Alienation

About 6 months ago, I was invited to be the first ever guest on The Roger-And-Chakra Show to talk about Alienation. The chat morphed into a free flowing discussion about alienation, it’s causes, triggers and the reactive processes that kick in and many other things.

Please click the Episode Headers to listen to the show.

Chakra

Chakra and I share a past when we were both colleagues and kindred aliens at a computer company back in the mid-1980s in Kolkata. She came closest to figuring out what the hell I was talking about. In the episodes, you will hear more about our joint experiences of alienation.

Chakra now runs a service, helping people resolve their thoughts, sort out inconsistencies in their beliefs, and generally help with the mental peace we all crave. You can learn more about it here.

Chakra also writes about many things on her website, and I strongly urge you to check it out.

Roger

Roger is a musician, a singer in a metal band called The Unofficial Utopia. Nearly 30 years ago, metal wasn’t a genre available in the city. So there’s been an opening of tastes. Which is a good thing. He also has a day job, but we never got around to finding out more about him, because the discussion went off down all sorts of paths and, I do believe, Chakra and I monopolized it a bit, given that we hadn’t actually spoken to each other in 3 decades… Sorry Roger!

Now, that I think about it, I should have asked about the name of the band, because I have questions!! I think we’ll have to chat again soon!

Meanwhile, check out his work here!

1: Taking Flight

We chatted about the first sign of a feeling alienation. Chakra and I had a common trigger – Woodstock the movie.

There were some reminiscences. The story of Peterman was never finished, so you’ll have to wait for One Bluish Egg, to read it. The cat is another unfinished tale, but this you can read for the low, low price of nothing but your sanity and a mouse click right here.

You can read about my encounter with Michael Lang, architect of Woodstock, if you click this.

The opening song is called “The Airport Song” and was recorded by a band Magna Carta. The band toured India circa 1979. I found out about it and told everyone else. I was too poor to attend myself, but the other people did.

2: Going up the Country

This part of the chat was about art and how art feeds alienation, how art helps with alienation and how alienation can feed art.

Books can, and did, for me, create an alien world. There was no hope or expectation to connect with that world. You could simply read about it but never actually be in it. Art can allow us to escape and insulate ourselves from the noise around us. We discussed the need for insulation within the context of my experience growing up in an alien city.

The opening song, “Going up the country”, by Canned Heat, is one that has stayed in my consciousness from the time I saw the movie.

3: Long Time Gone

This episode covered a fair amount of ground. From my development, Chakra calls it evolution, I hesitate to term it that, from a quiet guy to the opinionated Grampa Grumps. We talked about finding onself, even as the university changed, despite the constraints of poor academic credentials

The work situation garnered a healthy discussion! We looked at instruments of change that were destined to change the world, but….

I came to the conclusion that I was simply trying to survive by using my skills at the English language to confuse, confound, convince people to pay me.

The song “Long Time Gone”, is by CSNY. It’s the first song playing in the background as the Woodstock movie opens.

4: I don’t know who I am, but life’s for learning

In the concluding part of the show we agreed that everyone has their issues. How successful we are at growing, boils down to support systems and coping mechanisms. In that context, we discussed learning methods and responses to them, harking back to personal profiles.

I reiterated that I really had no ambitions, like everyone seemed to have. Chakra opined that we were built for the future.

I’m not entirely convinced, but I like the idea of coming back from the future to bug all the people who bugged me!

The song “Woodstock” by Joni Mitchell was made famous by CSNY and Mathew and Southern Comfort.

Currently Final Words

Yes, we call crave mental peace. Some of us acknowledge it and some are unaware and some flat out deny it. But we do….

There were people wanting to see how I sound and look on camera (Me….). Now we know!

There were loads of technical difficulties as you would expect in a show spanning continents, but we did get through it.

At the end of the day, I do believe Chakra captured Joni’s sentiment perfectly.

“I don’t know who I am, but life is for learning”