First, pick a notation from the first column below. Then, pick a musical genre from the second column. Finally, pick at least one word from the third column. Now write a poem that takes inspiration from your musical genre and notation, and uses the word or words you picked from the third column.
I cannot say I completely followed the full instructions here. This was not because I did not want to follow the instructions. It was because it was not clear to me what it meant.
Picking up 3 things from 3 columns seemed simple enough. I did that. I picked literally go nuts, folk song, and centaur.
This time, instead of writing on thinkdeli where I have been writing for the past four days for GloPoWriMo, I wrote in my notebook. When I typed the poem into thinkdeli I rewrote it more concisely.
In the notebook, the poem was 13 lines long. I made it 12 lines long on thinkdeli. I did this without removing any content details.
I had to write two poems for the prompt given for Day 4 on the NaPoWriMo website. This is what the prompt is, in essence:
Last but not least, here’s today’s (optional) prompt. In her poem, “Living with a Painting,” Denise Levertov describes just that. And well, that’s a pretty universal experience, isn’t it? It’s the rare human structure – be it a bedroom, kitchen, dentist’s office, or classroom – that doesn’t have art on its walls, even if it’s only the photos on a calendar. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem about living with a piece of art.
I began to think about the poem seriously at about 9 p.m. The thinking was interrupted by dinner. I watched something on OTT and did not notice the time pass 11.30 p.m.
I typed my poem on thinkdeli. Then a voice came in my head.
“You think what I do is not art?”
I did think he does on our walls is art. I don’t quite know how I deciphered my son’s baby language but I wrote the second poem. Also, on thinkdeli.
I had this photograph on phone’s lock screen and wall paper. I had kept this on the phone in the end of 2024. I thought this photograph was taken early in the morning.
I imagined, waking up among this forest scene early in the morning. A little later, I would have missed it. A little earlier, I would have missed it. But the photographer, Arati Kumar Rao stayed up and took this photograph.
I wanted this photograph to wake me up early. This is the art I describe having lived with.
The second poem is about my son waking me up in the morning. Not at the time I could take a similar photograph that lives on my phone’s screen, but earlier than I would naturally have.
I live with this artist, and his art is all around me. In the many places I look.
This was the prompt given on the NaPoWriMo website:
And just as many songs do, the poem directly addresses a person or group – in this case, the Muses. Taking (Anne) Carson’s translation as an example, we challenge you to write a poem that directly addresses someone, and that includes a made-up word, an odd/unusual simile, a statement of “fact,” and something that seems out of place in time (like a Sonny & Cher song in a poem about a Greek myth).
I wanted to see a parallel in Indian poetry. I stumbled on an article of translations of medieval Indian poetry. There is one that I particularly liked:
svārthārambhapraṇataśirasāṃ pakṣapātāt surāṇāṃ dṛptātmānaṃ karajakuliśair dānavendraṃ nihantum | siṃhībhūtas tribhuvanaguruḥ so ‘pi nārāyaṇo ‘smin rāgadveṣapratihatamateḥ kasya na syāt paśutvam ||
Sūktimuktāvalī of Jalhaṇa 131.59
The author, Anand Venkatkrishnan, translates it as:
When the gods (to whom he was partial) started bowing to him to save their own heads, even Nārāyaṇa, the guru of all, turned into a lion to slay the proud demon-king with his pointy fingernails.
I mean, if you were so swayed by love and hate, you’d become an animal too.
Translation of Sūktimuktāvalī of Jalhaṇa 131.59, Anand Venkatkrishnan
A search for Sūktimuktāvalī shows that it is an anthology of poems commissioned by Jalhana. I looked up the original text and found it on the Internet Archive.
I tried to find more by the writer than the four articles he wrote for The Revealer. I found a Tumblr account in his author bio. However, he has not updated it since 2020. He seems to be currently at the Divinity School in the University of Chicago.
He has written a book on the Bhagvata Purana and about scholarly life in India. I like it’s opening lines:
We often talk about the life of the mind as if it were the mind that mattered, when it’s really the life.
Anand Venkatkrishnan, Love in the Time of Scholarship
The book is an open access publication made available online [PDF link] by the University of Chicago.
I realise now that this post has not been about the poetry I wrote about 45 minutes ago, giving it a lot of thought but not really satisfied with the output. Not yet.
In short, the poetry is about the story of the Nakshatras and the Moon. Modern science posits these asterisms at different points in space and time. I tried but have not been fully successful in adding all the suggestions in the prompt.
April is Global Poetry Writing month. The theme for the prompts this year is around cultural institutions. As the website says:
This year, our daily resources will take the form of online museum collections and exhibits. Hopefully, you’ll find these to be at least entertaining, and you may even be able to use some of what you see as inspiration for your poems – particularly given that our prompts this year will all be themed around music and art.
I am writing the poems as is on a platform called thinkdeli. Here, I want to provide a little more context.
The prompt for Day 1 is:
As with pretty much any discipline, music and art have their own vocabulary. Today, we challenge you to take inspiration from this glossary of musical terms, or this glossary of art terminology, and write a poem that uses a new-to-you word. For (imaginary) extra credit, work in a phrase from, or a reference to, the Florentine Codex.
I looked up the glossary of Carnatic music terms on Wikipedia. I learnt about something I missed learning in my Carnatic music education – Swarajathis. This became the basis of the poem.
I learnt swarams, geethams, and varnams.
But not swarajathis.
I seemed to have pranced over them,
Unknowingly.
I lived through boyhood, adulthood, and parenthood.
But not youth.
I seemed to have pranced over those years,
Knowingly.
I don’t know why I skipped learning swarajathis between geetham and varnam. After varnam, I went directly to learning keerthanams.
In my mind, I similarly skipped over youth. I was eager to get into adulthood as a child. Once I got there, though, I was eager to do many things I wanted to go back and do things I could have done in my youth. Like solo travelling, hiking, etc.
I’ve been keeping a Bullet Journal consistently since 2018. I followed Ryder Carroll’s Bullet Journal YouTube channel for learning how to keep one and new additions Ryder would make to the system.
A challenge with the analog system has been the about the ability to search analog notes for something specific I may be looking for. Another challenge has been the inability to embed multimedia from various sources.
On his channel, in a recent video, Ryder was answering a question posed to him on how he integrates a digital calendar into his workflow. He confessed that he uses a digital calendar but uses a Bullet Journal notebook as his source of truth. He further elaborates that he captures any task, event or note first in his notebook before transferring it to a digital tool he may use for the same purpose.
Tiago Forte recently launched an interview series following the launch of his book, Building A Second Brain. I’ve enjoyed watching this series because he captures people’s entire productivity system very well. One of his recent interviews is with Ryder Carroll.
Ryder has always been open about the fact that his process evolved. But, this video shows the extent up to which his process has evolved. Here, it did not seem to me that the Bullet Journal was as fundamental to his system as he seems to claim in the video above (the one about the digital calendar).
This left me disenchanted about what systems people share about their note-taking system online. It was silly on my part to believe what was shared. But, I assumed good-faith, that what they were sharing was the system they were following.
My Note Taking Journey
I was interested in note taking since about 2018 when the Bullet Journal gave me a framework to take notes. I was not deliberate with my note-taking till 2020. That is when I took Saurabh’s course on Notes for Growth Notetaking 101:
The next Notes For Growth session is on Sunday, 27th Sept @ 5PM (by @saurabh)
Agenda 1. Evolution of the "cult" of note-taking 2. Note-taking principles that work 3. Saurabh's process for taking notes 4. A system for you to take notes https://t.co/SHJKFijlzW
I think his announcement about this session in July 2020 is what helped me get on Roam Research early on, as one of it’s early adopters. It was this session that told me about Zettelkasten. It was at this session that I seriously followed Tiago Forte and Nat Eliason. But, it was also here that I started going into the world of note-taking. Roam Research, Notion, Obsidian, etc. Through it all, I’m happy that I kept my Bullet Journal.
I did not enjoy Notion because it was very structured for me. With Roam Research, I always worried that they would suddenly ask me to pay $15 a month that I would not be able to afford. With Obsidian, I wasn’t able to give it more time but I spend time browsing and enjoying other people’s note gardens. There are many more but I thought it was time to double down and settle for something.
Text-based Productivity System
I’ve reached plain-text for my productivity system. I use Notepad++ for my home productivity system management and OneNote for work productivity system management.
This blog post by Derek Sivers opened my mind to the possibility of a text based productivity system. Cal Newport wrote about it in 2009! When I posted it on Twitter, I got a reply from @tshrinivas which opened up many more possibilites:
I’ve now moved my bullet journal from dotted to square grid paper for my bullet journal. With text based tools, I’ve been more confident with portability and not afraid to capture my notes in email, Google Keep, chits, notes, etc. I am confident that I will move the most important of these into my text based productivity system.
On the cusp of November, I began writing again. The last time I wrote before this was for the SSLV launch in August. I did not write on the Bullet Journal instance either.
This blog post is to link to the various pieces of writing I have done at the cusp of November:
The Wire Science – When an LVM3 flies, what does it mean for India?
I wrote this piece for The Wire Science. It was published on October 30, 2022. In the article, I argue that while the LVM3 has proven reliability, it needs to sort out production issues and needs more support from the government.
Short Story – Return to Earth
I started writing this story in 2018 for National Novel Writing Month. It started as a pentalogy. I hoped to publish one novel as a part of each NaNoWriMo in the future. I then decided to cut it down to a trilogy. In 2021, I decided to cut it down further to a single novel. This story has haunted me and the only way I could think of something else for NaNoWriMo 2022 was to limit it to a short story.
Reflection/Shadow
It's all a play of light.
It's a reflection,
When it comes back at you.
It's a shadow,
When it's behind where you are.
A reflection let's you think about yourself.
Yourself, in terms of how you look,
Yourself, in terms of how you feel,
But, more importantly,
Reflection confirms what you feel about yourself.
A shadow tells us about ourselves,
Ourselves, in terms of what we fear,
Ourselves, in terms of what we don't expect.
But, more importantly,
Shadow tells us that fear is just a play of light.
Spices and Seasonings
She remembered a time,
When the food wasn't bland and dry,
It had spices and seasonings,
And accompaniments and fries.
She remembered a time,
When rain poured from the dark sky,
When children played in puddles,
Without a worry, nor wondering why.
Now the food was bland,
As spices were lost to a fire,
Neither were there seasonings,
Because there was no one to hire.
It was just her,
Alone on Earth,
Wondering if anyone would come to save her,
Or at least get her some spices and seasonings.
Parallel Spirals 