The art of referencing

Let me call it so ... 'the art of referencing' !

I can recall moments from as back in time as primary school when an idea would strike me, and as it happens even today, I would become very restless, eager to share the 'idea'.
At times, on quick retrospection, the idea would sound more brilliant to me than in the first instant, the instant it was born; at times it would begin to sound atrocious, but almost always more remarkable !

What happens with remarkable ideas or remarkable people or things or food ... anything ... is that the focus often gets restricted to the sheer remarkability quotient of the subject (some thing the recent revolution of 'sensationalism' in TV news channels has brilliantly cashed ... they draw your attention not to the subject but to its being remarkable ... so it makes your eyes pop out ... it gets talked about and they make money or whatever else they are after).

To me this is saddening. Imagine a thoughtful gift wrapped in a very-very-bright paper and frills pinned to it, maybe a wordy cardling taped to it as well. It's very likely that what catches attention and hence absorbs attention is the wrap, not the gift. Sad!

When I take an idea to a person who I think might appreciate or critique it (both are sought as dearly), I often fear any frills taking the gleam away from the idea. One thing that I've experienced very commonly spoiling the party is the spontaneous need to acknowledge and say 'Wow what an idea!' Over years I have grown to rather dislike people who are instantaneous in their appreciation. It frightens me. I am not sure if the 'idea' even sank in. As opposed to something having been found, something being conceived is a 'bigger deal' where in lies the perfect setup for its demise. If I write 2 stanzas of rhyme and take it to someone to be read, it is less likely it will incite as original a response as would a stanza I say I found on the internet perhaps; coz in the latter case the remarkability of it having been created does not eat into half the reader's soul.

Now, in a bid to shrug off the baton of ownership of the idea, I often attempt to create a story of how I 'discovered' the idea. I would randomly name a philosopher (he said this), blurt out a fancy name of a fictitious book (where I read it), talk about a random person, live or imagined (I heard it form him). To prevent the spurious 'awwww' or 'wowwww'.

Why this whole spill?
Because of late, meeting new people, talking to people with varying histories and geographies, browsing through videos and blogs on the internet (yes I am jobless and have all the time in the world for nonsense pursuits), I have had multiple deja-vu's. Bizarre things I imagined, nebulous ideas I conjured, I realize aren't completely unrealistic after all. They exist; in varying shapes and modes around the world. And I'm discovering terminologies for my whims!

Back in 2nd or 3rd year of college, I had built an imaginary school of research only to slate my fancy for the possibility of phonetic sounds carrying meaning. I find out via a TED talk 'phonesthesia' (http://www.ted.com/talks/golan_levin_on_software_as_art.html). I was possessed with the idea that sounds and images do inevitably have a relation. They have coined terms like 'the sounding image'. I had a hazy notion of what I later found was called associative memory. And now I see an Arthur Benjamin demystifying mathemagic and a Bobby Mcferrin making a point in audio adaptivity! It's all making a complete circle.

But this is digressing from the subject. Back to the 'art' of referencing, I say is one's veil from beneath which one can trick the smart-ass Heisenberg and record observations of the inside of a nucleus and not wake up the sleeping neutrons! It might be a classic case of name-dropping for some but it may well be thought of as inverse plagiarism!