This is an experimental stop-motion video I created using 750+ frames of transitioning blue lights on my bedroom desk using daily life objects as props for this project on a late Sunday night when I was bored. This video represents the dream that loops within the mind of a lost soul who feels he is losing his mind and losing himself to the mundane disappointments of real life, losing his sanity to drugs, music and an unfulfilled claim at redemption. Hope you enjoy this.
Nothing new has bloomed here underneath the dawn sky. Barely a flicker of a flame lights up the cold grey walls Casting shadows, moth shadows.
Moth moth on the wall, your fate will foresee you. Your eyes will lead the way, Let you scale the treacherous summit.
Serene as a pitcher of ice Dawn dawns upon dawn. Marooned at the far end of the plank of ethereal reality Courage dissolves and hope manifests.
Architecture reigns.
Grey skies, dawn skies, time flies.
Condescendingly and yet reassuredly, Moth cries, the moth cries
Where lies your name? The moth cries. What purpose do you hold? Do you hold purpose? The moth cries Or does purpose hold you.
Purple haze...dawn dawns upon dawn.
Progress, do you? Or decay? The moth cries. Destruction and carnage? Peace an unfulfilled dream? Tell me more about betrayal and the loss of faith Redemption and sacrifice.
Firefly firefly, moth firefly It burns brighter. An aura takes hold. Radiation takes hold. The moth Is now a firefly.
Shimmering like a wavering radiant dark moon over the dark foreboding ocean, Thoughts flow from his eyes in the form of tears of ancient knowledge. Speaks He does, The Ancient One, Words of wisdom. And yet no sound can be heard.
Assembled inside the arena, they wait for him like starved wolves. Expectations are heightened and a mass sense of discomfit lies tingling in the air. Speak to us, they cry out. Scathingly critical. They hold their glasses of wine, up in the air.
Speak to us, they cry.
And He speaks.
The crowd is silenced. The crack of dawn rumbles in the horizon And the highways of the mind are now open roads.
Minds wander Wander to unknown avenues and cosmic entities and surreal places In a trance, they sway. Sway to the words of the ancient one.
Thunder and flames; lightning and smoke. Swaying to the music. Music of the words. Blinding flashes of white light And a trembling cloud spilling out a delirious fusion of vivid colors. Sway to the words of the ancient one.
Vultures and raptors; coyotes and cactii Rattlesnakes and boulders; the cries of lone wolves Isolated and stranded, and yet surrounded by the wanderers Enchanting night skies, desolate open spaces The starlight. Starlight. Sacred starlight.
A flicker of a smile passes upon the wrinkled face of The Ancient One He knows. He shakes his head.
Picks up a wine glass He does, and pours himself The Divine Fluid. Ayahuasca. Santo daime. Natem. Shori. Yage.
And in a tranced state, He joins his audience in the beautiful highway between this world and the next.
" I'm in the wrong body, the wrong form, the wrong thoughts, the wrong life. ... I'm the mask, painted and empty, nothing more than a vessel for other entities to see through. Talons curl into the eyeholes to twist and stretch me apart. My tongue is torn loose and my stomach ripped through my throat. Burning and liquefying. All is molten rubber, stinking and agonizing. I'm changing."
\It forms red triangularly inclined pyramids at the edge of your corneas while the skies burn like flashing beats inside a dark cave dimly lit up by a spontaneous delirium of low fi sound that emanates across every perpendicular vortex that surrounds you when you dissolve into a multitude of crystalline drops and you toss your books into the air and they float on to the sound of a guitar that strums to your favourite tune and you think of monkeys mating towards a penultimate aim of unconscious expansion and the tantrum the grasshoppers are making with their monotonous yet varying decibels of lucrid screeches trips you out to a world where you see tarantula sillhoutes expliding across a white screen and your senses are taking over you and it feels like you're in a battlefield and a void all at once, someone coughs and someone speaks and someone mutters incomprehensible phrases to you as you chant childhood prayers you remember vividly like someone fed it to you.\
Send them in. Send in the army of headless reptilian parasites. Allow them to suck the life out of every colorful entity within the room. Allow them to reap personal benefits in storms of egocentric winds off every fabric of life that breathes inside. Watch them strangle anything green and anything that grew from seeds. Witness the destruction of the psychedelically infused walls that keep the room linear, and shiver as the cold wind blows in from outside. Send them in right now. With scarred hands and eviscerated livers, they will smile coldly when they see it all falling down in front of their own lifeless eyes, and they will cackle with malicious glee when millions of generations of thoughts, images and words will all condense into a clot of nothingness.
But a TV screen shimmers outside their line of sight, but within the same room. It is now playing a slow, sad melancholy tune; a tune that cries of lost love. Something the creatures within the room will never be able to comprehend. They are unaware, as they stand in a circle, with their hunched backs, laughing away at the sight of nothingness around them - the reality of chaos. They are unaware as their backs are turned away from the television that is about to explode into a million little pieces.
A deafening explosion, and a whole ten minute bout of silence later, all that is left in the room is chaos.
Chaos creating chaos creating chaos.
The passage above is an analogy of the simplest truth that mankind always knew and will know till the day it call comes to a gracious end. Well, gracious in terms of the sheer magnitude of chaos that is bound to ensue. Chaos that leads to chaos. Which leads to chaos, which leads to...chaos.
It is a rather bizarre analogy, but you get the point.
Meet me at the equinox and sing me a lullaby. Put me to sleep at the inner edge of outer space where I can just crawl into a fetal position and watch as the black holes reveal their secrets to me in full blown technicolor. Give me a stringed instrument painted in black that blends with the interstellar darkness, that I can strum as I feel the breeze from a beach that I conjured up with my imagination, blow over my face, smoothening my wrinkles. Take me to your leader, and help me help him with helping me to rise up into cosmic ecstasy, beyond where the sand can dampen my hopes, beyond and above to where only my infancy has let me go to. Drive me somewhere infinitely awe inspiring, where the sheer beauty of the cosmic magnificence around me would overwhelm me so much, I'd be left reeling for eons to come. Triumph over me as I drown in my self loathing verses, pushing myself to a personal breaking point. As a wise old man once said impulsively, it's always beyond your abilities to watch nebulas bloom as the winds of astral knowledge weigh your eyelids down; it is as impossible to achieve as to divulge in your own deep thoughts, unpertrubed by interfering obstacles that would otherwise condemn the pleasant breeze to a harsh blizzard. Just let me feel the warmth for once. Liberate me from this madness.
In my infancy, all I saw was flashes of technicolor strewed across everything that seemed real. Brilliant arrays of vivid bright light then creeped in to my field of vision, letting me see beyond what the predestined haze of obliterated grayness let me see.
I am going nowhere.
My life is but an intensified chess game between the forces of good and evil; I chose my path solely because the dark auras of social stigma pushed me roughly across the borders of black and white lines of self actualization, into a universe where everything is just a matter of following the herd into the pits of raging fire.
I have ceased to think for myself. Brainwashed I am, by the millions of tiny atoms of media-infested force fields that stray deep into my minds, erasing my ability to conceive for myself.
Stranded I am, on this rock in the middle of a great raging ocean, driven by a furious urge to throw it all away and get swallowed by the depths of blue, never to be seen, never to be remembered again.
All my life has made no sound, except for the bells I hear on odd occasions, noticeably louder each time, signalling the end of our time. It is too late to fight off what has taken a cold grip on my life. It is too late to unburden myself of the chains that hold me down to the ground. I am being led into a void of nothingness.
It’s amazing, really, when your talent is appreciated. My newfound talent, of course, being photography, has become more of an obsession than anything now, and god knows it, it’s paying off.
There’s a moth resting on the terracotta wall. *click* There’s an old brown brick that’s jutting out on the wall. *click* There’s a pipe that’s leaking sewage water of the sludgiest kind. *click* There’s a rusted old candlestick. *click* There’s a once magnificent building that has lived its life in grandeur and now lies in ruins. *click* There’s the sky; she looks like she’s about to burst into flames. *click*
I find beauty in ruined figments of the past. Once grand buildings, now lying in dust. Rust. Dirt. Cracks on the wall. Dust. Ancient spider webs. Everything I see, I click a photograph of it my mind’s eye, and make sure I come back to the same spot with my camera and capture it in its entirety. Browns and greys, hues of pale yellow and desaturated red, monochromatic shades of faded light. It’s all a game of chess in my mind now.
To click or not to click.
*click*
I admit, the world is a beautiful place, but there are some things that go unnoticed by many. Those small, brilliant shards of nature’s big glass of wine. Those are the things I notice. And someone needs to put them on paper, to say the least. Putting visuals on paper, of course, involves photography.
I take my camera everywhere these days. The night, I must say, is the best time to take photographs. When there’s absolutely no one in sight. When there’s a dark beauty in everything you observe, when the lighting is just perfect to capture the most beautiful visuals ever. Taking walks on deserted alleys after midnight, and clicking away has become a routine activity now, wherever I go.
Trying not to close my eyes so soon. There's a cold breeze streaming from the vents that inscribe the tall and gritty brick walls that imprison me. As depressing as a bucket filled to the top with carcasses of fish, those dead eyes gazing blankly at the brink of extinction. The walls are cracking, the lightning shaped dents expanding at a pace the naked eye can not read. Life, as we know it, is ebbing away from every bare inch of ground under my cold feet. Gritty old kettles rattle in the lonely shed, clammy nuggets of snow coat the old wooden shed door as it hails as it's never hailed before. Green and yellow are things of the past, monochromed shades of brown and grey are all I can see. The ground now quakes, impending surges of a strange aura of dread envelops the surroundings. What is left of the sun, is a tiny dot of brilliant white light somewhere beyond the endless horizons of empty space. Now I stand inside the dingy, dully lit toolshed with a pickaxe in my bare arms. All love is lost. I am the last man standing. A miniscule fibre of flesh on my lower arm I scrape with the pickaxe. I am the last man standing. The last. 'Tis too cold. As I watch the depressing grey skies signal the marching drum beat of impending doom, as I watch our mighty earth being swallowed up by the throats of an unknown force that is hell bent upon destroying Infinity,
I pick up the pickaxe. And I bring it down upon my skull. Goodbye Earth.
And THAT is how I imagine the End Of The World to be.
The past few weeks have been more than amazing, and quite frankly, I was surprised it turned out to be so. Coming home for the first time after a long break of about half a year for my first ever university spring break, I thought, would turn out to be an uncomfortable gap of discomfited thoughts, filled with awkward silences, unintended pauses of a very gauche nature, and spaces of time when you wanted to sink into the earth under you and disappear.
But it was not. In contrast, it ended up in being a long and cheerful number of hours, days and weeks, filled with reminiscing about the good old times when we were young and free, filled to the top with nostalgic inner warmth. Weird as it may sound, friendships get cemented on stone, and bonds become stronger than ever before, when two people haven’t seen each other for a very long time. I finally came to realize the worth in metaphorical gold each person around me weighed; I believe that without them, my life would be an incomplete puzzle. People change as the sands of time get carried by the wind in soulful carpets of dust into the distant horizon; nameless faces appearing and disappearing into the sands. But the ones who do stay solid, well, those are the ones that you genuinely remember forever.
Nowhere else on earth can you feel as comfortable and completely satisfied as possible with lying on a couch, a novel lying open next to you turned to page 151, a half empty can of soda lying somewhere around the corners of your vision, some good old 70’s Brit Pop playing in the background, the warm sun shining mildly through the half closed drapes, and well, your mind at a comfortable state of peace and content. Flipping through your old notebooks filled with writing and designs and songs and everything else, looking through old letters from past flames, and smiling at how young and stupid you were back in the days; nothing ever feels as good.
Sue me, for sounding like I’m on the brink of turning into an old man when I’m just hardly even eighteen, but I tell you, a lot does change when you leave home for the first time in your life and come back to visit. Brings back old fond memories it does, fills you with a pleasant sickly sweet sense of nostalgic reminiscence it does, leaves you craving for the good old summers at home it does. But then, you come back to reality, and you sigh, and your heart fills with longing to relive those days again. Your first girlfriend. Your first break up. Your first lessons of life. Your first dawning self realizations about your true self. Your first ever encounters with the realities of life. Your first ever memories of feelings ranging from dreary depression to nirvana. Your first ever steps towards yourself. Good times.
And now, it’s time to leave, as I write this. A flight back to real life waits for me. I bear no regrets at the thought of going back; a different life with its own unique set of people awaits for me back there. But I tell you, the days you live at the place you call home, those days; you’ll never ever get them back. Time goes by way too fast. Fuck time and all its intricacies. Fuck you. Fuck everyone else too.
And, just for the sake of telling you this, I once wrote down on a piece of paper, a list of things to do, to erase out all the regrets I have ever had back home, by a series of apologies, showdowns, venting out of well concealed frustrations, sorting out misunderstandings and the sort. But now, I tear that piece of paper to shreds. And I write a new note on a fresh new piece of paper extracted not so economically from a random notebook:
“To whomsoever may concern, go fuck yourself.”
*Grins to himself*
Home, where my thought's escaping
Home, where my music's playing
Home, where my love lies waiting
Silently for me
The voices, the lights and the whispers, The knowing smile and the pretty face, That look in her almond eyes. Flitting through your dreams. Ever evasive. Dreams. Octane dreams. Knowing, deep inside, that it is all but a passing phase.
Nothing is real, The dreams tell me that every other night. All the images of BeingWantedAndWarmthAndBeingLoved, Mere manifestations of the ticking clock inside. Tick tock tick tock.
The unknown force driving you to Wait, Wait eternally for that significant other, A practical joke being played on you by that bastard puppeteer above you,
Those passing visuals you witness, Not of endless calamities, but of Fair maidens that come your way once in a wolf's cry, They get your mind racing, Turn your drained gully of a heart into a fucking waterfall, *Thud* Hammer. Heart beating like a Hammer. They turn your incisions and your scars, inside out.
And then they leave. Poof. Gone. *Thunderclap*
The impregnated black clouds seem to follow me as I walk back home, Back to the place, back to my sanctuary, Where all I do is waste away on visions of.....STOP.
Now,
Is it worth it, I ask myself. To kill that part of you to feel the lack of pain. To lose yourself in your mindless self-indulgent bouts of sunshine, on a rainy day, To paint a fake smile on your darned face, To waltz through broken cobbled boulevards, Walking Dead. To smoke a cig and blame it on infinite possibilites. To watch a broken twig bleed, To burst into flames to pardon those who broke you. To save the saddest songs for last. To try, just try. The answer lies in the skies, they said.
Fuck It All. I give up. My fall of grace, dust to ashes, ashes to dust, whateveryouwannacallit. I have had enough of reading this endless manuscript of Waiting; when will I ever find the last page?
When, goddamnit? Fuck.
And yet, And YET,
On those nights, Those silent nights, When the lights go out. When you turn around, and look into the eyes of the prettiest girl you'd ever seen. When all you do, is look out the window as she does, At the same cursed twinkles of Existence, the stars, And the stars tell you, Turn Back, Look at Her. And that unknown force, That points your eyes towards hers, And lets you see, That tiny diamond of a tear in the depths of that glimmering well, Her pretty face blurred by the moonshine, That flicker of a smile, sweetly worn.
Then DAMN it,
You change your mind. You realize, All hope is not gone.
He draws upon a shaky conclusion as he trembles to get his thoughts right,
A conclusion he does not love.
But one he remains firm on, as firm as the lone leader of a pack of wolves howling into the night, standing at the edge of a crevice so deep,depth deserved a new definition;
"Why is the world just a shallow earthen pot of half sun-baked black dahlias, rather than one filled with a bountiful bloom of a psychedelic display of colorsemanated by the brightest of the bright magnolias?
Why is it always a true story that when every man, woman or child you know,looks at you as if you had utteredsheerly the most blasphemous of blasphemousphrases ever to be phrased when you had indeed voiced out a mere fabric of your brilliantly complex nervetree of ground breaking thoughts?
Why is the population of the very planet You grew up on,just a mere mass army of monotonously idle media-driven group of single minded individuals, who daredto explore their vastly complex storehouses of unborn ideas only as much as blind armies of wounded men would, when they barely scraped the surfaces of hostile castles with their drawnswords erstwhile failing to realize the castles even existed?
Why is it virtually a sin to wander unto yourself and discover the true reason for your pitiful existence on this planet, while it is something worthy of applause on a grand scale when one carries out an act that just cements the ideology that every mind must follow a specified path into a dark void of linear oblivion when there are actually a countless number of roads you could take to actually explore your own mind and free yourself from the binding chains of Stigma?
Why is it Wrong to be random and spiral out of yourself to explore metaphysical depths untold of, while it is Right to be a typically traditional God fearing individualdrowned in theological lies driven into himlike nails by the hammers that the Elders in his Family possessed?
Why did the sacred art of Love involve two plastic souls pretending to the world that they were indeed One and the Sameby engaging in fake actsand speaking out mindlessly artificial phrases lacking in Heart, all the while massacring and mutating beyond comprehension,the true meaning of what the word Love actually represented? "
The answer would never come to him, he concluded.
Struck his heart like a poisoned arrow it did, that Change was not possible.
He would have to live on.
Live on.
Live on.
Live on, and yet not daring to Live as Living was meant to be Lived.
Not for one moment, daring to step out of the circle of fire drawn around him by the rest of the mindless souls marching on towards the End.
Not for one moment, daring to hope that someday, he might just find that one person to complete him and shine Light upon his thoughts.
Breathe.
Breathe.
Ah, the travesties of an unsatisfied incomplete man, he thought.
It was all part of the game of Life. No strings attached, but no spiral staircases into the unknown either.
* Soft music in the distance*
A discontent sigh of a man shaken by his own conclusions,
as he turns to a mirror and looks into his own eyes, thinking
'Maybe it is not meant to be.
Maybe I am not meant to reach out.
Maybe I am not meant to step beyond the invisible boundaries I couldn't cross.
Maybe I am meant to walk on an already trodden path towards a Dead End I would never see. And maybe, just maybe, my thoughts weren't meant to cross a Human mind. '
Put on your headphones and play these songs, bitches and motherfuckers.
1. All Time Low - Remembering Sunday 2. Sick Puppies - White Balloons 3. Raconteurs - Old Enough 4. Tool - Wings For Marie Part 2 5. Aranda - Whyyouwannabringmedown 6. Paramore - Brick by Boring Brick 7. All That Remains - Forever in your Hands 8. Rise Against - Whereabouts Unknown 9. The Almost - Drive There Now! 10. Senses Fail - Hair of the Dog 11. Black Tide - Shout 12. Porcupine Tree - Open Car 13. HellYeah - Alcohaulin' Ass 14. Escape the Fate - Something 15. JET - Shine On 16. Pearl Jam - Love Reign on Me 17. Drowning Pool - 37 Stitches 18. In Flames - Take This Life 19. Sevendust - Prodigal Son 20. Stereophonics - Dakota 21. Aqualung - Brighter Than Sunshine.
Imagine yourself as a rich pimp, rollin on the streets in a Benz, throwing your arrogancy around like you own the fuckin world, money bulging out of your every pocket, your eyes glazed with greed and lust.
This is Causeway Bay, ladies and gentlemen. The area in town dedicated to rich fucks and greedy motherfuckers. The most expensive set of stores in town.
I am putting up these pictures, coz I was damn fuckin' IMPRESSED by the beauty of the place, and also coz' tonight was a good night where-we-got-high-on-stuff-we-bought-in-Causeway-Bay.
