A Freedom So Priceless Yet Free

i was reading through this story on the NSA surveillance http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/obama-calls-constraints-nsa-surveillance-article-1.1582758 on phone data that got me thinking…Over the past few days,weeks,months, I’ve been digging deep in my head,trying to understand the internet and how it causes loss of self, individuality and identity. Frankly I’m not sure I’ve figured it out yet but i think it has got something to do with privacy.

Privacy,to put simply,is that need to shield oneself from the world,that desperate need walk into a lavatory and turn down the ‘engaged’ knob so you can sit back & reflect with the power to shoo off anyone who knocks at your toilet door. Notice the word power in my description above?? Yes Privacy gives you that, in addition to a sense of freedom. In a nutshell, you cant have self reflection,power and freedom if you don’t have privacy,thinking becomes impossible and creativity withers with it.

How does the internet kill all this?? Well it is obvious the first thing that comes to mind,to any mind is social media and the constant need to log all our data and personal information onto the web.One of the scariest realisations I have ever come to is that once you put something online,it is nolonger yours,like this blog,you have no power over it anymore. It could be pasted onto another digital device way across the world in a blink and you would do nothing about it. The mere thought that someone else can control your actions is eye-popping enough. We live in a world (mediasphere) where we are required,(or to say it as it is),forced & obliged to log our birthdays,email and home address,contact information onto web pages. I use the word ‘forced’ because almost all corporate organisations and career opportunities now require you to have a certain degree of social presence to earn a living. This not only exposes us to fraudsters and con people but also makes us vulnerable to a mental prison,a loss of freedom..how does freedom and privacy relate you may ask.. Take an example of a maximum security inmate at say Guatanamo bay,he is constantly being watched,monitored and basically puppeted. On self reflection ( call it introspection), i have a personal example. Over the past 6 months or so I haven’t been able to sit down and blog for even 5 minutes, simply because I’ve been surrounded by so much activity, too many people in my personal space, too many people to try and get away from, too many people to allow me think,I needed some sort of space bubble to climb into and think straight ( I am now on holiday by the way 🙂 ) and i think the change is evident. Creativity doesn’t stand a chance in an environment where your mind is constantly trying to keep out noise,distractions and hatred. Finally on the element of freedom,it is assumed that our political system is a democratic one. I’m quite Apolitical but honestly believe my country is thus far. In a democracy, power is of the people and if this is taken away we plunge into a state of military. If the gorvernment (insert friend’s name) is watching and monitoring (which it is) everything we do online and we get hunted down for making wrongful criticism,we lose that power. But of course we give them (gov’t) all that power when we keep checking in on Foursquare,tweeting our nansense activities,facebooking our supposed-to-be-private pictures,we lose that control over our own lives,we forget that we have to turn off that gadget sometimes and go greet the neighbour, we are so deeply engrossed in trying to keep up & accommodate non-face-to-face relationships that we forget and lose our identities..take for example you met that online chat friend of yours after months of talking,you will more often than not refer to them by their social network name,it will even sound weird reffering to them by their birth name (identity lost)…we have built date-relationships online but it is always a heart break disappointment when 3 months into your love life you realise you two were better online when all each of you do is still try to talk VIA CHAT!!! We nolonger have power over anything real life and i know Jesus weeps for his flock.

Anyway,liberally thinking, it cant be all negative though,the global village is rising exponentially and in the near future or actually in this future,the fastest way to get your business up and away is by social network marketing and presence. You would be a fool not to join the band wagon. It is however imperatif that more than once in a while you unplug yourself and enjoy the real life’s little pleasures,feel the power surge back into your mind and take time to reflect and meditate on your life,embrace the beauty of a freedom so priceless yet free!!

Mozart AFK

Weekly Photo Challenge

Me and my Vacation buddies…worth a thousand words

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Behold thee!!!

You have picked me out.
Through a distant shot of a building burning
you have noticed now
that a white cotton shirt is twirling, turning.
In fact I am waving, waving.
Small in the clouds, but waving, waving.
Does anyone see a
soul worth saving? – Extract from ‘out of the blue’ by Simon Armitage

You probably read that little poem up there totally wrong,here is why…
Over the years,way back from primary school,I hated poetry,all those incoherent sentences in twisted meanings and complicated terms just didn’t get me.That explains why I always failed in poem-writing class,I just didn’t see why someone had to make a simple sentence sooo twisted. However,many many years later,to be precise 3 years ago,I met @bluepetal who turned out to become a really good friend of mine,she introduced me to poetry when she took me to one of the great annual poetry sessions around kampala town and ooh my God that stuff was superb,the way the poets expressed the words made me deeply infatuated with poetry and I never missed a session thereafter.
One thing caught the attention of my bad side though,I noticed that everyone who came onto the stage had a plastic accent,and by plastic I mean artificial,and by artificial I mean foreign,and by foregin I mean forged and fake. Somehow,everyone seemed to have jumped out of a HarryPotter or Game of thrones movie cast.It felt like I was watching Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley) recite a poem with his strong native british accent. Now let’s be clear,none of the people I saw on that stage looked british and what are the odds that they all spent their early childhoods in a british pre-school on the streets of London?? Very minimal indeed..
So my question is,do we have to have british accents to be good poets in kampala? Is that why I can never be a good poet? Cause my accent is native ugandan,deep from the abyss of Masaka. And where do we go to subscribe for this british accent class??
Well now that you know what you have to do,re-read that Simon Armitage Extract. It makes a lot more sense in an accent… Amazing!!!!!!!!!… Hope to catch you at the next poetry session gavnarrr

Mozart AFK

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The Dark ‘gnite

That title won’t make sense till atleast a paragraph later so here goes…
My nickname or let’s say most of my closer friends refer to me as ‘mozart’ the legendary composer and musician,a child prodigy. You can find lots of his music as movie scores or behind a lot of radio jingles but here is the story; I got this nickname back in highschool when I used to play quite a lot of piano and also was able to read staff notation (those golf-like signs drawn on classical music sheets). So one musical night,a good samaritan baptised me with such a great’s name and all through till university,am a ‘mozart’. Now I need to clarify that I am NO WHERE close to being like Amadues Wolfgang but I like it,and that explains why at the end of each of my blogs,I add the signature *mozart AFK* which means “mozart Away From Keyboard” and I guess I wouldn’t mind being called so till the days of my grave.
But,there is one aspect in which I think I am as close to The Mozart as possible. When you watch his biography movie, ‘Amadeus’,he is depicted as a nocturnal composer. Most of his compositions were made in the dead of the night when all was quiet and mellow and of late I have come to realise that I am getting nocturnal too. Late night I find myself sitting up thinkin up random melodies and more recently writing blogs under the black skies.Yes most of my blog entries and added at 2am,3am. At such odd hours,I find myself hyper-active and I feel my mind fully ignited.I feel like > The Dark ‘gnite < *if you get what am saying*
However,last night I found myself very unusually tired and cranky so I just bundled myself onto my bed with a mental note to get up at 3am and post my entry but that turned out a failed venture and for the whole day today I had failed to put my mind together into a blog till now (Time stamp: 18:30hours),sitted at my favourite bar ordering a cold beer and the usual pound of pork flesh,hope to catch you later in the night… Auf Wiedersehen

Mozart AFK

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Posted via WordPress for BlackBerry.

Adrenaline pumps

I find,we all find the brain an amazing phenomenon of the human body,and yes I use the word ‘phenomenon’ purposely,the way the brain thinks about its own troubles,solves those troubles and gets itself out of trouble.Think of it as that time when you see something scary like a makeupless ghost of your ex-girlfriend and suddenly get that out-of-the-blue gush of energy to sprint off way past Justin Gatlin (We all know his latest IAAF achievement right?? Congs Gatlin),that rush of adrenaline that makes your brain master all the energy to get you into flight mode.It is just the brain playing tricks on you.
I love to play my own tricks too, sometimes on my own self,say I have a class test or a life threatening deadline coming up,I brush off all early attempts to get the work done and wait for the eve of the deadline to get into a sweaty frenzy to have it all done in the shortest time possible. 9 out of 10 times I end up regretting half way the job but then I realise how high and almost perfectly numbered my IQ gets and how fast my RAM can go and I love it. So this time round,I decided to play it on my friends.
For about two weeks now,we’ve had this pending class group project needing a written proposal by the end of next week but somehow,out of a group of eight chillax-loving college students,all we have is a mental list of how many movies and series and beers we’ve watered down every single day so I decided someone’s got to fix this asap. I made up a fake appointment with some influential project funder and told these good-fellaz am scheduled for 8am in the morning for a take-it-or-leave-it meeting in which Mr. “money bags” will need to see how much work we have so far.
Now I felt a little guilty and sad cause I too had to get into this last-minute frenzy but you should have seen the sleep wash out of their eyes like white wash,it was a hilariously sorry sight!
So as I sit here writing this blog on my hand-held with one hand while simultaneously typing out the project proposal on the laptop with the other hand,I know my IQ can’t get better than this and I know I will have a lot of angry faces to calm down in the morning when I finally tell them their 3am bed times were all on a prank to get their adrenaline pumps into use…But hey,it was all for the better good,a man’s gatta do what a man’s gatta do!!!
*time check: 2.25am*

Mozart AFK

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10,000 Hours

Adolescence is such a trying time.Besides going through all these hormonal bodily changes,you have to struggle with acceptance and getting onto the social peer high ground.It is a messy pile of nonsense.
One of the most important things in adolescence though is the need to discover yourself,the need to find out who you are from within,nurture this inner self and make use of it when you finally officially crossover into the pains of adulthood.It is a period where you in most cases have to determine the architect design of your future. If this is passed without discovering that inner self,chances are you might get fixated,have a mid-life crisis or miserably die trying. These niches could be sport,music,people skills,money making or any newly unearthed talent strong enough to create that sense of uniqueness.
Am glad I think I found mine.Not to say that I have just discovered it (cause I believe am way passed adolescence),it now just clearly occurs to me that I successfully managed to discover myself,that I didn’t sail through high school agony wastefully.
Yes,everytime I sit infront of black and white keys,I feel myself raised and full of power,I feel like I can say everything I never said and still can’t say in words in just 12 Keys,I feel a sudden rush of blood and joy and find it hard to contain it… I Love my Piano…
I still have a long way to go and that’s what drives me,I am what Brian Carlbertsen or Arlington Jones would call ‘amateur’ cause I’m yet to touch my 10,000hours. Infact I aint even done with the 1st hour. 10,000hours stand between me and prodigy and I ought to start already. 10,000hours of intense practice and dedication,atleast that’s what we are told. It takes time to be good at what you do and it is so damn hard to make it work,most times you fail and barely fight the urge to drop it and move away,but a wise man once said; it is a blessing to have a rough start!
So as I sit down at this piano tonight on this cold june night,I have a big white smile on my face cause I know my 10,000 start with one black and one white key…

Mozart AFK

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Posted via WordPress for BlackBerry.

Keep Scrolling

We love to see new things,human nature dictates that we are always in a state of hunger for better,faster,stronger and shall always be like that to the end of time.When Eve ate the forbidden fruit,she was probably looking for a new experience out of curiosity maybe and that got us kicked out of Eden. Fortunately,this instinct has successfully pushed the race through evolution and survival.We have all sorts of amazing innovations designed to make life more fun,but who is to create these ideas and who is to prototype them???
We do have the kind of people who want to have a goodlife but don’t want to work for it,the same kind of people who want money but don’t want to get jobs,the same people who want fun but make no effort to create it. My favourite example are the social networks particularly facebook and twitter. These are platforms created to share ideas and have fun doing it though it gets so grossly absorbing we end up illusively feeling like our real identity is in some virtual cyber space probably being hacked into, we realise our mistake late then get into defence mechanism (don’t trust my psycho-analysis so much though) to try and take it all back,we eventually stop adding value to ideas and simply choose to stare at what is there,in the end we want what we initially had but can’t have it cause no one wants to put it out there,we simply become “Timeline scrollers” #TLScrollers. Days,weeks,months pass by and nothing exciting and new seems to come up cause of withdrawal and before we know it,a social network is branded fake and boring. That is exactly what I think happened to facebook and is quickly infecting the feathery veins of twitter too. Let’s not pretend we don’t know facebook is on a downward spiral,and twitter is following suit soon,all in the hands of #TLScrollers,the type of people who want to fire up their laptops,continuosly check their timelines,make silent criticisms,complain of ‘nothing new’,and do nothing about it.
If you want to have a captivating online experience,you need to be as captivating and interactive as possible,we are in an era where web content is created by the common man in the comfort of his home,no more dependence on a few goons in media houses for debatable information.
So the fall of the social platform empire shouldn’t be blamed on the UI or OS creators but on the end-user,that little man with a smartphone who simply keeps scrolling through their timeline…

mozart AFK

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In Your Dreams

On a warm fuzzy sunday morning,tired from the mind-blowing physical activities of the night before,I struggle out of bed and lazily draw the curtains with a growling yawn letting in the bright light of the beautiful sunday skies,so bright it stings my eyes.I look out the window,jolly worship songs playing at the neighbour’s and it suddenly hits me that it’s the day to go give sacrifices of holy lamb,so I rush,slide on whatever rags I have in the closet and shut the door behind me.
As I walk,I see this rare deadly creature that makes me freeze,sucks the holy breath out of me and gets my adrenaline shooting,so rare it makes my spine tingle.I stop and stare,look away quickly then take a second look,torn between walking fast ahead and avoid any danger,wait and let it pass so I can crawl behind it,or simply go ahead trust my curiosity and touch it maybe whisper soft incantations of awe. Just like any other lover of nature would,I choose to stay back and crawl behind it,instinctively pull out my smartphone to capture the moment and well stare and mark out all its features in my head…Part of me keeps saying “this opportunity comes once in a life time,nature offers this to you now”,the other says “get over yourself and get to church,besides it will reject and sting you.”but I choose to stay back and lustfully stare
I will later come to realise that the second little voice in my head is what people normally call “being slow”,probably out of self defence,the creature suddenly runs way ahead of me and hides in a hole,am left staring in the blank,10 minutes wasted,10 minutes which would have changed my life,10 minutes in which all I had to do was to walk up to this rare deadly gorgeous looking lady and say hi,maybe go for a drink,maybe become friends,maybe get closer,maybe make a toast on our wedding,maybe make a family,maybe live forever,she runs off and am left staring in the blank,regretting why I was that slow,probably cause of my natural fear of rejection,I think about it and slowly start to believe in Love At First Sight but then again,almost immediately,I realise that’s just stupid,what exactly was I loving?? All I did was oogle and drool at the shapely everything,maybe have a surge of blood down south and wish I could spank that,clearly that is genuine lust,there is NO such thing as Love At First Sight,it’s a myth created by fairy tale writers and believers.
And so with that,I walk away with the satisfaction that it was just a brief curable surge of hormones….Speak of slow guys’ consolations!
*Runs off to church*

Mozart AFK

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Diseased Society

The last time i was active on my wordpress website was about 2 months back,probably been busy wasting time but also slowly trying to perfect the musician part of my body system,I have a few intentions for a corporate music career,nothing big. Lately I’ve been hard to reach,I’ve been secluded from the world either due to my struggle in trying to become something in this world or due to the fact that my smartphone gave me a painful farewell,i prefer to think the former,smartphones keep us connected 24/7,with the push email,whatsapp,and various IMs or simply doing office work like they were meant to.it would be unfair for me not to acknowledge their role in helping us make friends,find lovers,get married maybe,but this past period when i had to make do with a ‘dumb phone’ has made me confirm the obvious truth that they actually make us unsocial,in the struggle to be on social networks and be friendly,one indirectly becomes blinded of their own life,the more cyber you get,the less physically social you become,i call it ”The SmartPhone Disease” 

   When you become friends with a party animal in club it would be fruitless for you to think that you can successfully convert them into a docile introvert,they say once an animal always an animal.Same thing happens online,if you become friends because of your common binding social network addiction,your friendship will have to remain online based for it to work. Thats why you go for a date with this ‘cyber’ catch and for most part of the date,instead of physically talking and eating,you are both replying to tweets,beeps,flirting with your exes and probably texting eachother via IM across the table 🙂 lool (btw it gets annoying when its just one party doing it)

   A tweep friend of mine once referred to it as ”The Unsocial Network” and at first i thought it to be a silly conclusion but now i know better.It’s more like being in a room with someone but when each of you is in another with 3 different people *think about that logic*. I also dont understand people who just wont turn off their phones or silence them in a meeting,at a date,class,church service,clearly smartphones make people dumb,read as ”smartphone dumb people”….

  Guess the best lessons are learnt the hard way,the next time i lay my hands on one of those high-end smartphones,i will know better not to text other people about how boring the person am hanging with is or text my side-dish to come over right after am done with my wife…

 

Life is wonderrful

   Feelings are for real but are exaggerated in movies. Shakespeare and his contemporaries did a good job illustrating it in their works of art,of course the writers of today (our contemporaries) are also doing great.Telenovelas (I half expected Spell-check to tell me it wasn’t a real word) have unfortunately killed it with their idealistic perceptions of life… Life and feelings are inseparable,if you can’t feel,you aint alive,you are just a zombie.

When i speak ‘feelings’, lets admit,the first thing that runs through your mind is love… well its the first thing that ran through my mind as well,but,there are plenty more feelings,there is pain,excitement,anger,anxiety, and Butterflies in the stomach. Of course all those above listed feelings and more can be linked somehow and quite strangely to love but no let’s not digress,let’s stick to how wonderful life is.

Take just 5 seconds and look away from this screen…look at the people around you,look at the way they breathe and smile and talk. Focus on one person and zoom in on one part of their body,maybe the face. Don’t you just wonder why God created someone like that?? isn’t it amazing that there is some invisible thing called ”air” that keeps entering our nostrils and is the only thing keeping us alive?? This invisible thing is the only reason you can smile ( trust me you cant smile if you are suffocating..try it). Isn’t it amazing that you have that special person in your life who you think you cherish?? Isn’t it amazing that you can listen to music,dance,party,booze,eat and still want more the next day?? its all one big movie that only comes to an end when you die *moment of silence for you*

One of my best movies of all time are Tobin Bell’s ‘Saw’ movies.The blood and the horror scenes are truthfully extreme but the ‘games’ he plays on life-unappreciating people are good lessons (for lack of a better phrase). You wont appreciate life until your will to live is tested through physical and psychological torture. In fact I would gladly be his acquaintance 🙂 jk….For more on this,you need to get yourself a copy of any of the movies,I recommend SAW II…

So when you get out of bed each morning,love it as it comes,feel the new day,feel the fresh breath of air,feel the life in you,feel that breakfast on your plate and feel those feelings,don’t hold them back because anyway,Life is indeed a wonderful gift… And so for today folks,I leave you with the lyrics to one of the songs always on my repeat playlist >>> Life is wonderful by Jason Mraz;

It takes a crane to build a crane
It takes two floors to make a story
It takes an egg to make a hen
It takes a hen to make an egg
There is no end to what I’m saying

It takes a thought to make a word
And it takes some words to make an action
It takes some work to make it work
It takes some good to make it hurt
It takes some bad for satisfaction

La la la la la la la life is wonderful
Ah la la la la la la life goes full circle
Ah la la la la la la life is wonderful
Al la la la la

It takes a night to make it dawn
And it takes a day to make you yawn brother
And it takes some old to make you young
It takes some cold to know the sun
It takes the one to have the other

And it takes no time to fall in love
But it takes you years to know what love is
It takes some fears to make you trust
It takes those tears to make it rust
It takes the dust to have it polished

Ha la la la la la la life is wonderful
Ah la la la la la la life goes full circle
Ah la la la la la la life is so full of
Ah la la la la la la life is so rough
Ah la la la la la la life is wonderful
Ah la la la la la la life goes full circle
Ah la la la la la la life is our love
Ah la la la la la

It takes some silence to make sound
It takes a loss before you found it
And it takes a road to go nowhere
It takes a toll to make you care
It takes a hole to make a mountain

Ah la la la la la la life is wonderful
Ah la la la la la la life goes full circle
Ha la la la la la life is wonderful
Ha la la la la la life is meaningful
Ha la la la la la life is wonderful
Ha la la la la la life it is…so… wonderful
It is so meaningful
It is so wonderful
It is meaningful
It is wonderful
It is meaningful
It goes full circle
Wonderful
Meaningful
Full circle
Wonderful