Why I think Lana Del Rey is the most underrated artist

Posted on Leave a Comment

Yes, I am going to say it again. Lana Del Rey is the most underrated artist of the present time. She deserves so much more. Although it is very sad to see, today’s music is all about fake make-ups, auto tuned pitch, and increased average loudness. Modern pop music starts with profanity in lyrics and goes all the way up to complete nudity (I am not going to talk about Miley Cyrus!).

I am sure this sounds really dumb but Lana has changed the way I think about music and life. There is a deep artistic quintessence in her lyrics and she draws the impression from great artists like Elvis Presley and Nancy Sinatra. ‘Born to Die‘ is the only album that I heard for more than ten months continuously. When compared to Lana Del Rey, the other music is like a plant which grows only on the surface where as Lana Del Rey is the root that typically lies below.

It all started with ‘Video games‘. I was instantly impressed with the soft vocals and arresting beauty in her lyrics. Her voice is so unique, I searched for alternative artists approximately close to Lana’s uniqueness but I could not find any, except for Nancy Sinatra. I don’t really care if she auto corrects her voice, it is sensational and captivating. Her music is ready to be perceived in many ways. It can be cheerful but painful at the same time. Most people might feel her music a bit draggy but believe me when I say this: If you don’t like it initially, you don’t have to force it. Just forget about it. But, if it so happens that you like her style in the first run, then you will be addicted to her. Lana’s music is definitely not for everyone to appreciate.

One of the main criticisms of Lana Del Rey is that she can not sing on live. She’s not perfect, her songs are not reproducible on stage. When asked about the same, Lana once replied:

 I think like, the people who have been listening to my music for a little while know that I’m more of a writer and, like, a studio singer. So I think if you come to the show, you just come to hear the songs on the record that you might like.

Yes, she is courageous enough to accept that she can not sing live and writing excellent artistic lyrics is her main ambition. This is exactly what contemporary music is missing. Instead of concentrating on the artistic part of the music, modern pop music is all about reinventing the same old sounds with increased loudness and bad lyrics.

Lana’s attempt to bring up old singing styles from history and modernising them perfectly to current audience must be appreciated. We always want everything to be perfect, but sometimes being imperfect in some aspects isn’t that bad. I sincerely hope that she gets more attention, as she deserves it.

Of stars and fantasies

Posted on Leave a Comment

I have a fantasy. Whenever I gaze through dark sky, with little stars sparkling homogeneously, I would imagine myself on one of the millions and millions of planets in this universe, which rotates around one of the many stars , and when I think about such a beautiful harmony in our universe, I get a distinct naughty feeling that we are  so insignificant on that scale. What we do everyday, what we die for mean absolutely nothing. On such a scale, all our problems seems like nothing. Even if we can probe some part of such immense beauty, it would give us infinite satisfaction.

Walking through the streets, with a speed less than ten kilometres per hour, I am just one fractionally insignificant part, in such a huge, beautiful and adventurous universe. That drives me, and that encourages me to learn more about it. I am sure it does for everyone at least once in their life.

1392639436_d682d8856a_z
Infinitely many

I would then wonder why the constants of nature had adjusted themselves to such a precision, allowing us to breathe. I wonder how nature calculates and computes the seemingly complex mechanisms. I wonder what processor nature uses to calculate probabilities, draw patterns out of nowhere. Does it process in bits like we do? Is that processor digital like that of our processors? We are given a huge computing machine. Having no details about the hardware and software except for some occasional clues, how can we ever solve the puzzle?

I can’t stop there, and ask how we transformed from non-living atoms to living organisms. Where is this feeling that ‘I’ comes from? How can we ever know what is reality?

At one level, the complexity in nature is very bizarre and surprising but on another level, the laws governing them are very simple.  What does nature think about us, when we are trying to probe her own creation?

It baffles me that we have something that is absolutely wild. How far can we probe her? Can we ever get to know the real algorithm she uses? I would be very disappointed if turns out to be very simple!

Unanswered questions, and some of  the questions themselves were never asked. I feel great for the fact that we live in such a wonderful time, we have so many secrets to unravel about nature. Remember I told you this was a fantasy? Well, it ends here!

(This song really soothes my mind inside out.)

Life is fast like never before

Posted on Leave a Comment

I can exactly remember my childhood, my first real-house that I lived in, and the first real-friend that I had, I can still feel them. They had an ever lasting impression in my mind but I can’t seem to remember the events with the same intensity. As I started to grow older, things are never the same. I can still remember my last five years but very vaguely. They don’t seem to glow any spark in my mind.

I have a strange thought that life is fastening up every second.  I must be foolish to think something like that. Life is fast like never before, I might not be able to stop it.

I have always aspired to see life from a different perspective. May be, this feeling that life is more fast is one of the bi-products of my sanity. May be, this is something I have to live with because I chose to. That did not make sense to me. Is life really getting fast?

Memories from Past
Memories from Past

It might be possible that life is just as it is, and I might be ignoring the importance of incidents, as they seem to be redundant, like a Deja vu, a reflection that comes from deep inside that I’ve already experienced what I’m experiencing now.

Back to basics

I am not a psychologist, I don’t know how memory works. It makes sense to say that when I’m experiencing something for the second time, it is not as important as it was before. A second kiss is not as good as the first one, a second travel to the same place is not exciting any more, the same experience can never be better. My mind might have decided to ignore the second experience and only remember the first one. So, life is getting faster would mean that I am not experiencing anything new. Strange, but looks like truth..!

Whenever I did something adventurous, I feel it and I can still feel feeling it. My first pain, I can feel it now. My first success, I can still feel it. I just love feeling them. But, now, I can’t seem to find any pleasure in feeling any new things. Enough of feelings! 

Life is more enjoyable when it's slow
Life is more enjoyable when it’s slow

It didn’t take me long to realise that life is all about slowing it down. If you ever felt that life is fastening like never before, remove your seat belt and get out of that car. There is only one thing we can do to make it stop. Experience new people, explore something you’ve never done before and put yourself in completely unknown situations. That can knot your memories with greater importance so that you can feel life longer so that it feels like slowing down. Remember one thing though, life is all about slowing it down, getting out of the daily routine and doing something sickeningly exciting, within the lines of morality can make an ever lasting impression.

Simulating Physics with Computers- Feynman

Posted on 2 Comments

The beauty with Feynman is that anyone can read and understand what he was explaining. Feynman talked about ‘Simulating Physics with Computers‘ (What a modest title!) in a keynote and fortunately it’s now available as text. He talked about various problems in simulation of Physics with the help of computers and even introduced the fundamental concepts of ‘Quantum Information’. Apparently, it is a very interesting subject to me. More importantly, he speculated about some of the problems with Space time continuity.

Feynman

If you think about it, the fascinating question would be to ask ‘Is Space-Time ultimately discrete or continuous?’. That will not come under Physics, it is more of a philosophical question, so I am not going to worry about it.

The more interesting question will be to ask what could be a better description of the world. If I wanted to describe an electric field, I would have to rely on Maxwell’s equations, which are again continuous, defined at each point in space-time. To simulate such a theory, one would need to consider infinite set of points and evaluate field at each point. This is not possible in computing, so one is tempted to make the fields discrete in such a way that it would not violate the theories which we have now. So, the question now will be, if we can describe the world using continuous equations and simulate them using discrete variables, which is a more fundamental description?

Feynman answered this question splendidly, in answering a question, he says,

All these things suggest that it’s really true, somehow, that the physical world is representable in a discretized way, because every time you get into a bind like this, you discover that the experiment does just what’s necessary to escape the trouble that would come if the electric field went to zero, or you’d never be able to see a star beyond a certain distance, because the field would have gotten below the number of digits that your world can carry.

If we talk about discretizing.., of course I pointed out that we’re going to have to change the laws of physics. Because
the laws of physics as written now have, in the classical limit, a continuous variable everywhere, space and time.

Although this is not a topic to do research on, it became a more personal interest to me and I started reading some papers and to my surprise John Wheeler in his paper, ‘It from bit‘, essentially says that the world is discrete at the most fundamental level. He explains his reasons for believing so and these two papers are absolutely worth your time!

The secret to staying forever young

Posted on Leave a Comment

Have you ever  thought of staying forever young? Time is very mysterious, looks like another year is about to finish! I had a successful first year in my love for  Physics, I am blessed with a set of great friends, family and a good institute to learn Physics. But, the time is still running, I am getting older and obviously you are too. I have a mountain before me to climb, the mountain of just the basics in physics. Well, that’s me, but for you, the definition of success might be different. Aren’t you worried about years that are passing by? Why not stay young forever?

I don’t like ageing, but no one is exempted from it. It is just that eventually after a while, the cells in our body starts dying and this process malfunctions our body causing to the ultimate inevitable death. That’s ageing in a physical sense, but I don’t even like ageing as a mental state, I just don’t like it. Ultimately, everyone is supposed to die, it is unfortunately chaotic and unpredictable. Everything is meant to be broken, there will be ups and downs in life but that’s the way life is. I have to accept the reality, even if it is frightening.

The secret to staying forever young lies in your mind. You have to believe in yourself that you can do anything at any time. Age is just a number. Although it is true that most of the successful people started to gain attention right from the early stage of their life, it doesn’t rule out that you can do a degree or achieve anything after certain age. After all, the most disappointing thing in your life would be not to try something you love and fail.

For me, the increasing count in years represent a maturity and experience but not the ageing. It is important to stay young forever…well..uh…at least in mind? Don’t you think so? Be curious like a child and show the maturity in your behaviour from the experiences you had.  Don’t be disappointed just because you spent most of your life in unimportant things, find something you love, and start working on it. It so happened that I like writing very much and I just realised it. I know, I am a bad writer, but I am still working on it.  There is time to do everything, you just have to concentrate and work on it and don’t forget to stay young, at least in your mind!