Moving forward ...

Here I am, on the aptly named Sunset Drive in Miami, feeling like it's getting dark. I just had my performance review and for the first time in 7 years, I received an average rating. In the recent past, the Good and Very Good ratings I've attained are deserved on the back of both high growth of the business both on the personal as well on the system front. This is therefore not unexpected. I did hope for better, on the back of stepping into a new global role. That said, I know I have yet to secure my seat at this high table. So, hope remains.

Walking around Sunset Place, a stereotypical American mall, with my performance appraisal still percolating in my mind, He reached out. A store under renovation had smartly pasted famous quotes in the covered windows. One that spoke directly to me was Helen Keller's "Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence". 

I was in Sunset Place primarily to visit the Barnes & Noble store there. I bought 19 items. A tote bag that snugly contained 17 vinyl records,  and a leather bound gilt edged King James Bible. The records are an ecelectic mix, as usual. From a couple of Beatles and MJ albums to folk classics of Neil Young and Van Morrison, Green Day's iconic Dookie, Journey's Greatest Hits, even a YoYo Ma orchestral record and one that simply called to me: Frank Sinatra sings out "Come Fly With Me".

The best revenge, Old Blue Eyes once said, is massive success. With that thought in mind, I am moving forward. 

Blowing my mind

There's a starman waiting in the sky
He'd like to come and meet us
But he thinks he'd blow our minds
There's a starman waiting in the sky
He's told us not to blow it
'Cause he knows it's all worthwhile

In the last quarter of 2016, I went on a shopping spree... for vinyl records. It was never a format of my time. The prevalent music medium was the 8-track (which played like a dream on my dad's old car), then the cassette tape (which I made many of my own mixes, including one that I gave D that won her heart :-)) and then the CD, followed by mp3 and the various assortement of digital music files. Vinyls were before my time. But good things don't die. They make a comeback. So from Barnes and Noble in Washington DC and Chicago to treasure hunting in Red Point in a Singapore warehouse and Retrophonic in Chinatown and of course a bunch of online orders, I easily tripled my initial collection (which were largely gifts from dad and my friend R).

So, many enjoyable weekends were spent n the basement listening to the smooth silky sounds that only a record can produce. And then I put on David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars...

If there ever was a transcendent moment in music this must be it. The lyrics and music envelopes one into an entirely new world: Mars?

“A cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest, and a queer threw up at the sight of that”

“Oh no, love! You’re not alone
You’re watching yourself, but you’re too unfair
You got your head all tangled up, but if I could only make you care,”

"Making love with his ego Ziggy sucked up into his mind
Like a leper messiah
When the kids had killed the man I had to break up the band."

Like Rubber Soul and Revolver, it changed my perception of music. This is a record I will go back to again and again.

And then there is the book. Vince Vaughn famously said that this was the last book he has ever read, and continues to re-read it. The book is Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. It takes a lot longer the read the book than to listen to Bowie's seminal record. But it is worth every minute. I am still working through it, to the detriment of my health. Often, some bedtime reading soothes me and ease my entry into deep sleep. (Although I must say listening to the rosary does it even better!).

Then a book like The Fountainhead comes along and I couldn't put it down. One page compels you to carry on into another and another. Until one has read all about Keating, Toohey, Wynand, Francon and Roark, it cannot be put down.

Photo credit: Decoechoes

This book caused me to break a rule I held dear. Because I love the words and the knowledge they embody, all neatly bounded in a book so much, I have never allowed a page to be deliberately dog-eared. But then there were simply too many profound pronouncements in this book that I couldn't store them in my mind. I had to mark out these pages, alas, with a fold on the corner of the page. Here are a dozen, and these are not even my favourite!

“I love you so much that nothing can matter to me - not even you...Only my love- not your answer. Not even your indifference”  

“I could die for you. But I couldn't, and wouldn't, live for you.”

“There’s nothing as significant as a human face. Nor as eloquent. We can never really know another person, except by our first glance at him. Because, in that glance, we know everything. Even though we’re not always wise enough to unravel the knowledge.”

“Self respect is something that can't be killed. The worst thing is to kill a man's pretense at it.”  

“Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. man had no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons,and to make weapons - a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and we have comes from a single attribute of man -the function of his reasoning mind.”

“Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.” 

“To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul - would you understand why that's much harder?”  

“Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received — hatred. The great creators — the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors — stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.”  

“But you see," said Roark quietly, "I have, let’s say, sixty years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I’ve chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I’m only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards—and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one.”  

“I don't wish to be the symbol of anything. I'm only myself.”
 

“Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea.”

“You have been the one encounter in my life that can never be repeated”I do hope I will continue to encounter more records and more books like these. Stuff that blows my mind!