Words -II

The Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005 has remained my favorite for years now. Every time I read it, it inspires me to think how powerful words can be. The language is lucid; the style is simple and unassuming. An abecedarian might even think it is mere stating of facts. But when you are through reading it, you feel immense energy enthused in you.


Jonathan Livingston Seagull , The Alchemist and L’Étranger are a few books which have made a difference to the way I look at life but none exceed even 200 pages in a standard paperback edition. They tell simple tales and you wonder if it could have been simpler than this. Yet, the underlying philosophy is so profound, so intense that you keep thinking about them for days.

Maybe that is why I favor free verse in poetry more. It is not bound by a strict meter or rhyme. You can feel the rhythm when you read it. Pablo Neruda's Love is one such composition that has been a treasure since the beginning of my poem hunting days as a teenager.

As we grow up, our tastes change. The food we eat, the dress we wear. Even the habits we cultivate. Things may change drastically someday. Things I thought I'd never do, might be done. Human emotions are dynamic in nature. You can not predict a second before hand what you might feel and as a consequence how you'd react.

"O painting," says Faure, ".. sublime art, the highest, the most subtle,"
"Music," says Hadow, "rises into such heights of sublimity as no other art can attain."
"The supreme art.. Literature, the perfect expression of life." says Wilde.

For me, I am what I read. So even in all the uncertainty, there are a few things that I'll always like. And I'll strive towards that form of art, which transcends and is independent of the medium used.

Writing, like any other artistic expression- is the outflow of one's feelings. The greatest sin, therefore, is to curb its naturalness which gives it vitality, gives it life. Concrete and imitative or the abstract- whichever art form I use, the perceived object and the observer should become one. And so should the author and the reader.