Ephemeralisms

The Little Boy and the Red Ball

2010-03-04T16:43:00.002+05:30

Slightly unsettling story that has the potential to lead to a good bit of introspection, written by Sourabh Phadke

The Little Boy and the Red Ball

Now I’m going to tell you this story very slowly.
Slowly, since I want you to see the story.
It’s called ‘The Little Boy and The Red Ball’.

There was once a little boy with defective eyes.
If you showed him the colour Red, he would see Blue.
So you would show him a Red ball, but he would see a Blue ball.
You would show him a Red apple, and a Blue apple would be what he saw.
You’d show him a Red crayon, and he would see a Blue crayon.
So our little boy with defective eyes started going to school.
There amongst many other things, they decided to teach him ‘Colours’.
So one day the teacher sat him down and showed him a Red ball.
“Little boy, do you know what colour this ball is? It’s called ‘Red’. That’s spelt as R-E-D and pronounced as ‘Red’.”
So the little boy who saw the ball as blue, learnt that the colour was called ‘Red’.
Spelt as R-E-D and pronounced, ‘Red’.
So you would put three coloured balls in front of the little boy: One Blue, One Yellow and One Red, and would ask him to choose the ‘Red’ ball.
And the little boy would pick the correct ball up even though he saw it as blue.
He saw it as Blue but had learnt it as ‘Red’.
So you would throw a Red ball at him, and he would catch a ball which was Blue.
You would ask him to bite into a big, Red, juicy apple, and he would bite into an apple which was big, Blue and juicy.
You would ask him to draw a pretty Red rose with a Red crayon, and he would draw a pretty rose which was as blue as all the other pretty roses he had seen.
But he would call it ‘Red’ since that’s how you spell the colour: R-E-D, pronounced ‘Red’.
But there’s a slight problem with our story.
One which we can’t even see.
We would never find out about the defect in the little boy’s eyes since we saw a Red ball and called it ‘Red’ while he saw the ball as ‘Blue’ and yet called it ‘Red’.
The little boy never saw our ‘Red’ and we his ‘Blue’.
It was all ‘Red’ for us.
Spelt as R-E-D, which is pronounced ‘Red’. Period.
So perhaps the little boy didn’t really have ‘defective’ eyes.
His eyes were perfect and beautiful, only because they were his own.
And perhaps we all are little boys and little girls with perfect and beautiful eyes.
And the ball is ‘Red’. Spelt as R-E-D, which is pronounced as: ‘Red’.

Jack, the Master Trader

2009-07-18T19:30:00.005+05:30

An idea that had been trying, for a while now, to worm its way into my brain’s list of things tagged ‘actually worth thinking about’, has finally managed it. Ergo, I now have something to write about.

Why is it that I must simultaneously aspire towards my ideals of art as well as of society (immediate and otherwise)? On the surface of it and often (very inconveniently) deep down below, the two are incorrigibly at war. Unfortunately, their symbiosis is undeniable.

Are honesty, open-mindedness, dynamism, alertness etc in every aspect of everything, not precursors to being an honest, open-minded, dynamic, alert etc musician? Everything that I regularly convince myself I must be, in order to be a good musician, I find that I must incorporate into my person, into my conduct with society as well.

This is all very well and very virtuous. But this takes up a lot of brain-continuum. Wouldn’t it be easier if I could allow myself to file social responsibility away as another avoidable form of cacophony and focus on music instead? On an everyday level, this dilemma is cacophonic.

Is it acceptable, for instance, that right in the middle of an extremely intellectually and emotionally demanding concert, I’m acutely aware of the resources that we as musicians consume? If I’m out walking on the street with a tune in my head that’s asking to be sung or composed or altered or heard, does that justify my ignoring everything I inescapably see around me that I think needs to be changed? When I’m singing, I try to reassess everything that comes out of my mouth. I try to be open to other ideas, I try to make sure I don’t stagnate and that what I’m singing is honest. Wouldn’t I be a hypocrite if I don’t do that when I’m talking to somebody? Or writing this post? Writing this is a bit of an effort to sort this issue out. Shouldn’t I just be singing right now?

At the root of this cacophony, I think, is guilt. When I’m singing, I’m guilty about not doing twenty other things, and doing them well. When I’m doing any of those things, I’m guilty that I’m not singing.

On the other hand (the masochist in me is glad there are always at least two of those), maybe I’m on the right track. Maybe I have to try to be good at everything, because maybe by trying to be the master of all trades, I come closer to being the master of me. Because, at the risk of invoking Batman and Descartes in the same sentence, I think therefore I am, but it is what I do that defines me. I think I’m a trader – that’s what I’m trying to be a master of.

Either that or I still haven’t accepted my own decision to sing.

In response to a defense of Art

2009-04-07T01:56:00.003+05:30

After Listening to Ashok Vajpeyi's lecture, entitled 'Why Art?'
-------------------------

Contemporary consciousness gives more importance to objects than it does to ideas.

This statement gives shape to a lingering subconscious doubt about the prevalent perception of 'reality' in society and its inevitable effect on me. While this is probably an inconsequential (though not irrelevant) observation, to the artist, each object is an idea and each idea is a tangible object.

Art allows you to live in a world of ideas. This is a privilege. Ironically, the growth of art is not separable from its performance, which is a solidification, an objectification (or, at least, an execution) of the idea. This line of thought is probably escapist, but there is the example of the naathpanthi fakir who makes no single location his home for more than a few days. Why dwell upon a single point when ten others beckon? Probably because doing so will reveal a subtler set of ideas contained within that single point. Still, बिखर बिखर बनत जात.

Coming back to the point, it must be admitted that society's material perception of reality attempts to 'package' the artists imagined reality in a very ironic and futile attempt to make that reality more 'real'. The artist's often vulnerable consciousness is his greatest culprit because it tries to give shape to his ideas for the wrong reasons. Solidifying an idea in order to make it grow or in order to be able to look beyond its superficial form and appreciate its innards is one thing. Solidifying it to make it more accessible and more communicable is another. Is this a wrong reason? Must this be fought?

Art lies in the imperfections, not in a single ultimate truth.
The cosmos is imperfect. It is made up of imperfections.

Does art not aspire towards this ultimate truth? While it dwells and feeds upon imperfections, it simultaneously attempts to overcome them. The श्रुति is a fine example. Can this process be called the practice of art? Do we avoid a direct pursuit of this truth because we're scared of actually finding it? Like Linda Hess says, Kabir talks about the शून्य शिखर, which represents the achievement of this truth, which has as its consequence the death of your identity - a death we constantly live in fear of. If the cosmos is imperfect, this ultimate truth must be fictional - 'just' another imagined idea. What then makes it so desirable and terrifying, simultaneously? Is it becasue we want to free ourselves of the imperfections that lie between it and us? But then this is the realm of art. So do we anchor ourselves to this realm because of the art that lies within it, or because of a fear of the salvation that lies at the other end? Do we want to sheild ourselves from actually visiting the other side and seeing for ourselves the greenness of that grass? Is this inability to let go what gives the artist his चिरनिराश ह्रदय? रहने दो सागर - ए - मीना मेरे आगे. Is this why even Kabir kept composing?

On the other hand, the process of ideation may be a gift that we have that allows us to at least realise the potential for or the possiblity of perfection - in our respective worlds of ideas. Ithaca is inconsequential because it doesn't exist. On the other hand, घट ही में तीरथ न्हाया राम.
So, essentially, do we, must we, should we try to go anywhere?

Tolkienheaded in Darjeeling...

2006-09-24T20:02:00.000+05:30

Mithrandiri (Tolkienesque)

Astride wind-chariots thundering west,
downward bound, the clouds did sail!
They sought for me – was this in jest?
But they bade me ride that hallowed gale!

I tarried not – I sallied forth
with humbled head and awestruck eye.
My feet made paths where there were naught
and all about me did they fly

Ever onward did the grey host speed
consuming every plunging dale.
The rumour of their formless steed
was heard in every mountain’s wail.

For I was in the wondrous lands
of thunderbolt as they were called –
wrought of old by mighty hands;
with living rock and greenwood walled.

And ever onward was I led
agape, astonished, overwhelmed,
afraid my foot might cruelly tread
this land with myriad beauty helmed

And lest my tiring, faltering stare
should fail – Oh benevolence!
Each several thing of beauty there
Then melted into consonance

With humbled head and awestruck eye
I followed a forgotten trail
and then ere long it brought me nigh
the entrance to a hidden dale.

Where birds sang, many, sweet and fair
I hearkened to their beckoning song
and ventured forth into their lair,
when, after climbing hard and long,

I came upon a mighty stair
fashioned with naught but living earth
and velvet grass and flowers rare –
each step was of enormous girth.

And as each step I left behind,
the splendour that my eyes beheld
was as bright light to the dark-worn blind;
my thirst for lore-sung grace was quelled.

The rangers grey did condescend
that day – they bowed and made me soar
that this glimpse might make me comprehend
the grace of distant Valinor.

Darjeeling, Summer '06

Translation 1

2006-05-29T10:58:00.000+05:30

My first attempt at translation. This is an excerpt from the foreword to a certain book that my dad wrote in his hyper-poetic and equally fluid hindi - and translating it for the english edition of the book had me trying to keep it as poetic and as fluid while coming up with english parallels to natively hindi - hindustani (musically, not patriotically) - terms. Was one hell of a task. Am not too unhappy about how it turned out...for now...

**********

Music is a fluid structuring, as opposed to the stasis of the painter’s canvas or the sculptor’s stone. The flow of the raga has its own narrowings and widenings and with its ephemeral transformations from a multitude of shimmering rivulets to a vast, all-encompassing ocean, it rivals the many avatars of the Narmada; but our raga-river keeps returning to its source to begin its journey again and again, instead of flowing on into oblivion.

The society that our swaras dwell in has its own codes of conduct. The swaras have their own relationships – they have their unions and their separations, their own gaits of coming and going and are very vulnerable to the influence of the aesthetic values that great artists confer upon them.

The sustenance of these concepts during a performance brings a raga into being. The bandish is the medium through which the raga is presented and embellished. The singers of the Agra gharana loved these bandishes -these raga-personifications - limitlessly. An attempt to define the bandish would go something like this: A well structured note-composition which contains somnolent, unarticulated indications of the improvisation possible in a particular raga, but never a complete representation of the raga can be called a bandish in the realm of Indian Classical Music. A raga on its way to realisation, and its entire aesthetic, can only be safeguarded by putting it into the indicative cast of the bandish.

The ambiguity of a bandish’s dormant suggestiveness can be reconciled only by unveiling the bandish improvisationally so that the facet of the raga hidden in it shows forth. The artist’s mood decides the temperament of this unveiling – sometimes of measuring the possibilities of grammar and sometimes enthralled by some indefinable music-induced emotion.

Unveiling a bandish imrovisationally requires a series of avartans (rhythm cycles). Both the avartan and the gait of the raga believe in being reborn and also in reaping what was sowed in their previous existences. Each avartan’s destiny is inevitably decided by all the good and evil done in the preceding avartan.

Classical music is essentially this process of using a sequence of avartans to examine and unveil a bandish. This sequence of avartans does not fetter the creative abilities of the artist or, for that matter, the raga.

The rules and the restrictions of raga-tala have their own grammar, but the realm of artistic creativity lies, enchantingly mysterious, at the very periphery of this grammar. The inspired artist walks this mute, ambiguous, flexible borderline tightrope with his procession of avartans, oscillating between these two realms in his eternal quest for balance – for the golden mean. Beyond art’s veiled confines, this process gives the immortal traditional principles of art a subtle elasticity and protects them from the threat of stasis. This is the domain of art, of creation, of improvisation.

The bandish is the khayal’s only medium of expression.
The three primary constituents of the bandish are:

1. The swara interactions characteristic of the raga.

2. Rhythm, with its connotations of rhythm-work (the manipulative exploration of rhythm), rhythmicness (the condition of being rhythmic), lilt and syncopation.

3. Words – their language meanings as well as their auditory, phonic meanings, their sonic resonance, their ability to provide cadence and the drama hidden in their pronunciation.

The vocal specificities of pronunciation also add their own colour to the singing of a bandish. The pronunciation of the vowels and consonants of a word adds meanings of tonality and cadence to it, apart from its language meaning. Artists, most notably those of the Agra gharana, have adorned and enriched music by creatively incorporating these concepts into their renditions.

...

2006-05-03T16:39:00.000+05:30

An offshoot of my next poem which leapt out of a compulsion to write again, the end of a long tolkien obsession and darjeeling.

I seek roads that go on and on -
From many a door have I begun,
That ere stasis and age have won
My havens I should chance upon.

Nightsounds

2006-03-10T17:16:00.000+05:30

Past midnight hour, when most distractions die,
   An outlawed world's cacophony then blooms
   As if it were but myriad remnant fumes
From a blaze that charred the noise of the day gone by.
A brave new world of subtle sounds that rise
   And grow from one of night-time's many wombs;
   And before tomorrow sends them to their tombs,
They steadily claim their share of our skies.
Their discord fills the deepening moonlessness -
   Relentlessly their obscure haze now grows.
     While i'm deprived of the barricade of sight
They rob me of repose - my ears fluoresce.
   For their being does so blatantly expose
     The hoax that is the silence of the night.

Distractions in a neverending quest...

2005-10-24T22:30:00.000+05:30

The reds - they throng the crowding greens
         as night falls on their tranquil row.
In ordered chaos, black throngs white -
         the outpourings of Fiodor.
I find no semblance of thy form!
         Pray, Salvation, where art thou?
In wood alive? Wood dead? Or in
         the dragonflies of Bangalore?

To an old wooden statuette (In Progress)

2005-07-27T01:13:00.000+05:30

Polished, brown, obediently erect,
At peace with the livery of your day,
Through ever-changing seasons, you have slept,
While every passing season had its way.

Each hurricane, each wave of potent heat,
They shattered every shield and went straight through;
And in your slumber - blissful, ignorant, sweet -
Shaped every aspect they could find, of you.

Through each attack you obliviously bore,
The oak whose wood made you, it lay in wait.
Through years of agony, it watched you for
Some sign of change in your somnolent state.

When no hint came, that oak, that mighty tree,
It unflaggingly, firmly rooted stood.
It doubted not, despite the agony
Its ever-living, ever-growing wood.

What made you so content with ignorance?
Your craftsman? Who, for all that he was worth,
Could not fathom your sheer brilliance
And put you on a pedestal at birth.

All of your existence has been unfurled
There! On that pedestal - your throne, your seat!
That pedestal's become your very world -
A world that ends just inches from your feet.

You thought you had a will that was your own,
An upright arrogance that none could touch.
But though, upon your plinth, you stood alone,
The plinth, it morphed, it twisted and, as such,

Conceded its position, compromised
To fit each whim of each well-meaning knave.
Imbecile! Have you never despised
That every passing hand made you its slave?

Unintelligible. Do not read.

2005-05-01T14:24:00.000+05:30

Truth, through every act,
Absconded with practised tact.

Then the heavens gave
A naive knave

His first glance at futile fact.

told ya...

Aestheticism and the Bai Jerbai Wadia Library

2005-02-25T20:08:00.000+05:30

Data communications and networking is an incredibly boring subject. The bai jerbai wadia library is, therefore, relatively (i've always wanted to quote einstein) interesting. The effect of that cause (Newton? no?) resulted in what follows...

P(re)S: for those still clueless...this poem happened when i was sitting in the fergi library - study room, staring at the ceiling immediately above the girls section and,
1. Noticed a weirdly suspended ladder that i was pretty sure could not be put to use
2. Was suddenly inspired by the sheer massive-ness of that hall
3. Realised that i hadnt written for eons and anything was better than that @#$@$! textbook.
here goes...

**********

A solitary suspended ascension gropes
just inches away from its anonymous creator, miles below

The peak of it merges into harsh symmetry
but curves of rust - just short of arabesques - team up with an almost graceful window behind...
A feeble effort to quell the ruthlessness of the colonial triangle

Volumes of emptiness overwhelm sound into submission -
It exists throughout the nothingness, but almost silently.
Almost.

But the behemoth stays grand...
It's two paling seneschals counter decade after decade of grime
with donations of their own sepia
and in sepia -
the behemoth stays grand.

A Masterpiece Lost

2005-01-17T20:29:00.000+05:30

When turquoise blue met aqua-marine
But awesome terror stood in between

Excesses of azure display
Of approaching exquisite dismay

And the artist, who sought an afflatus attack;
He took that blue into the black

Hibernation

2004-12-07T16:00:00.000+05:30

Make haste, tomorrow, bring forth full light
Thy subtle sheen charms me tonight

Thy brightening east shall intertwine
My brightening thought, and glimmer, thine

Restrain, this eve, ere thought takes flight,
I wish I may, I wish I might

At light, thy eloquence fair, portray,
I wish I might, I wish I may

Make haste, tomorrow, bring forth full light
Lest thy dawn sees my dusk, my night