HooksForBooks

Mean For Halloween / Inktober 2014

Earlier this month when I started noticing #inktober on my feed, I was also very cranky in general. One day, post a shower I sat down to get it out of my system using some black ink and this happened.

Which led me to want to extend this into a series, and I started the #MeanForHalloween portrait series on my facebook page, where you can request quick ink portraits that display you flaunting that mean streak you so carefully keep under the covers. I also started getting requests by people to draw their  friends, and that sounded like an even better idea- be mean for halloween and scare your friends with horrible portraits of themselves!

So far, I've been spending about a maximum of 20-30 minutes on each portrait ( working on this series alongside  few client projects) and at times, its been TERRIFYING because I'm mostly really embarrassed of my lack of consistency in style/accuracy and the fact that I'd HAVE to post once its done- without fail.But since I started it just to have fun with it, I'm not being too hard on myself and just putting it out there.

 I'm still taking in requests, so no matter who or where you are, whether you celebrate halloween , whether you're feeling mean , have friends to make me draw - you could contribute by volunteering for a portrait and let me figure out the rest. Or, if you like it, share it! It'll be really encouraging.

Check out the pieces from the series so far:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1532710353612319.1073741834.1436046033278752&type=1&l=35b35f125c

How about it?

'Thought we were due for a change or two around this place

When they get back, they're all mixed up with no one to stay with.'

Today I woke up in the middle of my dream while I continued sleeping. I only remember it now because the feeling came back to me about two hours after I was officially awake- like a phone call from a recently visited spa- but that never happens. Spas never really call you to say 'Hello, I remember you and that's all I have to say'. Although  I've never really been to one, so I have no idea either way. Recently, a friend of a friend happened to offer me a discount coupon which offers a 400 rupee discount on some serious spa business. This is true. And probably a good thing.

I have no memory of what was going on before, or what transpired after this moment which comes back in vague traces of remembrance, but I remember the moment- suddenly wide awake and aware that this is important. For some inexplicable reason, this is significant and it will choke you but not really. You only think it will choke you but its probably just turning into a turtleneck, for winter is coming. I took a step outside the building entrance- the momentum of a hurried sprint down the stairs featuring prominently in my mindbody.Eager for something, nobody knows what, but there I was- 11, restricted, with that moment as the only exemption from my physiological bondage - a leap of faith. An overused phrase I'd never have recognised as a part of my own vocabulary, but was ingrained in my brain as that step out of the building every evening, at least most- somewhere inside a vertical stretch of downward sloping land called the officers' quarter for Indian Oil, Siliguri.

I would be lying if I said I remember exactly which way the threshold sloped. But I saw it then and that was it, the cracks exactly where they'd been years ago.What I recall now is more or less just the feeling of being midair during the calculated leap across the little slope that would help me land exactly across from where I was a moment ago. The foot hitting the concrete, the image of the footwear- both lost.

Today I bought new shoes. I'd show you but I don't think it matters anymore. I wish it still did. One pair is bright red.

Is it pulling in?

HEY GUYS

Check out my facebook page, subscribe for pretty things- art, photography, postcards and some other merchandise too in a few months! I hope to update it soon with all kinds of obscenities from my sketchbooks to begin with. 

Watch this space, and that. :)

The only reason I have ever been able to successfully stay up at night has been to write. This is true.
I have tried many times, I really have- for the sake of the college degree that cost my father most his life's earnings, for the sake of the love that deserves my attention, the sake of art, self respect or conversation, for the sake of my friends who need to be wished on the day I finally remember to wish them, for the sake of my nostrils (and other orifices) that would, in the event that I lose conscious wakefulness,be vulnerable to ingression by the three tiny cockroaches still alive in the room- but never, ever have I not succumbed to slumber if not for that one reason.

Why is that? Why haven't I noted this before? Will having noted this NOW change anything? I'm quite fucking curious and I wish my favourite poet adds me on facebook because there is absolutely nowhere else that she would show herself and I have absolutely no money to buy her books so I'll have to do with sparse appearances by her spirit wherever possible, and apparently that's only facebook.

My ability to digress impresses me greatly, but again, did I really digress at all?
Hm.

I wrote a song.

Saturday morning, have no fear
We've got a whole round around the sphere.
We're spinning fast and we're running late-
Wish I could drown but there's no time to waste

Saturday morning

You should be truthful to you my dear
This ain't no time to make you disappear
So you pull down your socks, you pick up your shoes
and I look for myself until we lose this
saturday morning

And suddenly, it was saturday morning yesterday

Maybe the distance is not very far,
Maybe we're stuck just wherever we are.
But baby we should make our move before the sun beats down again

Saturday morning, every saturday morning.

It's saturday morning, and I'm right here
We missed a whole week, oh wait- it's been a year
No treasures to mark and no sailors aboard
Tied to the ground that's been grave to a hoard of
saturday mornings, and I have been
silently mourning over and over and over again.

But this is the moment I claim as mine now.

I bury the anchor- and I take a bow.
Let's say you're the water- I just don't need to float,
swim, sail or drown- I'll just take the road to me
this saturday morning

and fuck the morning yesterday was

This is the difference- closed and ajar,
Guess I was stuck while you drifted apart.
So babe I had to make my move before the earth spun around again


I am done mourning every Saturday morning.
Here's to Saturday mornings.

I dont know if this makes sense now, but

don't bury no shovel, just pick up the plow

Nothing bothers me more than my lost appetite for myself. It almost gives me the strange impulse to change the content in my about me page but I'm really not sure if that is going to be any help at all.

Days like these, I'd gladly be salad with no dressing and not complain about the blandness in my brain if that's what it takes to keep you healthy. Seems like I have priorities after all, eh?
Healthy.