The backseat of the car, what a strange and unfamiliar place, offering up a different perspective on the world drifting by. I rarely get to sit there but after a long day of work where I was really seeing Anoushka awake for the first time in 12 hours, I couldn't bare to have her be alone in the back. So I decided to be with her.
She made herself comfortable in my lap and I buried my face in her hair for an instant flashing back to Patna, the only place where I remember sitting in a rickshaw - the quartet, Mom, Dad and the two of us (my brother and I) sitting on their laps as the rickshaw wended its way through Shri Krishna Puri to our aunt's place or to various other parts of Patna - Pataliputra, R-Block, Bailey Road, Punaichak, Frasier Road...visiting relatives or shopping or headed for Hotel Rajasthan...our favorite in those days - the flashback happened a the instant when I buried my face in A's hair, I remembered that's what my Mom used to do.
There was an indescribable feeling of wholeness, tinged with sadness, feeling her curled up on my lap, slightly drowsy, her arm casually thrown around my neck...sad because my recollections of my childhood are still sharp, almost as if they just happened, yet several decades have gone by since those rickshaw days...how fast will these years of a curled up child sitting on my lap fly by? Not a unique thought by any means but a potent one all the same.
There was another little thing she did that I remember doing as a child: I was holding her lightly around her tummy and then as the car ride progressed my hands naturally fell away. She didn't miss a beat in retrieving my inert hands and placing them back on her tummy exactly as they were before. What was an unconscious action to me was actually a thing of which she was very aware. I remember missing a constant pressure of a touch that suddenly disappeared as well, I remember putting a parent's hand back to where I was being patted and put to sleep again. History repeats.
Well, that's what I'll remember of this day other than the following:
We have finally left Raag Bilawal behind and have started exploring the Teevra Ma in Raag Yaman...progress! Finally!
The highlight of the day...a pat on the back from my music teacher, an endorsement to move forward in this musical quest.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Music, lucid dreams and other weirdness...
I have been able to write on this blog, bake sugar cookies, play costumer and make-up artist for my little Super Girl and practice Raag Bilawal for the umpteenth time as well as the violin (mental note to self: next time record it just to see how awful you sound). There isn't a single song in the Suzuki Violin Book 1 that I've ever heard before, I'm amazed at that. It would be so much easier to gauge how I sound if I had ever hummed or heard the song before!
But it is definitely getting easier to read music and to glean from staves the information about the key signature, the tempo, the whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes...so on and so forth. If the teacher doesn't get tired of teaching a stark beginner like me we could probably keep proceeding at an andante pace.
Not so with Indian classical where we seem to have encountered a rather long period of rest...the pace being set by someone who prefers infinite rest at the 'Sa' (Do) pitch to steadily ascending higher pitches and octaves. We have been singing the same composition for over a month now because the pace-setter is facing pitch and rhythm confusion. Let's see what tomorrow's class brings; I am hoping that during this two week hiatus she'd have befriended "Soor" (spelling modified to suit the teacher's accent) and "Taal" so they march lock-step...at a steady walking pace.
But before considering the things I am hoping tomorrow will bring, I must mention some of the things from my very recent past...because some strange things are happening...
The word andante above, brings me to the Mendelssohn's Op. 64's andante movement and lucid dreams. A friend asked me once if I ever had lucid dreams...I said no - at that particular moment I didn't remember any, but I do have them and when I do they always shake me up and turn me inside-out, like my bus dream posted here over a year ago.
Anyway while I listened to the andante one morning in the bus and reached a semi-awake, trance-like state, with my orange-hued, shut eyelids acting as a screen of sorts, I clearly remember seeing a silhouette that might appear something like this:
The dream was over almost as soon as it started as the bus made a jarring stop at my destination. I was shaken, nevertheless. The image came out of nowhere, the music was the only explanation since my life and my thoughts are devoid of such images or thoughts for the most part.
Music certainly has inexplicable effects on people. I just read somewhere that all his life Freud maintained a disdain for music. He is known to have said something about not wanting to devote any time to something that could affect him in strange ways...ways that his deductive reasoning brain couldn't fathom.
Wonder what he would have to say about the image from my music induced lucid dream? He would perhaps explain it away as a deep-seated desire of some sort that had nothing to do with music. Yet I feel certain it was the music...the effect is consistent.
The other bizarre dreams happened on Friday when I stayed home from work. I had told the As that I wanted to sleep late...I had said I would dress little A for school, get her ready, and then crawl back in bed while big A took her to the bus stop. And that's what I did...
The next thing I knew, there was a lot of noise outside the house. I got up to explore. There was big A, standing outside fiddling with his car while the little one stood patiently in the garage, waiting to get in the car. I glanced at the clock it was 8:10 AM, her bus usually leaves at 8:05 AM. I was yelling and screaming, asking him what he thought he was doing and how could he be dawdling when he knew the bus was about to leave? For some reason he didn't answer, making me feel like the kind of a nagging wife that husbands learn to ignore as the marriage matures.
Then I looked around and noticed that all the kids in the neighborhood were running around and playing as if school was out that day. I was very confused. I stepped back into the house to check the school schedule tacked up on the refrigerator...it said nothing about school being out. I walked back to the garage where she stood with her backpack watching her dad fiddle with the car. I asked her whether she was sure she had school. She said she did and that she wished Daddy would get her to school soon. Just then our neighbor, who is also our housekeeper, walked in and started chastising me about the bus leaving without A...her homework missing...my head was reeling now...and then there was a loud ringing noise...that woke me up from what had apparently been a dream! I turned around and noticed that big A was back in bed. I asked him when he got back and if he had taken little A to the bus stop. He said he had.
All was well with the world, there were no screaming kids outside, no hubby fiddling with the car and ignoring me and no neighbor charging in with accusations.
And so I closed my eyes once again...or I thought I did...
This time I found myself in a house that resembled the one we had in Delhi, the bathroom with the pink walls, attached to the bedroom downstairs. However, there was no privacy here, just a curtain separating the bathroom from the bedroom. I was freshly showered and wrapped in a towel, trying to apply lotions and creams, except servants, aunts, uncles and friends kept interrupting my routine. I yelled at a servant that walked in with extreme nonchalance, telling him to get the heck out! And then I heard some older aunts mumbling in the background, excoriating me under their breaths for the verbal abuse I inflicted on the poor servant. I yelled, I screamed in frustration... and then...
I found myself in my bed in Hackettstown, NJ, sleeping the morning away, with nothing unusual going on...except in my head!
But it is definitely getting easier to read music and to glean from staves the information about the key signature, the tempo, the whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes...so on and so forth. If the teacher doesn't get tired of teaching a stark beginner like me we could probably keep proceeding at an andante pace.
Not so with Indian classical where we seem to have encountered a rather long period of rest...the pace being set by someone who prefers infinite rest at the 'Sa' (Do) pitch to steadily ascending higher pitches and octaves. We have been singing the same composition for over a month now because the pace-setter is facing pitch and rhythm confusion. Let's see what tomorrow's class brings; I am hoping that during this two week hiatus she'd have befriended "Soor" (spelling modified to suit the teacher's accent) and "Taal" so they march lock-step...at a steady walking pace.
But before considering the things I am hoping tomorrow will bring, I must mention some of the things from my very recent past...because some strange things are happening...
The word andante above, brings me to the Mendelssohn's Op. 64's andante movement and lucid dreams. A friend asked me once if I ever had lucid dreams...I said no - at that particular moment I didn't remember any, but I do have them and when I do they always shake me up and turn me inside-out, like my bus dream posted here over a year ago.
Anyway while I listened to the andante one morning in the bus and reached a semi-awake, trance-like state, with my orange-hued, shut eyelids acting as a screen of sorts, I clearly remember seeing a silhouette that might appear something like this:
The dream was over almost as soon as it started as the bus made a jarring stop at my destination. I was shaken, nevertheless. The image came out of nowhere, the music was the only explanation since my life and my thoughts are devoid of such images or thoughts for the most part.
Music certainly has inexplicable effects on people. I just read somewhere that all his life Freud maintained a disdain for music. He is known to have said something about not wanting to devote any time to something that could affect him in strange ways...ways that his deductive reasoning brain couldn't fathom.
Wonder what he would have to say about the image from my music induced lucid dream? He would perhaps explain it away as a deep-seated desire of some sort that had nothing to do with music. Yet I feel certain it was the music...the effect is consistent.
The other bizarre dreams happened on Friday when I stayed home from work. I had told the As that I wanted to sleep late...I had said I would dress little A for school, get her ready, and then crawl back in bed while big A took her to the bus stop. And that's what I did...
The next thing I knew, there was a lot of noise outside the house. I got up to explore. There was big A, standing outside fiddling with his car while the little one stood patiently in the garage, waiting to get in the car. I glanced at the clock it was 8:10 AM, her bus usually leaves at 8:05 AM. I was yelling and screaming, asking him what he thought he was doing and how could he be dawdling when he knew the bus was about to leave? For some reason he didn't answer, making me feel like the kind of a nagging wife that husbands learn to ignore as the marriage matures.
Then I looked around and noticed that all the kids in the neighborhood were running around and playing as if school was out that day. I was very confused. I stepped back into the house to check the school schedule tacked up on the refrigerator...it said nothing about school being out. I walked back to the garage where she stood with her backpack watching her dad fiddle with the car. I asked her whether she was sure she had school. She said she did and that she wished Daddy would get her to school soon. Just then our neighbor, who is also our housekeeper, walked in and started chastising me about the bus leaving without A...her homework missing...my head was reeling now...and then there was a loud ringing noise...that woke me up from what had apparently been a dream! I turned around and noticed that big A was back in bed. I asked him when he got back and if he had taken little A to the bus stop. He said he had.
All was well with the world, there were no screaming kids outside, no hubby fiddling with the car and ignoring me and no neighbor charging in with accusations.
And so I closed my eyes once again...or I thought I did...
This time I found myself in a house that resembled the one we had in Delhi, the bathroom with the pink walls, attached to the bedroom downstairs. However, there was no privacy here, just a curtain separating the bathroom from the bedroom. I was freshly showered and wrapped in a towel, trying to apply lotions and creams, except servants, aunts, uncles and friends kept interrupting my routine. I yelled at a servant that walked in with extreme nonchalance, telling him to get the heck out! And then I heard some older aunts mumbling in the background, excoriating me under their breaths for the verbal abuse I inflicted on the poor servant. I yelled, I screamed in frustration... and then...
I found myself in my bed in Hackettstown, NJ, sleeping the morning away, with nothing unusual going on...except in my head!
Violin Class
It was one of my better violin classes, I thought. There was some interaction with the teacher. He said my playing of “Go Tell Aunt Rhody” sounded good. He even said the rhythm, the bane of my existence, in any musical experience, was fine. So I was thrilled.
We spent some of the class time discussing the latest violin book I had finished reading, Guarnieri String Quartet’s first violinist, Arnold Steinhardt’s book – Indivisible by Four. Mr. Steinhardt’s writing has the power to hold the reader’s attention through over forty years of recollections. I enjoyed every vignette, conveyed with a light touch, about the group dynamic that developed over the years, the democratic decision making that went into the formation of a group of equals. There were humorous episodes about fans thinking of the group as an individual entity presenting them with a single bottle of wine and other gifts that they then wondered how to divide equally. There was a humorous anecdote about a brain surgeon who collected violins for a living and had invited Mr. Steinhardt to take a look at them. The brain surgeon remarked at how he was unlike other collectors and actually spent five minutes each day with each one of his precious violins. Mr. Steinhardt writes about thinking how he felt like telling the guy that he devoted five minutes of each day doing brain surgery as well!
So my teacher and I talked about my latest readings and impressions. I mentioned how much I liked Mendelssohn's Op. 64 and he confirmed that it was one of the most popular orchestral violin works ever written. I was glad I learnt to appreciate something even before I knew it was a universally acknowledged favorite. It was a surreal feeling to sit with a violinist who has been training since he was nine and talk to him about major violin works since I am such a bottom rung novice. But hey, I know what I like and like what I like.
So, to make up for this deficit, I am trying to see if I can develop that rare skill of sight reading. I can now read C#, C# B A A| B B C# B A| E E D C C|B A B C# A and sing it. I thought this was because I have been playing the tune on the violin and perhaps that’s the reason why I can read the music and hum it. So I tried doing it with “The Song of the Wind”, something I have neither heard nor played on the violin or the piano, and I was able to hum a ‘tune’. Later, when I got around to playing it, it sounded like the tune I had hummed!
Now that music is front and centre, everything I hear and see around me is music related. My attention is drawn to books on music, magazines, newspapers-all seem to be reporting more on music. Either the musical reporting levels have changed or they are the same as they always were and my antennas are picking up more signals.
I flip open my October 29th copy of The New Yorker and I am staring at Alex Ross's article, "The Well Tempered Web" which talks about how the web is helping classical music. A few blogs dedicated to music and musicians find honorable mention in his article, the most impressive of them all was concert pianist Jeremy Denk's blog. Alex quoted a passage from Jeremy Denk's blog that simply took my breath away. These are his words that were quoted in The New Yorker:
Somewhere toward the middle of the last movement, I began to feel the words that Messiaen marks in the part, I began to hear them, feel them as a “mantra”: extatique, paradisiaque. And maybe more importantly, I began to have visions while I was playing, snapshots of my own life (such that I had to remind myself to look at the notes, play the notes!): people’s eyes, mostly, expressions of love, moments of total and absolute tenderness. (This is sentimental, too personal: I know. How can you write about this piece without becoming over-emotional?) I felt that same sense of outpouring (“pouring over”) that comes when you just have to touch someone, when what you feel makes you pour out of your own body, when you are briefly no longer yourself—and at that moment I was still playing the chords, still somehow playing the damn piano. And each chord is even more beautiful than the last; they are pulsing, hypnotic, reverberant . . . each chord seemed to pile on something that was already ready to collapse, something too beautiful to be stable . . . and when your own playing boomerangs on you and begins to “move yourself,” to touch you emotionally, you have entered a very dangerous place. Luckily, the piece was almost over. . . . When I got offstage I had to breathe, hold myself in, talk myself down.
A musician who expresses himself through his music and expresses how the music makes him feel in words such as the one above! I crave to reach this height of expression, this state of passion.
But I'll probably die craving because my actions always fall short of achieving the thing that would make me the happiest. I don't spend enough time practicing the violin, I neglect my urge to write, instead I spend a lot of time complaining about not writing anything. The fact that I haven't practiced, that I haven't written, that I've wasted too much time, keeps me awake most of the night and this lack of sleep seeps into the work day where I wake up late, I get stuck in traffic that just doesn't move, I am late to work, I hate myself for losing my temper or for showing stress and then I come home, waste more time and am never able to break out of the vicious circle.
So something has to give...perhaps it all starts with writing something down. It should keep me focused and happy!
Feeling slightly uncharitable
I do dislike certain types of people, what a surprise! Since I like to think I am relatively unopinionated, tolerant, free of dogma and non-judgmental but then how would I explain these dislikes:
1) People who put on a beaming, beatific smile as they tell me they love the changing of the seasons, especially after I've just finished saying I hate winters.
2) People who nod their heads in apparent understanding of everything you're saying to them and then turn around and ask a question that indicates they haven't heard word one.
3) People who just don't know how to listen and spend conversational time just talking about themselves.
3) Perfectionists or people who put unreasonable emphasis on minutiae. Life is too short for that.
4) People who pay absolutely no attention to details.
5) People offering up opinions on how one could be a better parent.
6) People who refuse to believe that it is possible for multiple points of view to exist harmoniously, that there is such a thing as agreeing to disagree.
7) Lastly, opinionated people, in other words people just like me!
Pragya
1) People who put on a beaming, beatific smile as they tell me they love the changing of the seasons, especially after I've just finished saying I hate winters.
2) People who nod their heads in apparent understanding of everything you're saying to them and then turn around and ask a question that indicates they haven't heard word one.
3) People who just don't know how to listen and spend conversational time just talking about themselves.
3) Perfectionists or people who put unreasonable emphasis on minutiae. Life is too short for that.
4) People who pay absolutely no attention to details.
5) People offering up opinions on how one could be a better parent.
6) People who refuse to believe that it is possible for multiple points of view to exist harmoniously, that there is such a thing as agreeing to disagree.
7) Lastly, opinionated people, in other words people just like me!
Pragya
From now on this blog...
It pains me to see this blog not being updated with some regularity while I await the muse's return.
I realize that I need to write. It doesn't matter what I am writing but I need to write something everyday or else there is a domino effect of unpleasant events that gets triggered and seeps into my work and my personal life because not having written makes me cranky and sleepless and it just isn't wise to mess with the circadian rhythms.
So I am going to write something here everyday, isolated readers of this blog beware. When you stop by you'll see something that resembles a daily journal or an expressionless, uninspired recounting of the days events...simply words on white space...starting today.
Wow...just scribbling that bit of nonsense makes me feel better!
I realize that I need to write. It doesn't matter what I am writing but I need to write something everyday or else there is a domino effect of unpleasant events that gets triggered and seeps into my work and my personal life because not having written makes me cranky and sleepless and it just isn't wise to mess with the circadian rhythms.
So I am going to write something here everyday, isolated readers of this blog beware. When you stop by you'll see something that resembles a daily journal or an expressionless, uninspired recounting of the days events...simply words on white space...starting today.
Wow...just scribbling that bit of nonsense makes me feel better!
