In my experience, India is to funky smells what Paris is to perfume. Even up in the mountains, you get some sort of rank whiff. "What the fuck is that? There are no people around for miles!" I think so many people have lived in India for so long--farts have to go somewhere, you know.
Anyway, during the whole movie my memory was running its own version of John Waters' "Smell-o-vision." A trash heap, an outdoor shitter, a burning body...Not to say I didn't enjoy it, I did. But I'm a strictly first-world kind of guy (do they still use that phrase? I never could figure out where the "second" world was). I can't handle seeing the suffering though--I feel it. Starvation takes the fun out of room service.
India's problem can be summed up in two words: Kama Sutra. If they'd never written that bloody book--if they had a proper English view of marital relations (short, sharp, and with enough alcohol to prevent any memory of the event) there'd be about twenty-five millions in the whole country. It would be the Italy of Asia. But noooo...
You can't watch that movie without seeing yourself in the characters--which I suppose is the test of any good art, be it a movie, book, or pop song. Somewhere in the middle I was struck by a thought: if we were still doing concerts, I'd like to start and end them all by having the audience stand quietly and hold hands with each other--a bit like what the Catholics do, "Please Be With You." Touching is good; it's powerful. It'd be a way to remind everyone there that we're all One, to dissolve the artificial boundaries between us that cause all the trouble. And people would do it, if I told 'em to. We could've gotten them to do anything. "Okay, now all the chicks take off your shirts."
Of course, if we had them all touch, then one thing might lead to another as it often does, and soon the whole world would be Mumbai. So there you are.
Anyway, during the whole movie my memory was running its own version of John Waters' "Smell-o-vision." A trash heap, an outdoor shitter, a burning body...Not to say I didn't enjoy it, I did. But I'm a strictly first-world kind of guy (do they still use that phrase? I never could figure out where the "second" world was). I can't handle seeing the suffering though--I feel it. Starvation takes the fun out of room service.
India's problem can be summed up in two words: Kama Sutra. If they'd never written that bloody book--if they had a proper English view of marital relations (short, sharp, and with enough alcohol to prevent any memory of the event) there'd be about twenty-five millions in the whole country. It would be the Italy of Asia. But noooo...
You can't watch that movie without seeing yourself in the characters--which I suppose is the test of any good art, be it a movie, book, or pop song. Somewhere in the middle I was struck by a thought: if we were still doing concerts, I'd like to start and end them all by having the audience stand quietly and hold hands with each other--a bit like what the Catholics do, "Please Be With You." Touching is good; it's powerful. It'd be a way to remind everyone there that we're all One, to dissolve the artificial boundaries between us that cause all the trouble. And people would do it, if I told 'em to. We could've gotten them to do anything. "Okay, now all the chicks take off your shirts."
Of course, if we had them all touch, then one thing might lead to another as it often does, and soon the whole world would be Mumbai. So there you are.
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