Happy Monday!
What I’m listening to —
Bay of Pigs by Rogue Valley: Rogue Valley is an American music group from Minneapolis, Minnesota. This song was part of their final piece, False Floors, in a four-part music series dedicated to the seasons. I heard this song as part of ‘Hello, Again,’ an award winning short film and though I didn’t really enjoy the movie as such, the lyrics of the song hit home for me.
We’re all free to make our own mistakes
So don’t take mine away
Our human rights are supposed to include freedom of speech, thought, opinion and expression and a lot more…but in reality, it seems freedom is not a right but a distant dream. And freedom to make our own mistakes, truly divine.
What I’m watching —
A Silent Voice: I realize that I might not have the best memory because it seems I had seen this movie a few years before as well. However, when I watched it again, I felt like I might have seen it but still couldn’t recollect the story. The movie is about Shoya Ishida, who bullied Shoko Nishimiya, a deaf new student, in sixth grade. The two grow up with their own sets of weaknesses, confusions, awkwardness, struggles and challenges and the movie covers themes of bullying, suicide, friendship, heartbreaks, relationships and integration of disabled in society quite delicately.
A quote I’m pondering —
“Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence — but more generally takes the form of apathy.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
A book I’m reading —
A Road to Wigan Pier: In the first half of this book, George Orwell gives a detailed description of the horrible living conditions and poverty among the working class in England (Lancashire and Yorkshire) before World War II. Orwell writes about their bleak prospects, poor housing, unending hunger, unemployment, exploitation, cramped and overcrowded homes with real humanity, unapologetic anger and unshaken honesty. In the second half of the book he criticizes several thought leaders, reformers and writers and highlights their hypocrisies and dismisses their shallow ideas while giving powerful arguments for a need of a just and equal society by pursuing real, unadulterated Socialism.
A short film I’m watching —
Homebound: This 18-minute short Malaysian film is about Alan who works in Singapore and is visiting Malaysia in search of a particular mysterious location in the interiors of the country. On his way to the place he meets Ling who offers to take him there. The movie captures a typical mother-child relationship beautifully while emphasizing that, ‘Life is not just about getting from point A to B.’ Our time on this planet is limited and if we forget to prioritize, we’ll be left with a heart full of regret. As George Harrison rightly put it, “It’s being here now that’s important. There’s no past and there’s no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can’t relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don’t know if there is one.”