All life is an experiment

“All life is an experiment. The more
experiments you make the better.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Brand new year (well, almost. Its only been like 2 weeks and 2 days) . And a brand new experiment (well again, as new as the year atleast) ;)

Over the years, the lazy self has wanted to read more poetry than it ever got around to reading. As if that weren't enough, the self enjoys poetry being read out loud. Which in turn implies exercising more muscles than it would ever consider moving.

The idea - Outsource the reading.
The name - pō'ĭ-trē

This is a pre-alpha proof of concept. So be patient :)

And what is this all about? A perfectly valid question. In an ideal world, it would be a scene from Kabhie Kabhie, where the Big B woos Rakhi with"Kabhie kabhie mere dil mein". But in a less than perfect world, the self has created a blog by recording poetry in its own voice - hoping others would get interested and add to the collection. (Yes, it believes that this will be a collection. Well, it also naively continues to believe that america will one day elect a woman president) :)

Poetry in any language is welcome. As long as there is not too much of @#$%!*, everything goes. Please try to respect copyright and other such brutalities that society imposes on the self (and the others).

As the collection grows, it will be indexed to make it more navigable. And yes, it will be made searchable by google (or your favourite extension of the brain on the internet). All that is still in the works. (Did the self mention it was lazy?)

About now you begin to have these great ideas on how to improve or support this blog. Or you might be thrilled that there is some use for all those flamethrowers in the attic. If you want to help, here are some ideas.

a) suggest a better name, a better tagline, a writeup about why the self and anyone else would want to do something like this.
b) record a poem of your choice - its easy. *
c) suggest a better layout
d) any suggestions infact :)

(until telepathic communication between us higher beings is perfected,) please email your ideas, audio recording, suggestions etc to



e) the self also appreciates kind words, dark chocolate, great movies, good food, lazy vacations and of late, has been interested in collecting mughal miniature paintings. Help with any of these would be greatly appreciated too.

How it works :

"What you don't do can be a destructive force." -Eleanor Roosevelt

pō'ĭ-trē runs democratically. As long as the self is the only one running the blog, it decides what goes. If you are inclined to join the club, you will get voting/vetoing rights too. :) For now the hazing rulebook recommends that one must have atleast three poems recorded in her/his/its voice and up on the blog before membership and voting rights are assigned (and now,it feels as powerful as Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List) ;) Ok, the other option is to be really nice to the self (for helpful hints refer e) in the list of suggestions). But the true strength of any democracy lies in the power vested in the people. So contribute and make this a better place, for one and all.

Aside:
The self is no great reader of poetry. (That it is a great admirer of poetry well read, is a different matter altogether.) It does believe that, recording poems in its own voice and putting them up in public domain, might in a small way, help coax others to do the same.

The self is a very sensitive being, with a huge ego. So it fully understands the risk involved in doing this. It worries that all this might just result in the brutal slaughter of its own precious ego. But what is that sacrifice, compared to the pleasure of being able to sit (rather, recline) and listen to poetry at the click of a button (ok, a couple of buttons, you nitpickers!)

Other minor details:
* Here are some ways of recording audio.
i) you can actually do it on any windows PC - (start -> all programs -> accessories -> entertainment (or multimedia) -> sound recorder) and get a .WAV file.
ii) if you own a fancy-smancy voice recorder you use to secretly tape interesting book reading etc, use that. :)
iii) if you are on skype and use it often, it is sure you already know you can save audio recorded while chatting on skype - try that. the self does not use skype, but it hears this is a good option.
iv) go figure a better option and let the self know, as it loves to learn about these things.
v) came across this really cool open source audio recorder - Audacity. Lets you do a lot of complex recording, multiple tracks etc. But should work well for recording your readings. This works way better than the windows sound recorder. **