Rhythmic arrhythmia

And just like that, unlike every other year, despite 2020 being a bitch, its now that the time is going full steam ahead. Yeah, I know its all relative and all that science thing, but what translates to real life is what matters at the end of the day (or year).

It is always said that teaching is the new learning. Among the things that I pick up from my students, I thought this one was most common. While there are the kids who kinda pick up things without understanding (I don’t blame them. I started early, I did the same too), there are also a few grown ups who understand music, though not able to sing as per their need. These are people who might have perhaps discontinued learning for a long period of time, or who can now dwell on the beautiful structured arrangement of the basic lessons, or whatever. 

So these lessons basically are structured so that your sense of pitching and rhythm sits in your head like a nail in the coffin. Firm and not wanting to get out. (Surely not, since its a coffin). While the lessons advance, there is a lot of play with the meter and rhythm. And how the relative speed changes. While doing so, and while learning a few unusual rhythm patterns, most are either able to sing or clap to the rhythm. Stand-alone, its possible. But combine them and there, you get a perfect recipe for disaster. The pitching goes off. The claps become arrhythmic. I am not an advocate of memorising. I can’t do it myself, so there is no way on earth I’d ask someone else to do it. I encourage them to remember the pattern of the notes that they deliver so that one uncertainty is dealt with at one time.

Sigh. Uncertainty. How it can link such flawlessly to life. And as I write this, I smile with the feeling of rising and falling with the uncertain wave. Isn’t life just uncertain? I complicate things, don’t know if all of us do, but I do. And sometimes, when such real life examples come by, what do you do? I teach all my students to overcome one uncertainty at a time. Enjoy it. You’ve no idea how it’ll all sit through. The complicated note patterns sit through the rhythmic claps. They just do. You just don’t know when it will. But if you keep working on eliminating one uncertainty at a time, like for here - get the singing pattern right and don’t worry about the rhythm claps now. Once you are deft with that, your mind can work on the other unknown. 

Is this how simple life also is?

September, living it up finally

Bittersweet, I’ve always told. The news that I was going to put up on public platform in a few days from now got so effectively masked with the saddest news I’d heard in a long time. September, to me, in 2020 has become completely aware of itself and is just flexing it big time.

We all have certain memories associated with certain people, certain things from childhood. So much that we think that it’s the way of life. We get matured (sometimes) and then we realise that a lot of things have an expiry date. What makes it different with people is that, they don’t come printed with that date like the milk we buy. We know people expire, but we just don’t know when. That’s the reason most people keep telling us to live life to the fullest, like it was our last day, blah and blah.

Even before I was at a decent level in music to my own standards I had heard of Dr. SP Balasubramaniam (now listed with various spellings). Analysis of his voice in any form was kinda redundant, because it was the voice that created a standard. Of course, in my initial days, I wasn’t as multi lingual as today, but based on whatever I’d heard, it was how songs were to be delivered. Period. Nothing more said.

Cut to my engineering days when I was slowly diversifying, I discovered that it doesn’t matter if you could sing only difficult songs or only easy songs or whatever, but the voice quality that you’ve matters a lot. Technically is one thing, but emotionally surrendering to the song to render it in a way that makes for full justice for it. 

Second year, when I cleared my auditions for Yedhe Thumbi Haaduvenu for ETV Kannada. Shooting was in April, 2004. We were at Kanteerava studios, with heavy make up on and waiting to see when the shoot would begin. It was the first time I was on a reality show and this was the first episode. After some delay, a white Ford Ikon pulled up. A man so tall, so big got out of the car. You’d naturally expect some degree of dominance with how he walked, right? Wrong. There were two of the contestants standing by the door, and the families - maybe some 15 people in all. Not a big crowd. The mere fact that SPB bowed down and did a namaste to all of us even before entering the studio had me floored. 

We were on the stage, waiting for instructions when he walked in after getting dressed up and all that. He spoke to each of the 4 of us on stage, telling us that we have been trained in music and we are so talented and there is nothing to be nervous about. It was not required for him to say that. But such small gestures from such big stalwarts help small artists go a long way. 

I remember each comment he made, I remember how much of his talk was axed during editing. I remember all the titbits he shared. I remember how difficult it was to control laughter when he was around. I remember getting goosebumps when he sang on stage at the end of the second episode - baanallu neene. There are not enough words to describe the feeling. And all this, for aspiring musicians, young inexperienced musicians. I can only imagine the pain people close to him are enduring now. 

After that, I think over time as I started listening to more music, I discovered more about this voice. The ease of delivering any type of song. The antics on stage with fellow musicians, the soul stirring songs which had audiences crying like babies. From Oruvan oruvan to Chennai express. From Mettupodu to Kooraku kallikere. From Pavadisu paramaatma to Tazhuvudu. From Kathalikkum pennin to Shankarabharanam. It’s impossible to listen to even 50% of his work in one lifetime. If that’s not a rich legacy that one should aspire to create, I don’t know what is.

This news brought unfathomable grief, uncontrolled tears and so much of emotion. It almost felt like a part of me is never returning back. While I’m angry with myself for not pushing myself to finish a recording of the song we made for him, it seems like its all destiny’s plan. 

16 years back, when a 20 year old aspiring singer went on stage and was fumbling with the mic to introduce himself, this legend put his hand on his shoulder and put him at ease, with a friendly comic. Gosh. I never thought I’d write a eulogy for him. Such is life. That’s how it works. 

Mind games

It’s one of those times when you want to write. Open the window and keep staring into blank space till something actually strikes you. And then you open with a ramble.

September. I’d been blaming the poor month for all its bittersweet symphonies thus far in my life. Not sure if the same is valid for 2020. This has anyways been a landmark year from the time whatever had to happen, happened. Or was it something that shouldn’t have? We’d never know. Who’d know? Not us, for sure. But it pushes me to think if this was the plan. Was all this a part of the plan?

While there is one side which urges you to be positive, pushes you to stay motivated, the reality kinda bites in your ass. So I’ve kinda given up on all the false hopes. That said, how do you actually live? In constant trepidation of an uncertain, bleak future? Or is it a millennial YOLO exactly because the time is uncertain? Hobbes (of Calvin and Hobbes, yes) had shot it down long before the pandemic hit our shores. It took me an animated character to understand that we don’t live once. We live everyday. We die once. When will YOLO change to YODO?

While life has tried to come about to its usual, its only a matter of time till all of us start losing it. Thankfully, we are not confined to four walls, we have the internet and a little bit of work gets done physically. More than being confined, the fact that we don’t know how long this is going to last for is what is eating us up. 

I had read that the mind erases the bad things that have happened in the past. The good things keep flashing so that we feel good about something that has happened. The mind also plays around by projecting future scenarios for the exact same reason. When we hope for a certain visual we have in our head, we get inspired by it, and tend to work toward it. But when we get there, our mind already has shown us much better visuals to aim for. Talk about them mind games. 

What mind games do you let your mind play in uncertain times like these? Of course its rhetorical. I’m 100% sure none of my blog readers would be the survivors of our preceding pandemic. So is it a live today, lets see tomorrow or a hopelessly positive approach that’s beyond practicality that tomorrow’s a better day? 

Guess our best friend, “THE TIME”, has answers to all questions.

2020

2020. Just that. Not meaning to open on a fairly negative note, but if we survive this year, we’d remember this more than ever, more than anything that ever happened in our lives.

Countless references have already been made, maybe more than that is the depressing nonsense, the exaggeration by media, the foolishness manifested everywhere from educated people, gullible illiterate people to world leaders. Now, at this point, maybe it is wrong to hope and expect anything from anyone. Maybe the one forte that’s on constant display is the common sense, or the lack of it.

With the number of motivational speakers, content creators (or other fancy jargon that you may use as you please - really, come up with anything that can help you stand out) and other folks who are trying to keep the world inspired and positive, maybe they are doing a good job. Maybe because I have never believed in that crap. The true inspiration lies in the eyes of the person who’s seeking it. Not someone who’s posting videos everyday about how his or her life has changed and how they want to make a difference in your life. Like the rule of the nature is, ‘Look, don’t see. You’ll find what you want’. But if people are trying to make a living of this, well, who am I to stop. They can, because there are people who are creating a demand for them.

There’s one thing I needed to talk about related to this. While there are innumerable people trying to motivate people and share their success story, there is this incredible urge to glorify failure. While I get the point that they are trying to make things more relatable to the real world, its not really a positive thing now, is it? Just because something works or worked with you doesn’t create a rule book for what the rest of the world has to follow. There are people with clarity about their career from school days. Then there are people who keep switching till they find peace. There are also people who surrender and make peace with what they have. Like I’ve always told before, success is very relative. What is success to me isn’t success to you. But then again, I really can’t advocate anything to anyone at this point of time. It’s kinda useless.

What 2020 has taught us is probably reinforce the age old saying - Live for the day. Little did we know it would come to mean in the literal sense. All the planning, all the postponing is what took a massive hit. It’s more like wake up, hope that all people dear to you are well and alive and do what you can, with no idea what’s going to hit us next. Like change is the only constant, uncertainty is only certain now.

Self recognition

So, this was quite irregular, despite having time to forcefully chill at home. Its difficult for someone, for anyone who has been following a regular routine to chill. Or maybe, I think its the force that's playing with the sanity. Had you chosen to chill, you'd just chill. But the current situation is such that any chilling beyond your home, might lead to consequences that are, well, chilly. (Sorry, I had to).

I am trying hard to refrain from posting about CoViD, from the impossibly ridiculous measures the world leaders are trying to take, from big failures of (big) governments in handling pandemics even after cutting some slack over letting them trying to grapple with it. It gets extremely annoying at times, that I end up not doing anything apart from brooding over it some days. But what can one do. The system is such. Deep rooted in a lot of unwanted things that its almost impossible to rid off of. But again, that might just be another failed acceptance of things. Sad, but true.

While we are all being made to sit at home and we are trying quite hard to retain our mental stability, we are turning our attention to social media, our only source of any human interaction apart from family members. Then there is also a conquest of completing all available series and movies on streaming services. Bless the internet, and the people who have been working to make sure our bandwidth isn't compromised.

I saw the newer version of Mahabharat that was telecast on Star Plus, some 6 - 7 years back. While I instantly became a fan of many characters, there was also a lot of gyan to take away from it. The character Karn is shown as someone who's oppressed about the recognition he gets and is hell bent on disproving it to the world. He is told time and again, that its a futile exercise. Well, nothing new to add on here. But its these simple things that make you sit up and ponder.

The knowledge you acquire to improve yourself and perhaps use it as a tool to help others out of their ignorance (not necessarily in archery, in life too) will definitely come to your aid, sooner than later. But the route might be a little less arduous if its taken up as a challenge. Of course, there is also a challenge to disprove the world which aids in accelerating the whole knowledge acquiring process. Something that pushes you. But one needs to be weary of what it is pushing you toward. Is it a fad for like 30 days that you are doing to kill time? Is it something you are doing to make sure no one else does it? Or is it something you've challenged yourself to do? The third iteration is the most beneficial one, clearly. When something is forced or you are challenged by an external force to do something, initially, though it might seem exciting, it really doesn't do much to help you improve yourself. And it might be really difficult, impossible even, to find people who wouldn't like to improve themselves. While on this journey to be a better version of you than yesterday, you start concentrating on the task itself rather than the outcome. Which is the abolition of recognition. The minute you recognise yourself, the other recognitions fade pale in comparison.

Legacy

It’s really kinda hard to accept the fact that there was no customary December or January blog post. It should have either been the recap of the year that was, or a very neutral emotion of looking forward for what 2020 would bring in. The fact is that, to make time for this blog post, it took me a little bit of time searching. And its February. But better late than never. Happy new year!

January went by like a breeze, a chilly, fast, breeze. Things went by - good, bad and ugly. I think most part of 2019 was also like that. There were some surprises that time brought in, some courage that the situations showed me on to, some tough decisions, some laughter, some crying, lot of alcohol, and a shit load of unachieved crap. It’s good that way, because you have a remainder to carry forward and start from there, but bad because the balance is never fucking ending.

I made a write up in the beginning of 2019. I called it Vision 35/Mission 2020. I give fancy names like that (sometimes only, strictly). It sounds very movie like. I liked the ring it has to it. Most part of the goals or objectives that had to be achieved are still in tact. Consistency is good, but the execution isn’t.

Anyways, with two topics that I kinda wanted to write about, the first was Legacy. Not the dictionary meaning of inheritance, but more like a person’s legacy. It’s something that hit me about it a few weeks back. It’s always spoken of when there is a certain quantum to it in terms of importance. Or, if I may, after a person passes away or moves away from your life. But do we not realise that the legacy is created during the course of life itself? I mean, of course, every day can’t be historical or monumental to a regard where everyone comes out and praises you for what you’ve done. The same way that every song that’s composed can’t become an anthem. But, even the minutest of the things that a person does that defines him, becomes his legacy. The minute the person chooses to step out of that, its kinda like an identity loss. Don’t get me wrong. I am not even subtly hinting at being closed to the idea of change. Change is constant. Everything, everyone - you including, are changing at this very moment. It’s not the change that I’m averse to. It’s the acceptance of the change without heeding to your own intrinsic trait is what is lethal. While there are aspects of you that change, there are certain things that don’t. The certain things that don’t change probably have come to define you over time. By trying to change, or by relenting to worldly stuff and trying to fit in, how does an individual retain his identity? Not everyone has the legacy that a chameleon does. The poor thing does that not to fit in, but its a trait. It’s just sad that the colour, a physical entity that changes there, is attributed to a more psychological thing in us, humans. 

I wanted to conclude, but I realised there isn’t one coming up. It’s just an unanswered open thought. Why does this happen? How can people completely give up an ideology that they are known for or associated with, in favour of trying to blend in? What do you want to be remembered for? For a person who stood for nothing? For a person who changed so much that no one knew who he was? It’s like what people used to tell me all through school because I was good at imitating teachers. “Don’t imitate them, you’ll forget the way you talk yourself”. If that had happened indeed, I’d not be writing a blog on conserving identity. 

Peace.