Written by Nandini Sethi
“You can be anything you want to be”, she said.
The world is wondrous, and you’ll find inspiration in every stitch of a fabric or scratch on a wall.
I know, I know the world is wondrous where the trees are lush, and the birds chirp with the beginning of dawn.
The oceans are deep and full of mystery, the moon sits pretty in the sky every night, waiting for another lonely poet to romanticise one more star in the night sky.
The world is large and what we’ve made of it is magical- did the early men know about cheese and chocolate and sugar? Would they ever know that we fly a million miles in the sky to get to the other side of the world to see mountains and beaches and drunk men dancing to songs from the far side of the world? The world you’ve come from?
I know, I know I can be anything I want to be. I can wear a funny looking hat on my short hair and claim to be a sailor, the king of the sea, I can be a singer, I can be a tennis player. I can pick up a scalpel and be a doctor, I can bend my legs over my head and be a contortionist. I know, I know I can.
So when I look to you, with bored eyes and a disinterested demeanour, claiming the world to be a bland place, I look at you for inspiration. For magic. I look to you to pull me out of the transparency and dive with me into the colour.
I don’t want to write another song about death. I’m sick of metaphors on trees and pretty pink flowers. I know the world is wondrous, but where do I find what I’m looking for?
And then I ask you, now with hope in my eyes and a twinkling vigour in my stride, “what should I write about?” So you give me the answer every artist despises hearing.
“You can write about anything you want”.
