Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

Good reason to get back to my corner: I need concentration and motivation and I need them seriously. I live in an environment filled with negative energy, filled with stories of failure. People strive but they are never rewarded what they deserve.
There are lots of things to complain about. But I won't. This is my good corner and I want to keep it clean, happy and motivating as it was before. So here we go again:

Last week a good friend sent me a link to the excerpt of an Oprah show, introducing Randy Pausch. And good things come to you when you are in need. You just have to be cautious to grab the right thing. And I did. I downloaded the full stroy, and I gained my nearly lost hope and courage again.

Randy is a Carnegie Melon computer science professor. He is 47 and suffers from liver cancer and doctors say that he's going to die in a few months. He prepares his last lecture in the university and gives invaluable, enchanting, memorable and impressive lessons to the audience. Watch for yourself:

Acoustic Simple Pleasures

1. JOJO /kho-kho/, that's how Spaniards represent evil laughter. I'm happy that I can pronounce that /kh/ sound. Regarding to this page at least 309 million English speaking people in the world can't pronounce it!

2. Hugo Weaving in V for Vendetta wore a mask in the whole movie, he made a revolution with his sonorous voice in the movie, and made me remember his conversation with Neo, in The Matrix, forever:

...In one life, you're Thomas A. Anderson... program writer for a respectable software company. You have a social security number. You pay your taxes. And you help your landlady carry out her garbage...

3. The first CD I burned for myself, was a collection of Eloy albums. The German rock band who took his mystic name from H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, one of my favorite books to read over and over as a teenager, where human beings in some future time are divided into two castes and the delicate, rich, healthy, lucky and aristocrat caste is called Eloi. Eloy is categorized as a space rock band. The heavy organ and bass fills that each play a major role in the songs, always make me high. I call it the natural high feeling. A sense of Floating, which is the name of one of their albums.

Different Worlds, Same Idea

As I told somewhere before, I sometimes check my old mp3s and make selections of them. This time I was investigating Chris de Burgh's songs. In his first album (1975 - Far Beyond These Castle Walls), there's a very mellow, romantic and oneiric song called Satin Green Shutters. He depicts his hopes and dreams of having "the most beautiful house in the world" and having his love of life forever and having "the most lovely children in the world". I know that at least his last wish came true a few years ago, when his daughter, Rosanna won the miss world title. Many people were fascinated here because Chris de Burgh has many fans in Iran.

Later, in the same day, I was running with my friend in the park as our regular sports schedule. He talked about a poor worker of a freight company who had rented their house many years ago. He said although he had a poor family but he always talked like he had enough money for everything. He always had bigger dreams than his pocket. They moved out and they had no contact with my friend's. But yesterday, oddly enough, the door bell rang and yes it was that worker with his wife riding a precious brand new BMW to come over my friend's family. He now owns a freight business himself and has sent his son and daughter to university. He is wealthy and happy with his family as he always thought so.

It was a nice coincidence to me. It doesn't matter what you are or how big or small your scale is. How much you are famous or how rich you are. You'll become what you think of yourself.

Here's a couple lines of Chris de Burgh's Satin Green Shutters:

"Where your dreams are, put your hopes, you know they will not fail you,
Where your love is, put your heart, oh what would you do if your dreams came true?"

Captain

South Korea started her car industry lunge at the same time Iran did. They improved day by day, but we produced that junk product over and over for more than 30 years and we were proud to call it our national automobile. Koreans developed other industries and we developed ideologies. The result is that today we are a great market for Korean cars and electronic goods. I use a Korean monitor on my desktop. Korea is a symbol of economic development for Iranian economists.

During 1996 Asian Cup our national football team defeated Korea 6 - 2, that was a great achievement because even in football we have been always behind them. The man of the match was today's best scorer of the whole football history in the world: Ali Daei, who scored 4 of 6 goals.

Daei has had the undeniable position as the team captain till the last FIFA World Cup 2006 in Germany. But that wasn't easy for him to hold the position. As he got more and more famous he became the target of the most envious critics inside Iran. From one side he became the best scorer of all time with 100+ goals in international matches, but from the other side he was cruelly criticized by the media because he had some deficiencies during some matches and the media and people following them wanted him to retire. Finally all pressures made the national team coaches to omit the long term captain from the list.

He didn't gave up. As he was playing in a mediocre team in Iranian Premiere League, he accepted to coach that team in the middle of the season, and in the end, that mediocre team was the champion of the league with Ali Daei's last goal. He abandoned playing football with glory and with all the envious people who always tried to destroy him.

I once read somewhere describing Daei's personality, it said: "He is the kind of men that has plans for everything, except for his death". And I saw him in an interview when he was asked: "Is there anything in the world that you like to exchange football with it?" and he said: "I exchange football with every good thing in the world. Football is just a small part of my life, I've got many other plans and issues that I like to follow, football isn't my everything."

He is the man of his plans and fighting for his plans.

Move It!

It's always the matter of time Mr Shellman! So move it!

Which One's Pink?

That's been the classic vexing debate after Pink Floyd's break up, between Roger and David's fans. The question comes from what Roger had heard in a convention in the early days of Pink Floyd. Someone had asked: "Oh by the way, which one's Pink?" thinking that Pink Floyd is a band member name. That made Roger to write Have A Cigar later for Wish You Were Here Album. A song about fame, fortune, money, and "riding the gravy train" in music industry.

Thanks to my introducer to Pink Floyd, he gave me the video of a cover band called "The Australian Pink Floyd". A pack of very talented Australian guys who could make themselves the most prominent and serious cover band, at least the only one that I know. The video is their concert in Liverpool in 2004. They have covered the whole Dark Side of the Moon and a bunch of other songs incredibly great in a big stage imitating all those post-Roger concerts style. The audience were enjoying themselves completely because although the music was greatly performing, the men behind the microphones were not the legendary official band members, so one could just say: shout and scream, who cares? This ain't Pink Floyd! The same idea was supported by the band themselves! They had replaced the classical pig with a funny giant kangaroo dancing during One of These Days (that scary song)!!! That made me laugh about an hour insanely! I enjoyed it a lot.

What I'm thinking now, is what Roger was saying in Live At Pompeii video. Answering questions about the expensive and unique equipments they used to perform their music, he said:

RW: This is the question of using the tools available when they are available! And more and more now there's all kinds of electronic goodies which are available for people like us to use. If we can be bothered and we can be bothered... It's like saying give a man a Les Paul guitar and he becomes Eric Clapton, you know, and it's not true! Give a man an amplifier and a synthesizer and he doesn't become whoever, he doesn't become us... I'd like to say if we were at a gig, it could be nice sometimes to say: Go on then, there it is, get stuck in! In fact open the show, it's gonna be 4000 people in here in half an hour, get out there and knock them out man, and then they'd say: Oh but we don't know the equipment and need time to rehearse! So we'd say: So did we about four or five years ... if people come to a concert and they don't like it, they don't come again!

and in another argument:

RW: Steve you're good at your job, but you could never produce a record so it's silly of you to try!

Steve: No rubbish! if you take a crappy enough group with only twelve songs...

RW: that's not we're talking about!

Steve: We're talking about producing works of art, or Pink Floyd records! That's 0.01 percent of the market, there's plenty of other crap going on!

RW: We are not talking about it at all, we're talking about a record producer who is in charge of a recording session. In order to be in charge of a recording session you need to have a minimal, not minimal, you need to have a fairly extensive knowledge of what the equipment is about and what music is about and what rock and roll's about, well steve knows what rock and roll's about but he got no idea of what the equipment is about, he's got very little idea in terms of technicalities, he knows what he likes.

Steve: Plenty of people have produced very successful records on that basis!

RW: Who?

...

RW: All Im' saying is in the finished article the only thing that's important is whether it moves you or not, there's nothing else as that important.

Easy Movie

View From The Top (2003)
IMDB
Directed by: Bruno Barreto
My Rate: 3/5

After a hard day arguing with a "dog", and after my fit of hatred was put out by listening to Animals, it was the time to bring my attitude back on track, probably by watching an easy movie. My random choice was successful and surprisingly supporting the idea that I'm reading a lot these days: having clear and detailed vision of your future goal and strive to get it.

Donna (Gwyneth Paltrow) is a small town girl always wished to see the world but she never had a chance to even leave that small town. After a break up with her boyfriend, she incidentally watches a famous and successful stewardess in TV, and that sparks a will in her heart to gain whatever she wishes. It's a simple, easy and delighting romantic comedy. I liked it.

Get Busy Living, Or Get Busy Dying

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
IMDB
Directed by: Frank Darabont
My Rate: 5/5

Everything is in the chain. Good things come in your good times, when you look for motivation, it will find its way to you. The Shawshank Redemption is the story of Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) an innocent banker accused for the murder of his wife and her lover, and sentenced to spend the rest of his life in Shawshank prison. The prison shows the teeth in the first night to him and all other new comers. When one of them couldn't help crying after the lights out, the guards beat him to death!

The hard labour, ruthless wardens, rapists, and the solitary cells are enough to make everybody break down, but:

[spoiler]
Andy never gives up, he uses his abilities to make it a better place to live for other prisoners, he asks for financial aid for organising a prison library by writing a letter per week to charity organisations for 5 years, until they accept to help him with a 200$ check, but he won't be satisfied by it and starts to write two letters per week to beg for more aid!

He gives useful financial advices to the guards and that makes him known to the prison warden. The warden makes him his consultee to perform money laundry for him! That gives great power to Andy, although he is humiliated as a criminal by the warden. But Andy has bigger plans in his mind...
[/spoiler]

This is a story of hope and endeavour. Although it's ficition but who cares as long as it's beautiful and motivating? Andy says in a scene to his friend, Red (Morgan Freeman): Get busy living, or get busy dying. The world was very cruel and unfair to him but he chose the first option.

Set The Controls For The Heart of The Sun

To follow the path:

Look to the master,

Follow the master,

Walk with the master,

See through the master,

Become the master.

Exhortative Essence of Summer

To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)

IMDB

Directed by: Robert Mulligan

My Rate: 5/5

Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) is a lawyer having two trouble making kids as his wife is dead some years ago. As he deals with the adult's world, accepting to defend an innocent black guy accused for raping a white farmer's daughter, in the racist atmosphere of 20s, he is observered curiously from his kids point of view as their hero father.


The last time I felt the childhood so close and touching was in the first or second year of the university, when I watched one of Dariush Mehrjui's masterworks, The Pear Tree. It was about an intellectual man in his middle age going back to his home town in his father's now old vacant house to have a peaceful time and location to finish his book. But his past memories of the house and people living there rush into his mind and he sees his lovely childhood, his relatives and his growing up and turning to a political activist and opposition against monarchy. He finds what he really has lost taking all those days for granted: His childhood. That house and all those childish games seemed exactly copied from my own childhood.

And after all these years I found that childhood again watching this great film, To Kill A Mockingbird. Being a 6 years old maniac menace little kid wearing short pants, always ambushing to fulfill the insatiable thirst of curiosity and that magic exhortative essence of summer penetrating in our manners, games and feelings of the world around.

That is great you know, but I'm not the nostalgic type (anymore) to tell things like I'd give all my life to live one day in that age again. Instead I'm thinking about how it is possible to keep that feeling of being a 6 years old boy alive to feel rejuvenated always... That's a question.

Chain of Goodness

Sometimes some things happen to make you explore one new level of life. I don't think it's just coincidences. When you decide to change, or moult, the season changes, the world around you changes to make you able to do it, but just one should be careful enough to grasp and grab the happenings. And they're not like a great job offer or a winner lottery ticket. They can be a 2 minutes song, a short novel, a delicious food or an inside murmur.

I just recognised this strange harmony of events and happenings talking to my friend M. who was truely obsessed with his everyday struggles and bad people around him. I just told one sentence to him and today he called and told me that single "tiny microscopic thing"* could change his mind and he felt better. He participated in a class of the great Persian computer science professor Caro Lucas today, catching him right when he was speaking about Artificial Intelligence philosophy, and how he felt even much better today after the class. He just grabbed it and he'll see how the chains of events will happen to make him feel greater.

The same thing has happened to me since last 3 months. I read about Psycho Cybernetics, I overcame a paradox about my future life style, I started this blog and writing about everything in my mind, and one of my wishes, which I thought it's very big, but it's not, is simply coming true in the next week! That chain of events is happening to me and I can't believe it. I learned to not get overwhelmed with stress and anger and ruin my days. And yesterday I just discovered a couple of great inspiring blogs that made my day (you can reach them from the links section). And that's in the chain. Everything is in the chain, I just should be careful to follow them.

* Comes from Tim Burton's Corpse Bride!