Prelude to June

Finishing off a project on the last day of its submission is something mostly engineers in India are habitual of tasking themselves with. What's more, its no longer as much of a habit as it has become a way of testing just how you've gotten over the past year. And believe me, that is one test majority of the engineering folks don't mind giving time and again.
Anyway, it was more of a personal experience for me, tidying up my own image processing project-inspired heavily-in the wee hours of this very evening. It was probably one of those rare times where, despite no fear of exam the next day, sitting on a chair in front of the computer screen for 4 hours straight wasn't objectionable to my brain (though my knees weren't pleased).

It's been a while since June passed and its also been a while since I had a perfectly well written post-perfectly titled 'June'-ready to post. So what got me going at the keyboard today was because of a lovely link to a video which actually got a forgotten topic back to my head. While I will surely tell you what video it was, however, I will not reveal what I was watching or about to watch previous to that. Let your mind wander-its good to exercise the imagination gland up there.

Yeah, so, that's the one. 

Amazing fact of life: I have been racking my brains to write something about sound for a while and have been waiting for some sort of inspiration. Just when I thought it was not to be, this comes popping in to my inbox. Thanks, R... You know who you are.

It is not so much about the way of speaking as it is the mechanism of speech itself that fascinates me. I find that everything we say is in some or the other way, completely misunderstood as speech. I guess what I'm trying to say is that, for me, speaking is not so different than singing. And singing itself is not really singing. Its just sound. Everything is sound.

Just open your mouth and say hello. 'Hello' itself is a tone. As is the whole of this article which you are reading in your mind or otherwise. I don't really know how to emphasize this enough, but, words-technically-are just sounds. And its a miracle that our tongues have the ability to make a gazillion different sounds-for that is the number of words we have. I mean, just change your language and try and speak in another one. Or even read in another one. The whole dynamic changes. The word sure does change too, but that change is not so drastic. And even if it is, we identify words themselves by the sounds we make while saying them. Isn't that what pronunciation is all about? Doesn't that prove that its much more important to sound better than pretty much anything else?

Agreed, this does really feel like that big a deal right now, but seriously. Give it time and let this thing grow on you. You'll realize that there is just so much more to our lives than we realize. That there is so much more for us to actually do with our own voices and the sounds that we can make. We all know that we can scream and yell and make people feel uncomfortable and/or let them know where we think their heads should end up. And I'm sure we know that we can make anyone feel a lot more calm with a subtle change of pitch and even make them feel loved with the famous chocolate tone of our throats. But that is not where our limit ends.

Just think of it this way, you have the power to redefine how every word is said and/or interpreted with the way you say it. If you can re-tune your radio to get music to your ears, then you can re-tune your own way of interacting with someone to make yourself music to their ears. And come on, we all love it when our favorite songs just keep coming along the FM. So what harm is there in making a world where every sound you hear is a resemblance to that song?

This is not one of those lengthy posts with a final to-do point. This is the one post which is just asking you to think and imagine, about a world with no words. Just some good old instrumental music. Plain sounds. One language and no language at the same time. One that everyone knows. Everyone feels. Everyone understands. Everyone listens.