Love is probably the most abstract notion of them all, such an elusive concept. Nevertheless most languages have a word for it. Perhaps it is more like a rainbow of emotions like tenderness, need, pity, dependence...all bleeding into each other, emotions with various different, nuanced frequencies attached to them. Or maybe like sight and sound...simply a perception, a construct of the mind. Even so, we do assign a word to it and it means something to most of us.
So imagine my surprise when I read the following lines in Colin Thubron's bestselling and extremely engrossing book - Shadow of the Silk Road:
"It has been said that the Chinese do not love. Observers of their family hierarchies have written that the only true tenderness exists between mother and son. Others have insisted that even the word for love in Chinese does not exist. And it is true that neither the blanket ai nor the benevolent ren translates into any unconditional passion."
I didn't turn the page for several minutes after I read that. I kept thinking about it and wondering about the absence of the word "love" from a language. What did it mean, if anything? Are people incapable of feeling love if they don't have a word for it? Or is it possible that more than a billion people consider or perceive the blend of emotions known as love as something else?
What of the "only true tenderness" existing only between mother and son? What about mother and daughter or father and son or father and daughter, no signs of tenderness there?
This wasn't the only passage in the book that stopped me in my tracks. There was one preceding this one that stunned me. In this passage Colin Thubron is talking to a father and daughter - Hu Ji and Mingzhao, both historians, specializing in the Tang and the Sung dynasties, respectively. Hu Ji talks about questioning history, rewriting it, replacing dogma with doubt. He relates a Tang dynasty story to Thubron:
"...a garrison commander, besieged by rebels, found his six-hundred-strong force close to starvation. Instead of surrendering, he first killed his wife and fed her to his soldiers, then one by one killed the weaker men and fed them to the stronger. Finally his troops were reduced to a hundred. They were overwhelmed three days before relief came."
Hu Ji then says to Thubron:
"And this has always been held up as glorious in our history - an example of perfect service to the state! So I've rewritten it in another spirit. How should it be judged?...You know in China we have no tradition of respect for human life. It's simply not in our past...That is our problem: inhumanity."
I can't even begin to put in words the thoughts that the above passage and these lines inspired: "That is our problem: inhumanity."
Leading up to the Beijing Olympics, China is constantly in the news. A prosperous China, a formidable market, a China that took the Olympic torch up to Mt Everest...China-Darfur...China-Tibet...China-Tiananmen massacre...all this and more doing rounds in the media, on the web, sweeping generalizations, accusations, diplomacy battles on one side and an ancient culture responsible for giving the world - paper, silk, the saddle and so much more - on the other...what is one to make of it all?
The world can only watch!
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Blackberry Blogging
This could be a fun way to spend my commuting time. Why didn't I try this before?
The alpha waves are probably surging at this hour since I am at my peak relaxation in the bus, in my own little world, no demands on my time. Just me, my book, my iPod and the gentle rays of the morning sun streaming in through my window.
The alpha waves are probably surging at this hour since I am at my peak relaxation in the bus, in my own little world, no demands on my time. Just me, my book, my iPod and the gentle rays of the morning sun streaming in through my window.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Interesting...
It was interesting to read this article in the July 28th issue of the New Yorker , entitled - The Eureka Hunt, about research into "insight". What happens when we have an insight, our aha moments?
I love reading this sort of stuff and often wish I had continued along the path of science so I could better understand these things.
Apparently the right hemisphere is the place that literally lights up with gamma rhythms when we have an insight (picture those light bulbs going on illustrations in comic books).
However, the brain that is open to insight is one that has a predominance of alpha waves...or in other words a brain in a relaxed state, a brain that is open to all possibilities. To me this sort of tied in with what I was saying in my post about Yoga. If anything Yoga probably generates alpha waves in the brain that leave one open to ideas, to insights and epiphanies.
The other thing that was mentioned in this article was how ideas seem to come flooding into the brain during a warm shower or just before the time one woke up in the morning. I have noticed this. Just before I wake up and while I am in the shower (always warm verging on scalding) I come up with wonderful ideas (at least they seem wonderful, insightful to me) and thoughts on what words I'll use or how I'd phrase these ideas. Then the pressures of the morning sink in and everything vanishes..."poof!"
Funny how ideas have to come flooding in at the time when one has neither a waterproof pad nor pen!
I love reading this sort of stuff and often wish I had continued along the path of science so I could better understand these things.
Apparently the right hemisphere is the place that literally lights up with gamma rhythms when we have an insight (picture those light bulbs going on illustrations in comic books).
However, the brain that is open to insight is one that has a predominance of alpha waves...or in other words a brain in a relaxed state, a brain that is open to all possibilities. To me this sort of tied in with what I was saying in my post about Yoga. If anything Yoga probably generates alpha waves in the brain that leave one open to ideas, to insights and epiphanies.
The other thing that was mentioned in this article was how ideas seem to come flooding into the brain during a warm shower or just before the time one woke up in the morning. I have noticed this. Just before I wake up and while I am in the shower (always warm verging on scalding) I come up with wonderful ideas (at least they seem wonderful, insightful to me) and thoughts on what words I'll use or how I'd phrase these ideas. Then the pressures of the morning sink in and everything vanishes..."poof!"
Funny how ideas have to come flooding in at the time when one has neither a waterproof pad nor pen!
Friday, July 25, 2008
Mad Men
What is culture if not a shared back story?
This thought came through unbidden as I watched the thirteen episodes of the first season of the AMC drama: Mad Men.
I spent the first several years of my working life at a company that functioned very much like an ad agency on Madison Avenue in the 1960s. Even the titles were nearly the same – Junior Account Executive, Account Executive, Executive Assistant, armies of women secretaries seated dutifully outside their boss’s offices. I was fortunate enough to be someone in an office rather than at a desk outside an office.
I say fortunate because in the late eighties there were enough echoes from the time in which the story of Mad Men takes place – 1960. I now realize that the people who were young executives in the early 60s, in their early to mid-twenties were probably still around in the late 80s when I entered the American workforce. These people were now in their late 40s or early 50s and still quite a distance from retirement. In fact some of them were at the peak of their careers.
What makes the show shimmer with intelligence is the natural way in which all aspects of life in those times has been recreated and filmed, the cars, the clothes, a close up shot of a phone bill, the appliances in the homes and most importantly, the attitudes.
This show, to me is all about echoes. Echoes from the past, echoes from an era gone by or perhaps never really gone, just lurking over the edge, waiting to make another appearance, if Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence is to be believed.
At the company where I worked documents that landed in my inbox always reeked of cigarette smoke. It wasn’t at all unusual for people to be conversing in the hallways with a cigarette dangling between their fingers. Yes California was, or was soon to be, a state where people could no longer smoke inside offices or at restaurants but Californians were always considered weird by the east coasters with whom I shared my workplace. It was hard to see my boss’s face sometimes through the haze of smoke that surrounded his desk.
Women in the workforce were often addressed as: sweetheart, lovey, doll. Or someone could announce toward the end of the day, “let’s round up the girls…let’s go get some drinks!”
Even the women, the ones who had risen to executive roles from the secretarial ranks or the secretaries themselves, didn’t seem to mind this language, this treatment. Some secretaries still believed that their best shot at a happy career was to make their boss dependent on them for everything, for every single one of their needs, literally. They were as devoted to their boss as a traditional Indian woman, who believes her husband is a minor god, is to her husband. They made themselves indispensable in this way.
My entry into the workplace was right before the time when words and phrases such as sexual harassment, second hand smoke, drunk driving, political correctness and workplace diversity came into being. As a young, alien observer I recall being stunned whenever a woman client came into the office and was greeted with barely disguised sexual tension in the room.
Many a time, my boss, would say with a nudge and a wink, after women clients had left the office, “Did you see how she was checking me out? She wants me! I am telling you P, she wants me!”
There were always innuendoes doing the rounds about how some women ended up in positions of managerial prominence. It just never crossed anyone’s mind that a woman could prove her merit out of the sack.
I heard terms like the “old boys’ network” and found it quite daunting to think about how closed off things would be to me, and not just because I was a woman of color and with traces of an old accent. It was even more disconcerting because the only other workplace I had seen, before becoming a worker myself, was my father’s. There were readers, lecturers, professors there. They worked neck and neck with the men and I didn’t see any hints of the kind of treatment that I noticed being meted out to women in the workforce in the US, it wasn’t something I had been raised to expect.
One of my boss’s secretaries was a woman in her early fifties, a career secretary. She was the keeper of all intelligence, all confidences, all information that afforded any access to him. She always hinted at having a very special relationship with my boss. It was very interesting to observe her behavior once the office decided it was time to embrace the 1990s and switch to “Casual Fridays”. Her interpretation of this 20% relaxation in the severe dress code was a rejection of that ever-so-restraining garment – the brassiere. And every Friday became a day for her to find several excuses to enter the boss’s office strutting her stuff, it wasn’t even done with any subtlety, her intentions were clear and a cause for deep belly laughs for the rest of us, who weren’t necessarily echoes of that era gone by.
Watching this show, set in 1960, in a very surprising way, brings back memories of the late 1980s to me. That is what is so fascinating and enthralling about it. The executives, senior and junior, in window or windowless offices, secretaries seated outside - answering and forwarding calls, opening and sorting their boss’s mail, making coffee, taking dictations, getting smacked on their bottoms, flirting back, supply closet affairs…these were all still happening in 1988!
Long lunches, also known as three martini lunches, drinks stashed in desk drawers, work parties, or after work affairs, people getting in their cars to drive home after imbibing countless drinks, offices reeking of cigarette smoke, this was all still very present in offices such as mine, poised at a transitional period in history, before everything appeared to change suddenly, leaving several disgruntled fifty-something people craving the days gone by, yearning for the “good old days” as every building became smoke free - even bars and restaurants. People stopped driving drunk (for the most part), alcohol in the workplace became taboo, suddenly people were ordering ice teas and ginger ales for lunch, women were being treated deferentially, no nudges, winks or off-color remarks to be heard anywhere…all this in the last ten to fifteen years. As it turned out, I didn’t need to worry at all, things changed just as I arrived on the scene!
However, it would appear as though things remained unchanged, or rather, changed very gradually, one company at a time over a thirty year stretch, even as several minor movements outside of corporate America came and went.
All this and more is so meticulously depicted in this show which has been nominated for several Emmy awards. Every episode I watch makes me think about things, the passage of time, the passing of eras, the changes in attitudes and latitudes – passing mentions of communism fears in those times, Kennedy, Nixon, McCarthy, the beginnings of the sex, drugs and rock and roll era, the derisive attitudes toward psychoanalysis, the time before self-expression and narcissism became en vogue, the era when people still believed in suffering and crumbling under the weight of their own emotions, wordlessly. The dialogs, the acting brings all this out so effortlessly and so seamlessly.
The last episode of the season, entitled – The Wheel – ended on very a poignant note as the ad agency of the story – Sterling Cooper – created a campaign to sell Kodak slide projectors. The Kodak executives come into the office, apologizing for the absence of the Eastman brothers who couldn’t make it because they spent a lot of time in the labs, and wait to be told how the slide carrying wheel, the unique selling proposition for this product, could be conveyed to the consumer. Don Draper, the Creative Director, recently elevated to partner (actor Jon Hamm) presents his work as a slide show, using the Kodak projector and slides of vignettes from his own family life, ensconced within the Kodak wheel, talking about returning to the place where one is loved and appreciated, just as the wheel returns to the very first slide.
Echoes again of a sensitive man, a caring man, one who appreciates family and tenderness and leaves not a dry eye in the room…or perhaps just a brilliant salesman who knows exactly how to get to the heart of the pitch…the questions remain…or are perhaps answered as the Kodak executives are convinced and the office celebrations begin. Don Draper, the Mad Man, the Ad Man, the Madison Avenue Man returns home, hoping to find his family but finding an empty home instead.
Brilliant! Let’s go to Season 2!
This thought came through unbidden as I watched the thirteen episodes of the first season of the AMC drama: Mad Men.
I spent the first several years of my working life at a company that functioned very much like an ad agency on Madison Avenue in the 1960s. Even the titles were nearly the same – Junior Account Executive, Account Executive, Executive Assistant, armies of women secretaries seated dutifully outside their boss’s offices. I was fortunate enough to be someone in an office rather than at a desk outside an office.
I say fortunate because in the late eighties there were enough echoes from the time in which the story of Mad Men takes place – 1960. I now realize that the people who were young executives in the early 60s, in their early to mid-twenties were probably still around in the late 80s when I entered the American workforce. These people were now in their late 40s or early 50s and still quite a distance from retirement. In fact some of them were at the peak of their careers.
What makes the show shimmer with intelligence is the natural way in which all aspects of life in those times has been recreated and filmed, the cars, the clothes, a close up shot of a phone bill, the appliances in the homes and most importantly, the attitudes.
This show, to me is all about echoes. Echoes from the past, echoes from an era gone by or perhaps never really gone, just lurking over the edge, waiting to make another appearance, if Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence is to be believed.
At the company where I worked documents that landed in my inbox always reeked of cigarette smoke. It wasn’t at all unusual for people to be conversing in the hallways with a cigarette dangling between their fingers. Yes California was, or was soon to be, a state where people could no longer smoke inside offices or at restaurants but Californians were always considered weird by the east coasters with whom I shared my workplace. It was hard to see my boss’s face sometimes through the haze of smoke that surrounded his desk.
Women in the workforce were often addressed as: sweetheart, lovey, doll. Or someone could announce toward the end of the day, “let’s round up the girls…let’s go get some drinks!”
Even the women, the ones who had risen to executive roles from the secretarial ranks or the secretaries themselves, didn’t seem to mind this language, this treatment. Some secretaries still believed that their best shot at a happy career was to make their boss dependent on them for everything, for every single one of their needs, literally. They were as devoted to their boss as a traditional Indian woman, who believes her husband is a minor god, is to her husband. They made themselves indispensable in this way.
My entry into the workplace was right before the time when words and phrases such as sexual harassment, second hand smoke, drunk driving, political correctness and workplace diversity came into being. As a young, alien observer I recall being stunned whenever a woman client came into the office and was greeted with barely disguised sexual tension in the room.
Many a time, my boss, would say with a nudge and a wink, after women clients had left the office, “Did you see how she was checking me out? She wants me! I am telling you P, she wants me!”
There were always innuendoes doing the rounds about how some women ended up in positions of managerial prominence. It just never crossed anyone’s mind that a woman could prove her merit out of the sack.
I heard terms like the “old boys’ network” and found it quite daunting to think about how closed off things would be to me, and not just because I was a woman of color and with traces of an old accent. It was even more disconcerting because the only other workplace I had seen, before becoming a worker myself, was my father’s. There were readers, lecturers, professors there. They worked neck and neck with the men and I didn’t see any hints of the kind of treatment that I noticed being meted out to women in the workforce in the US, it wasn’t something I had been raised to expect.
One of my boss’s secretaries was a woman in her early fifties, a career secretary. She was the keeper of all intelligence, all confidences, all information that afforded any access to him. She always hinted at having a very special relationship with my boss. It was very interesting to observe her behavior once the office decided it was time to embrace the 1990s and switch to “Casual Fridays”. Her interpretation of this 20% relaxation in the severe dress code was a rejection of that ever-so-restraining garment – the brassiere. And every Friday became a day for her to find several excuses to enter the boss’s office strutting her stuff, it wasn’t even done with any subtlety, her intentions were clear and a cause for deep belly laughs for the rest of us, who weren’t necessarily echoes of that era gone by.
Watching this show, set in 1960, in a very surprising way, brings back memories of the late 1980s to me. That is what is so fascinating and enthralling about it. The executives, senior and junior, in window or windowless offices, secretaries seated outside - answering and forwarding calls, opening and sorting their boss’s mail, making coffee, taking dictations, getting smacked on their bottoms, flirting back, supply closet affairs…these were all still happening in 1988!
Long lunches, also known as three martini lunches, drinks stashed in desk drawers, work parties, or after work affairs, people getting in their cars to drive home after imbibing countless drinks, offices reeking of cigarette smoke, this was all still very present in offices such as mine, poised at a transitional period in history, before everything appeared to change suddenly, leaving several disgruntled fifty-something people craving the days gone by, yearning for the “good old days” as every building became smoke free - even bars and restaurants. People stopped driving drunk (for the most part), alcohol in the workplace became taboo, suddenly people were ordering ice teas and ginger ales for lunch, women were being treated deferentially, no nudges, winks or off-color remarks to be heard anywhere…all this in the last ten to fifteen years. As it turned out, I didn’t need to worry at all, things changed just as I arrived on the scene!
However, it would appear as though things remained unchanged, or rather, changed very gradually, one company at a time over a thirty year stretch, even as several minor movements outside of corporate America came and went.
All this and more is so meticulously depicted in this show which has been nominated for several Emmy awards. Every episode I watch makes me think about things, the passage of time, the passing of eras, the changes in attitudes and latitudes – passing mentions of communism fears in those times, Kennedy, Nixon, McCarthy, the beginnings of the sex, drugs and rock and roll era, the derisive attitudes toward psychoanalysis, the time before self-expression and narcissism became en vogue, the era when people still believed in suffering and crumbling under the weight of their own emotions, wordlessly. The dialogs, the acting brings all this out so effortlessly and so seamlessly.
The last episode of the season, entitled – The Wheel – ended on very a poignant note as the ad agency of the story – Sterling Cooper – created a campaign to sell Kodak slide projectors. The Kodak executives come into the office, apologizing for the absence of the Eastman brothers who couldn’t make it because they spent a lot of time in the labs, and wait to be told how the slide carrying wheel, the unique selling proposition for this product, could be conveyed to the consumer. Don Draper, the Creative Director, recently elevated to partner (actor Jon Hamm) presents his work as a slide show, using the Kodak projector and slides of vignettes from his own family life, ensconced within the Kodak wheel, talking about returning to the place where one is loved and appreciated, just as the wheel returns to the very first slide.
Echoes again of a sensitive man, a caring man, one who appreciates family and tenderness and leaves not a dry eye in the room…or perhaps just a brilliant salesman who knows exactly how to get to the heart of the pitch…the questions remain…or are perhaps answered as the Kodak executives are convinced and the office celebrations begin. Don Draper, the Mad Man, the Ad Man, the Madison Avenue Man returns home, hoping to find his family but finding an empty home instead.
Brilliant! Let’s go to Season 2!
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Writing Compulsion
I have nothing to say tonight and I also haven't had enough sleep because the work week spilled into the weekend as it sometimes does, but I feel the next day goes better when I have written something, anything, the night before. So why not just talk about the weekend?
We found some time for the movies (yes movies - 2 on the same day). Saw two movies back to back - Mamma Mia and Journey to the Center of the Earth. They were both light-hearted, frothy fare but sometimes one wants just that. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face while watching Mamma Mia. It brought back so many memories of buying every ABBA record that came out in the late 70s, swapping lyrics, memorizing them, enjoying Chiquitita, I Have a Dream and Does Your Mother Know... the songs were as addictive as candy to the young me.
Now they've made a movie, a musical, using ABBA's music, and it is amazing to see how the story was written, thirty years since the music was created, and how each song fit each situation in such an engaging, amusing manner. I hadn't felt so entertained in a long time. I couldn't stop laughing at the lines, "Chiquitita tell me what's wrong, you're enchained by your own sorrow, in your eyes, there is no hope for tomorrow..." as Meryl Streep's Donna - is consoled by her two best friends.
"Does Your Mother Know" was another fun one with Christine Baranski playing the role of an older, botox'd femme fatale around several young island lads; the role reversal...with the woman singing the song was very amusing. Not to mention Pierce Brosnan and Meryl Streep singing, "So when you're near me darling, can't you hear me SOS, the love you gave me nothing else can save me, SOS". It was all so much fun that I wouldn't mind seeing it again.
We then stepped out of Mamma Mia and walked into the next theater to see Journey to the Center of the Earth. Another fun movie, more so because we were watching it with Anoushka and enjoying her edge of the seat reactions and her laughter at dialogs such as:
"Ever seen a dinosaur before?"
"Not one with skin on it!"
She expected to be hugged and cuddled every time the scenes got a little too intense for her.
Of course in Mamma Mia some of her comments left us speechless and gaping like:
"How did she have the baby if she never got married?"
"Why is Harry dancing with a guy?"
"She didn't sleep with hundreds of men, she only slept with three!"
I suppose they rate things PG-13 for some reason!
That's what we did for entertainment. I also spent a lot of time working because work did spillover into the weekend this time. As I ploughed through all my spreadsheets and got so much done, I wondered why employers still expect their employees to commute to work. Didn't wonder about that for the first time, of course. It has been a recurring thought for several years now. But it makes absolutely no sense to travel to work, burning several gallons of fossil fuels, just so my bosses can see my face. I was so productive and accomplished what I had to do with such speed and efficiency, working at home. Some day!
The violin class was a good one again. I was told I was the only one in a class of 40 or so people who could play Barcarolle well, with its rather complex slurs. Getting a compliment like that always helps re-ignite the old pilot light. I am really enjoying my practice these days.
On the Indian classical side, we closed the chapter on Kafi thaat and started Asavari - a very pleasant sounding raag missing Ga and Ni in the arohan and with a komal Dha, Ni and Ga in the avrohan. It sounds so melodious, with such a capacity for getting under one's skin.
Elsewhere I was reading about this particular raag and the author had mentioned that Asavari was all about renunciation, sacrifice, letting go. It reminded me of the post that preceded this one on this blog. It also made me wonder if the presence of so many komal notes contributed to this subjective evaluation of it.
How do people read so much into melodies and tunes? That's not to say, I don't. Music affects me in many hard to describe ways. But if I was to say that a certain piece of music stirred feelings of peace, tranquility, sadness, joy or even restlessness in me would people look at me strangely as if that isn't what it did for them at all, or would they agree? I ask because when someone saw renunciation reflected in this raag I found myself agreeing...is it the power of suggestion?
The other things I've read about, in reading about music and musicians:
1. Technical wizardry versus emotional playing of an instrument.
2. There is no improvisation, room for interpretation in western music (this in comments where Indian classical music is being compared to western classical music).
3. Fixed versus movable scale in the two types of music
4. The guru-shishya format of musical education in India followed by a comment that in the west a teacher is just a teacher, not given the same reverence as an Indian guru is.
I've come across these discussions often and I am in no position to comment on these issues because I am still such a novice, so generally ignorant. I am nowhere near any sort of technical mastery on the violin and I am certain I cannot introduce an emotional content into my playing unless I achieve some sort of technical confidence. But what bothers me is how some famous violinists are evaluated based on these two criterion, I fail to understand how someone who has dedicated a lifetime to the art of violin could leave emotions out of their playing. Music always expresses something internal, doesn't it? It can't be dry, it won't be music then. Or it will be music but it would be pointless for a musician to be playing music that is devoid of an emotional content.
As for improvisation and innovation...does it really never happen in western classical music? Of course the author probably meant that Bach and Beethoven need to be played as they were written, no room for unusual interpretations. That's probably true but isn't Jazz all about on the spot interpretations? And musicians who achieve the highly elusive emotional content in their playing...don't they take the smallest of liberties, playing things in a special way to enhance certain effects?
Fixed versus movable scale...I have no idea what that means. It appears to be movable to me in both types of music. Perhaps I need to know more before I can understand this.
As for the guru-shishya tradition, I have read enough books written by famous violinists (and other musicians), their biographies, interviews with them to know that they always mention who their teachers were, with tremendous reverence and respect, just as Indian musicians do. Perhaps there aren't things like gharanas here, but teachers are remembered and revered just the same.
The next time I have nothing to write about, probably tomorrow, I will write about the show I downloaded to my iPod and have been watching on by commute: Mad Men. Amazing show.
We found some time for the movies (yes movies - 2 on the same day). Saw two movies back to back - Mamma Mia and Journey to the Center of the Earth. They were both light-hearted, frothy fare but sometimes one wants just that. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face while watching Mamma Mia. It brought back so many memories of buying every ABBA record that came out in the late 70s, swapping lyrics, memorizing them, enjoying Chiquitita, I Have a Dream and Does Your Mother Know... the songs were as addictive as candy to the young me.
Now they've made a movie, a musical, using ABBA's music, and it is amazing to see how the story was written, thirty years since the music was created, and how each song fit each situation in such an engaging, amusing manner. I hadn't felt so entertained in a long time. I couldn't stop laughing at the lines, "Chiquitita tell me what's wrong, you're enchained by your own sorrow, in your eyes, there is no hope for tomorrow..." as Meryl Streep's Donna - is consoled by her two best friends.
"Does Your Mother Know" was another fun one with Christine Baranski playing the role of an older, botox'd femme fatale around several young island lads; the role reversal...with the woman singing the song was very amusing. Not to mention Pierce Brosnan and Meryl Streep singing, "So when you're near me darling, can't you hear me SOS, the love you gave me nothing else can save me, SOS". It was all so much fun that I wouldn't mind seeing it again.
We then stepped out of Mamma Mia and walked into the next theater to see Journey to the Center of the Earth. Another fun movie, more so because we were watching it with Anoushka and enjoying her edge of the seat reactions and her laughter at dialogs such as:
"Ever seen a dinosaur before?"
"Not one with skin on it!"
She expected to be hugged and cuddled every time the scenes got a little too intense for her.
Of course in Mamma Mia some of her comments left us speechless and gaping like:
"How did she have the baby if she never got married?"
"Why is Harry dancing with a guy?"
"She didn't sleep with hundreds of men, she only slept with three!"
I suppose they rate things PG-13 for some reason!
That's what we did for entertainment. I also spent a lot of time working because work did spillover into the weekend this time. As I ploughed through all my spreadsheets and got so much done, I wondered why employers still expect their employees to commute to work. Didn't wonder about that for the first time, of course. It has been a recurring thought for several years now. But it makes absolutely no sense to travel to work, burning several gallons of fossil fuels, just so my bosses can see my face. I was so productive and accomplished what I had to do with such speed and efficiency, working at home. Some day!
The violin class was a good one again. I was told I was the only one in a class of 40 or so people who could play Barcarolle well, with its rather complex slurs. Getting a compliment like that always helps re-ignite the old pilot light. I am really enjoying my practice these days.
On the Indian classical side, we closed the chapter on Kafi thaat and started Asavari - a very pleasant sounding raag missing Ga and Ni in the arohan and with a komal Dha, Ni and Ga in the avrohan. It sounds so melodious, with such a capacity for getting under one's skin.
Elsewhere I was reading about this particular raag and the author had mentioned that Asavari was all about renunciation, sacrifice, letting go. It reminded me of the post that preceded this one on this blog. It also made me wonder if the presence of so many komal notes contributed to this subjective evaluation of it.
How do people read so much into melodies and tunes? That's not to say, I don't. Music affects me in many hard to describe ways. But if I was to say that a certain piece of music stirred feelings of peace, tranquility, sadness, joy or even restlessness in me would people look at me strangely as if that isn't what it did for them at all, or would they agree? I ask because when someone saw renunciation reflected in this raag I found myself agreeing...is it the power of suggestion?
The other things I've read about, in reading about music and musicians:
1. Technical wizardry versus emotional playing of an instrument.
2. There is no improvisation, room for interpretation in western music (this in comments where Indian classical music is being compared to western classical music).
3. Fixed versus movable scale in the two types of music
4. The guru-shishya format of musical education in India followed by a comment that in the west a teacher is just a teacher, not given the same reverence as an Indian guru is.
I've come across these discussions often and I am in no position to comment on these issues because I am still such a novice, so generally ignorant. I am nowhere near any sort of technical mastery on the violin and I am certain I cannot introduce an emotional content into my playing unless I achieve some sort of technical confidence. But what bothers me is how some famous violinists are evaluated based on these two criterion, I fail to understand how someone who has dedicated a lifetime to the art of violin could leave emotions out of their playing. Music always expresses something internal, doesn't it? It can't be dry, it won't be music then. Or it will be music but it would be pointless for a musician to be playing music that is devoid of an emotional content.
As for improvisation and innovation...does it really never happen in western classical music? Of course the author probably meant that Bach and Beethoven need to be played as they were written, no room for unusual interpretations. That's probably true but isn't Jazz all about on the spot interpretations? And musicians who achieve the highly elusive emotional content in their playing...don't they take the smallest of liberties, playing things in a special way to enhance certain effects?
Fixed versus movable scale...I have no idea what that means. It appears to be movable to me in both types of music. Perhaps I need to know more before I can understand this.
As for the guru-shishya tradition, I have read enough books written by famous violinists (and other musicians), their biographies, interviews with them to know that they always mention who their teachers were, with tremendous reverence and respect, just as Indian musicians do. Perhaps there aren't things like gharanas here, but teachers are remembered and revered just the same.
The next time I have nothing to write about, probably tomorrow, I will write about the show I downloaded to my iPod and have been watching on by commute: Mad Men. Amazing show.