Dating New York this Christmas break!

Staycationing in New York this holiday break, I made it a fully non-work vacation (I deleted my office apps!). 


I visited the Whitney Museum, which has some very engaging destinations. 3 floors dedicated to Andy Wharhol! His numerous, diverse, huge paintings and installations are awe-inspiring. So very colorful, vibrant and contemporary. The Programmed section has both very soothing as well as exciting sections including algorithms on screens, moving images, etc. Some of them can be seen here.

I also got a chance to visit and study in the New York Public Library at Bryant Park, which was a serene experience. Liked the architecture and grandeur of the place, all tourists moving silently through it like 'Sleep no More' - nice immersive experience. I ended up studying for quite a bit about Kurt Vonnegut. What better than reading your favorite author in a nice library!



We also had our 1st date of 2019 and enjoyed the French-Italian cuisine (unlike me, I don't like trying new places so was scared), but ended up having a good lunch.




Wandered the chilly streets of New York with a cup of coffee, enjoyed looking through Bryant Park, I studied the architecture of old buildings, looked through at least 20 large Christmas trees in the city, each one differently vibrant from the other, read a few engaging books, which have been on my list for a while, listened to a lot of classical music & finished my list of pending documentaries, We enjoyed the ambiance of century-old preserved restaurants, I leveraged the solitude to think pure thoughts, wrote a few pieces (short-stories/book reviews), I reconnected with family members & friends regularly over calls and messages, experimented with cooking, exercised yoga.

Overall, a wonderful holiday break, soon coming to an end, wishing can imbibe some of these in regular life and not just vacations.

Kurt Vonnegut

This holiday season, I had the privilege of finally reading the book I have bought since a year, The Last Interview and other conversations with Kurt Vonnegut. It lays down his simple words and thinking with a lot of clarity. You can imagine him being right in front of you have a face to face conversation, from the true, sarcastic, funny voice he has. His simple excerpts are so powerful and lay a deep impact on one's thinking. A few listed here:

"I want a military funeral when I die, it will be a way of achieving what I have always wanted more than anything - something I could have had, if only I'd managed to get myself killed in the war - The unqualified approval of my community"

"We should send literary notices not to the English departments, but to the chemistry, zoology, anthropology, astronomy & physics departments, medical & law schools. That's where the writers are most likely to be"

"Are you willing to have a conversation with this woman for the next forty years? that's how you pick a wife"

'He has reached Nietzsche's melancholia of everything completed'

"Just because you have talent doesn't mean you have to do something with it"

"Practice an art, no matter how badly or how well you do it, it will make your soul grow, and not to become famous or rich. Have the experience of becoming"

"Just because there is no market for them doesn't mean you stop making them" (talking of any form of art)

"A writer's job is to use the time of a stranger such that he/she doesn't feel their time is wasted'

Such deep, wise truths in the simplest of articulations, being funny, serious & dreary at the same time. Loved his writing and made my day quite fresh. 

Will revisit his other books Breakfast of Champs and slaughter house 5, it's been too long.

Have a happy, healthy and fulfilling 2019 ahead.

'Sleep No More' in New York

Its our 4th wedding anniversary, and we saw 'Sleep no More', as Vartika had blocked tickets and wanted to see it since a long time.

It's a unique experience. You got to seek the characters, scenes, and the story yourself. No commentary, no prodding, no guideline, no sequence to help you. Initially surprising, you start to figure out what's going on. The acting is highly intense, rooms quite gloomy with dim lights and classical music playing, ghost masks on each audience member surrounding the actors. Created a haunted aura but not scary. It was psychologically intense, storing up emotions, shocks, pity, sadness, empathy, envy, lust and others on your mind. Whilst this is going on, you also need to run up and down the stairs (5 floors with hundreds of rooms) and seek where the actor is going next and who are they going to interact with. Some scenes when all of them come together - ballroom dance, dinner, orgy, blood bath is when all audience come together and you see crowd of ghosts staring at all actors and absorbing their mime and movements. The ruthless nature of murders and orgy, dry faces and evil looks, in your face nudity and sex scenes stir your mind quite a bit while creating a lasting impression. 

Working in Analytics and Visualization, this sense of Immersive Storytelling experience was something I could totally relate to. This is what I sell to clients go change the nature of Collaborative decision-making via group discussions, issue discovery, co-investigation and resolutions with your own understanding. Everyone in the audience can theoretically gain a different, new yet completely right insight through their own path.

Another exciting part was that if you stared into an actor's eyes, they would hold your hand and take you to a closed room alone where you experience their acting in person, alone and different. I saw 5 people in different scenes experiencing this. The last 2 were escorted at the end of the play go to bar on 2nd floor where they kissed passionately and left smiling.

I had gone into it without an iota of knowledge and hence it hit me very hard. People who had read or seen reviews before hand may not have been as surprised.

Quite different from the static, fixed play where someone is taking you through the play with a predefined commentary, scene sequence, practiced and times scenes and interactions.

It was a beautiful experience, such as life itself- while your paths are different and decided by you, the destination is something you can decide, and the journey itself will be the exciting artful experience that is most important irrespective of the outcome. Salud!