

I'm awfully glad I'm getting this chance.

I'm awfully glad Ash asked me.

I'm awfully glad I'm alive.

I'm awfully glad.

<>

The Lord of the Rings

All hail Peter Jackson for accomplishing the impossible. I just finished watching The Return of the King, and so far as I can tell, the LOTR trilogy stands right next to Forrest Gump as my most favorite movie experience ever.

I thought we'd absolutely never make a good movie out of LOTR, not in this millenium. No sir, not possible.

And along comes a hobbitesque man and makes magic.

Forget the snobby reasons: he had New Line Cinema's full support, he had a heck of a big budget, he had a stellar cast, he had the best background score (composed by the uber-God Howard Shore) ever composed for a movie, he had the best in tech available. Forget all that, and think this: would you have done what this man did? I know damn well I couldn't.

What he has done has realized Tolkien's vision. What he has done is set the mood just right. One little slip and this epic movie trilogy would've been shit. Another little slip and it would've been like Harry Potter (did I ever tell you I made the mistake of watching the movie and pretty much throwed up half an hour into the movie?).

What's more, the trilogy doesn't slip. Not a single scene in any single movie lags. Heck, the script is so damn tight that even the places where the movie deviates from the book (Shelob's lair comes to mind, so does the decision to scrap the entire Scouring Of The Shire) takes anything away from the whole experience.

Every actor fits his role to a T. Elijah Woods as Frodo is perfect. So is Orlando Bloom as Legolas. Hugo Weaving as the elf-lord, ditto. But the guy who absolutely steals the show is Gollum. Dunno 'bout you, but apart from Sam, Gollum's the real hero of the movie for me.

What Peter Jackson has done, in effect, is cut out all the parts of the story which I thought were cheesy. The three movies are all more than three hours long, but there's not a sliver of flab anywhere. There's not a single frame that doesn't belong.

The background score. Won't even begin to talk about it. Howard Shore now belongs in my group of the very elite: Simon Posford, Ben Watkins (Juno Reactor), Pink Floyd, A. R. Rahman, Thomas Williams (the guy who wrote the soundtrack for Road To Perdition).

When I saw the second part, I thought there was no way the third part could top it. After you've seen that magnificent Ent-fight, you're pretty much drained, and you feel you've seen it all.

But is part 3 out of this world? Is grass green? Is smoking addictive? Can acid induce hallucinations?

I don't care how bad Peter Jackson fucks up now. I've heard he's doing The Hobbit. I don't care if it's a dud. It probably won't be, but I don't give a shit.

What he has done in these three movies is create history. What he has done is given a previously ambigous universe solidity and form.

What he has done is a work of genius. If you don't think so, then maybe we're both living in different dimensions.

If you haven't seen these three movies, do so right now. Better yet, read the book first and then watch the movie.

As I believe I've said before, you owe it to yourself.

<>

Tonic for the Sleepless

Most people don't understand my weird working hours. I can stay awake till 4 in the night, but I hate--absolutely hate--getting up early. Once I hit the sack, if I don't get my eight hours, well, you've got a very pissed chimp on your hands. The kind that can bite.

Is it a result of my biological clock (born in the US, dudes. When it's night in India, it's day in the US)? Is it a result of childhood patterns developed on all those lovely sleepovers and campovers with my brotherhood? Or is it something above that? An unconscious ritual reserved for a select few?

I like the nights. They're cool and clearer than the day, somehow.

They're quieter.

In the night, conversation takes on a hushed, relaxed mask that is relieving. I talk slow, though I can talk very damn fast if I want, but I talk slow. And in the nights, almost everyone else does, too. That's nice. It actually sounds like people are paying attention to what they're saying as well as what you're saying.

People look better in the nights. I don't know why, but the white light of the tubes makes the simple pretty and the pretty beautiful.

I think it has something to do with knowing that you're going to a warm bed. That they day's over, you're still alive, praise God. That all the things you hoped for may not have happened today, but there's always tomorrow to wait for. Who knows what tomorrow brings?

Or maybe I'm a creature of the night. Simple as that.

My landscape is a blanket which stretches forever and ever.

My blanket covers everyone and everything and this world is nothing but a black, singular love.

You can start off anywhere, and walk anywhere. The road is long, the night is young, and all around you is familiar darkness.

The darkness covers ghost and man alike. It liberates werewolves and vampires.

Come along then, into the night. Look around with my eyes, the colors of the night are vibrant and alive.

<>

His world is a blur of feathers--the feathers his sisters foray
The ravens, a sight unseeable; the universe, a shadow of gray

A Copy of a Copy of a Copy

Got my exams in five days, and haven't studied worth shit. That's okay, been doing that since a long, long time. Want to talk about something else though:

Before I turned nine, I used to travel on trains a lot. Me and my Mom or Pop or anyone else.

I always sat in the window seat, always stared out at the tracks and the world blurring by. And I played a videogame in my mind.

Picture a superbike (with a rider, of course), scaled down to one-tenth of its original size. Now picture that superbike racing alongside the train I'm riding in, sweeping along the tracks, jumping over small rocks, turning and slithering to avoid electricity posts and poles. Sometimes the bike changed tracks. But always, it sped along the train, and along with me.

One day, the bike stumbled and fell. The driver (I called him John) got hurt. But he was a hero at heart, and so he just picked his bike up and drove on--never mind the pain. That day, when the race ended (when my station came and I got off the train), I awarded him a gift: from then on, John and his bike could fly when he wanted to.

From then on, John flew on rooftops, on billboards, doing crazy flips and turns.

We had a lot of fun, John and I.

I don't exactly remember when, but one day I sat in the train and I didn't think about John. And I didn't think about him till yesterday when I got in a train after about two years.

What happened is I saw an actual sports bike racing along the road running parallel to the tracks. What happened is flashback.

I saw John racing along with me yesterday, and he waved a casual wave--no regrets, buddy, long time no see, but no regrets--and we got along just fine.

When I got off the train, though, John said that maybe it was better if we didn't go together anymore. I thought it good too, considering how you probably think I'm a schizophrenic delusional bloke in dire need of psychiatric help now (don't lie, I know you do).

Thing is this: when we are kids, we're all mad. The reason we forget our childhood (you may think you remember it, but what you remember isn't your past, what you remember is a copy of a copy of a copy) is that if we didn't, we'd all be insane.

I wonder if that's a good thing or a bad one.

And on that mad note, sayonara.

---Chimp.

<>

The Village

First of all, please repeat the following with me: the guy who writes for the movies section of the Indian Express should be flogged a hundred and thirteen times on his ass, his face, his chest, his hands, and most importantly his mouth.

Why? Two days before the premiere of the movie, the fucker goes ahead and gives away the big secret. Lousy fucker. And he does it without warning, without any spoiler alert messages. He starts the sentence talking about how Shyamalan's facing a lawsuit because of the (this matter deleted for writing.com readers who haven't yet seen the movie. I got a heart, unlike the bastard).

The big secret out, the movie should've been a bummer, right?

Wrong.

The movie still rocked muchos gracias.

You know something? Even before I knew the big secret, I kinda wondered why Shyamalan would make a movie about the ancient ways and a stupid looking monster cult that sounded too much like a French movie I saw called "Brotherhood of the Wolves".

But it's Shyamalan, man. I watch his movies just because of him.

The movie mostly belongs to Bryce Dallas Howard, but the guy who absolutely steals the show is Joaquin Pheonix. Yet again.

He's been the highlight of almost every movie he's acted in. Gladiator. Signs.

8 Millimeter. When Joaquin says, "Disturbed? Look at me, I'm it all over," you believe him. He might look like another reserved wannabe, but this guy can act.

Not that it matters much in a Shyamalan film. Shyamalan can get anyone to act right.

I saw the movie with Ash and one of her cousins (little brother, thank God. Another girl would've been too damn irritating. He came all the way from Delhi just for the premiere. Does that tell you I like the guy? It has to). They didn't know the big secret, of course, and they were amused and shocked and surprised when the movie ended. But Ash and the kid were pretty much blocked out from my mind. All my attention was devoted to the movie. They didn't bother me either, good folks that they are.

I don't want to talk much about it, because I don't want to give any story away.

One thing I will tell you, though: The Village is a fairy tale.

Adios.

<>

"At a higher altitude, with flag unfurled
We reach the dizzy heights of that dreamed of world..."
---- Pink Floyd, "High Hopes"


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