Loners Inc.

I recently happened to have a conversation, more like a debate actually, with a fellow artist and a good friend of mine about what it is that makes artists and writers tick. We both ended up agreeing to one point. Most artists and writers are by nature introverts and the lack of human interactions actually seem to be helping us in exploring a lot more inside our heads than outside. Yes, we do miss out on a good deal of social life, sometimes to the extend that we get referred to as being anti-social, which is not quite a good thing. It is not as if we don't enjoy being with friends. It is just that we prefer solitude by the end of the day so that we can sort things out in our heads and cook up something worth our while. We need time for some serious daydreaming. After all, we make a living by trading our dreams

The flipside of this is that we learn about human nature more from movies and literature than through actual interaction. Our social circle stays restricted to just the handful of people we are able to share our comfort zone with. So coming up with characters and images that every reader/viewer can relate to becomes a challenge at times. Finding a balance between art and social life continues to remain a tricky business to me

Getting back to life, and things around me, I woke up today with a semi-gothic poem ringing inside ma head and I wrote it down first thing in the morning. Dreams fade away by mid-day and are best documented before breakfast! Then I found time to read Will Eisner's brilliant work, New York - The big city, and it inspired me into thinking why not document the unique things that happen around where I live, in what Rosh mockingly calls my Indo-French style :). Then i made a very long list of all the things that one gets to see only in the streets of Trivandrum, one of the Southernmost cities of India, and the homeland of yours truly.
So here I am, presenting to you all, Trivandrum - Life in the small city (link)
Merryn is on a train headed South to her home as we speak and I wish her a safe n happy journey. Come back to me soon!