Category: Blog

Musical Lineage

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As readers of this blog will be aware, my music tastes have been altered slightly in the last 6 months, what with my rediscovery of how much I enjoyed classical music. Yesterday, while spending time on the internet, I discovered this fascinating piano teacher family tree. You can take a look here to contextualize this post.

I’m enjoying this classical music wave so much that I genuinely hope that the love affair I have going on continues for a long while. However, in the fear that perhaps it won’t, I’m consuming a fair amount of it while I definitively know that I enjoy it. Seeing this piano teacher family tree type diagram was quite astonishing.

When I started going for lessons again, in January, I learned about Hanon and Czerny. I’m yet to procure my copy of their exercises, but my teacher told me about their prominence, and how much their exercises help develop finger independence and strength, and how long they’ve been in use for. It surprised me that I had not learned about them earlier, given how many piano lessons I had gone to. I spent a large amount of time reading about these composers and their techniques, and I was floored by how they conceptualized all of these drills. It’s pretty easy to think about, but to sit and notate, and see demonstrable results – and start a school of thought based on pure technique is quite something, and a feat I found worthy of admiration.

This graphic sort of put their influence into perspective. Particularly Czerny. There are so many influential, incredible concert pianists and composers who have been taught by him or by his pupils – and in the same school of thought, no doubt. I sat on my piano in the evening after that, and at the moment, I’m learning Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata again, and it blew my mind that Beethoven taught Czerny who then taught so many people.

It shows you the whole “six degrees of separation” theory in action. There is a minute possibility that my own entry into the world of the instrument is perhaps 14 or 15 degrees down from Czerny, given his influence. If that is so, no matter where the influence comes from, perhaps I can channel that spirit into me the next time I have music flowing through my fingers.

Connectivity

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After three weeks of being away from University, I gave in today and used my phone-a-friend option, to try connecting with a friend whose company I looked forward to everyday in class. We’ve been good friends for a while, which is not to say that he is my closest friend, yet a friend with whom I have been able to share every portion of the last five years. More often than not, we used to sit near each other in class, allowing us to talk about books and the law – which has, for the most part, been my preoccupation.

On that call today, I thought a lot about connectivity. While I’ve been privileged enough to be able to speak to my friends regularly on WhatsApp, chatting with them pretty much every day, I was thinking about how, for each of us, our preferences towards the form and manner of connectivity inspires the way our interactions take place and our relationships are built. It does take considerable effort for somebody who has an aversion toward phone calls, for example, to pick up the phone and speak to someone else. As it does for people who are bad at texting to reply to messages. However, in an era where so much technology is available, attitudes towards this technology defines, in a large way the nature of relationships that are built up.

I thought back for a while to my time at school – primary school, that is. It was difficult to become friends with new people, largely because while friendships were created out of common spaces and common circumstances (take the classes I attended, or, for example, summer camps I was able to participate in), they didn’t really sustain beyond that time period – because I hadn’t set up my e-mail ID yet, and we didn’t call each other up on the landline. The only person I do remember calling up, and that too, pretty religiously, is my childhood best friend. I believe I spoke to him after school on the phone a reasonable amount, especially when our classes changed and we ended up in different sections. It was, and remains, a fond memory – and the only reason I still remember his landline number (which has not changed).

That was on my mind today: the transitions that connections have gone through. Nokia’s old tagline was Connecting People. One day that was true of hardware. That era lies only in my memory palace now.

GloPoWriMo 2020: 5/30

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Today’s prompt is honestly the toughest prompt I’ve seen the good folks over at NaPoWriMo put out.

It’s called the “Twenty Little Poetry Projects,” and was originally developed by Jim Simmerman. The challenge is to use/do all of the following in the same poem. Of course,  if you can’t fit all twenty projects into your poem, or a few of them get your poem going, that is just fine too!

  1. Begin the poem with a metaphor.
  2. Say something specific but utterly preposterous.
  3. Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered randomly throughout the poem.
  4. Use one example of synesthesia (mixing the senses).
  5. Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.
  6. Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.
  7. Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.
  8. Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.
  9. Use an example of false cause-effect logic.
  10. Use a piece of talk you’ve actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you don’t understand).
  11. Create a metaphor using the following construction: “The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun) . . .”
  12. Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.
  13. Make the persona or character in the poem do something he or she could not do in “real life.”
  14. Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.
  15. Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.
  16. Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.
  17. Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but that finally makes no sense.
  18. Use a phrase from a language other than English.
  19. Make a non-human object say or do something human (personification).
  20. Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that “echoes” an image from earlier in the poem.

I do not see myself weaving all 20 of these into a singular piece – for the most part because that does not interest me. Thus, I will be incorporating one of these things.

Peach Perfect 

“You’re a peach!”,
Merriam-Webster exclaims is the best example of a metaphor,
To call someone pleasing.
Au contraire, my peachy friend,
Peaches are not pleasing,
Their colour, in fact, they’re merely leasing,
Their appearance?
Round gluteus maxima, I say.

Oh, and the descriptions of their taste,
“Juicy orbs of sunburst deliciousness”,
Clearly, you pick fruit with haste,
But, come now, we must do our due diligence –
and spot the fur from a mile, nay, a marathon away.

You may think we’re brothers,
Maybe the hair gives you that notion,
In reality, we’re third cousins,
My genes contain some of the worse portions – and
as a result my appearance is a gag,
“A potato with fur”,
“A haggly sack”

I so dislike this peachy business,
Why must he get all the praise,
The next time you see someone please you,
Please call them a kiwi, I say.
“You’re a kiwi!”
You see, it rolls off the tongue,
Kiwi is two syllables,
While peach is just one.

Audiobooks

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Yesterday, I learned that Audible allows you to sign-up for the service and download a free book. Now, of course, there are a ton of audiobooks available to listen to for free on YouTube, and I could have downloaded mp3 files somewhere. I’m certain of it. However, in times of isolation, you find yourself making decisions you wouldn’t ordinarily make. That was how I downloaded the application, signed-in with my amazon credentials and hunted around for a book to listen to.

I generally wear earphones while running because I like to be doing something alongside my run. This is particularly true when I’m not running on a nice trail, or doing an out-and-back run. During these runs, I’m often circling the same space repeatedly. At the moment, my field is my terrace, and it’s that small space I’m running around in. I tried playing a couple of mind games, even writing about one of them recently, but I gave in to how mind-numbing it became and sought to fill my ears with music and podcasts. This new acquisition upended that.

I found this lovely book, The Forty Rules of Love, which is about Rumi and Shams-i-Tabrez, and has honestly been narrated by the most wonderful voice artist I’ve heard (especially since he’s the first) – he’s doing a phenomenal job of bringing both the characters and the scenes to life.

I wonder if I can read more books this way. If so, it might be worthwhile looking into how I can implement this in my day-to-day.

GloPoWriMo 2020: 4/30

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Today’s prompt asks me to write a poem based on an image from a dream.

I get this recurring dream of me floating around in space after having a heavy meal – a literal gas giant, if you will. It isn’t so bad, I’m enjoying my life up there, till I realize nobody has the power or ability to bring me down. Quite often that is where the dream stops, and it’s what I’ve chosen to depict today, tugged along by Wordsworth dearest.

Gas Giant

Ballooned up,
No strings attached –
I floated around in empty space,
Without the ability to move around freely
Something kept me in place,
Unbeknownst to me,
I caused a crisis,
An eclipse
Preventing the sun’s rays from brightening up
Anyone’s days,
I lingered,
Lonely as a cloud.

 

GloPoWriMo 2020: 2/30

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Today’s prompt is to write about a specific place.

School

Primary school was a 3-minute drive from home,
Exit the car park,
Take a left,
Take a right,
Make a U-turn,
Take a right,
You have arrived.
Every morning, I’d be a passenger, witness to this route in my semi-dazed state,
Each afternoon, I’d be a compatriot to my father, awake and
Describing every minute of my day.
Take a left,
Make a U-turn,
Take a left,
Take a right,
Enter the car park,
You are home.
In those 3 minutes, I’d fill my dad’s ears with all sorts of stories,
Excitedly babbling away – never paying attention,
To the road that he’d take,
If only I had,
Perhaps I would have recognized,
That the shortest route to my school,
Was just a straight line.
Unfortunately, that was not to be,
My grandfather and I walked, in 40 degrees,
We exited the car park,
Took a left,
Took a right,
Made a U-turn,
Took a right,
We had arrived.

Gaming

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I have a chequered history with videogames.

When I was younger, all my friends had PS2’s that they gamed on. Except my best friend and I. This sort of put us at this weird relationship with our friends. We had (and I still have) Gameboys, and we played on those whenever we had sleepovers, aside from computer games that we had access to. Aside from that though, our conversations and entertainment activities involved the outside world for the most part, with day long trips to places like Children’s City.

At sleepovers with my other friends though, and on evenings when people weren’t in a mood to go out, I’d spend the evening at their apartment playing in, or watching them play videogames on their PS2’s. It always left me very dissatisfied, because I was always terrible at these videogames whenever my turn came – and I was made fun of because I was so awful, but I never really had the chance to practice, so to speak – given that I didn’t have a console to game on. For a while, that left me disappointed.

When we went to purchase a new television – and I can remember this very, very clearly, my parents were looking at all these television models, but I was on the side looking at this brand new Playstation Portable that had just been released by Sony. It was all over the news, and it was this fantastic hand-held console that allowed you to play these incredible games and all of this multimedia the way you would on the PS2, but in your hands. I was in awe.

I was particularly in awe because the game I saw was Need for Speed: Most Wanted, and I loved the game demo I was shown.

My dad surprised me by ordering me a Playstation Portable, with 2 free games. I saw the box on the desk in my room without an explanation, and honestly, to this day, it remains one of the happiest memories for me. My parents were very strict with it, because they didn’t want me to become addicted, so I only ever played the Playstation Portable when I was on holiday. Else, during the term, it was kept away from me, so I never got to play much. I made sure my holidays were filled with the PSP though, and I enjoyed it so much. My parents encouraged that limited playing, and at the beginning of holidays, when I had done particularly well on exams, I was allowed to buy games. I bought myself Ratatouille once, and man, what an investment that was.

However, soon, the PSP stopped being the “in-thing”. I couldn’t really play online, and I wanted to – and the console I wanted was the PS3. The PS3 released in 2006, and while we were relocating to India, I remember my mother spending some time looking at the feasibility of buying me another console and deciding against it. The PS3 in general came up in conversation on several occasions: I asked for one because I really wanted to be able to play with my friends online, but it was quite over-budget, and my parents wanted to encourage me to be outside and play in the outdoors, especially given that we had just moved to this fantastic residential space with all these amenities. Everytime I brought it up, I got shot down – and I used to be quite upset each time, I remember. Till my parents relented in Grade 9, around the start of 2012.

By that time, the PS3 Slim was out, and it had all these functionalities beyond just gaming. My parents agreed that I could have one if I sold my PSP, and at the time, I was okay with that condition. I sold my PSP to CeX in Bangalore, and got a great deal for it, and off-set that money toward the PS3, and some games, with my parents funding the rest.

It was a wild few months. However, at the time we bought it, I realized quickly that my interest in playing the PS3 was limited, and I didn’t really make the time to play because the academic pressure from school was going up and I was sort of succumbing to that, by putting pressure on myself. I did play the PS3 for a summer though, the summer before Grade 10 properly got underway. I played a lot of F1 2011, and FIFA 12. During that break – and in the subsequent winter break though, I realized how little I played it, and decided to sell it. It was barely in my possession for a year and a few months, maybe? I sold it pretty quickly, and got a good deal – one that funded one of my MUN trips to Hyderabad, a deal I was pleased with.

Since then, I rarely have played videogames. Although I enjoy them tremendously, I’m not very good at them, and I don’t prioritize them. However, since November, my interest in them has returned, and how.

This isolation period in particular has got me really interested in them once again, and one of the things I am most grateful for is that each evening, I connect up to my friend abroad and play FIFA with him for a few hours before I go to bed. We chat while gaming competitively against each other, and every day, it’s one of the things I’ve drilled into my routine to ensure I’m getting some amount of socializing.

Gaming is an interest I would like to continue. Not just with FIFA, but with some storyline-based games as well. I’ve learned how because you block laptop notifications generally while gaming, and because they’re designed to be immersive experiences, you care for very little when the game is going on. That’s a fabulous thing, because it takes some of the pressures from the outside world far away from your brain. All you’re thinking about is the game itself. I’d like to retain that. Even if it’s just a little each day.

 

Cheese Chili Toast

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When I’m away from University, there is not much I miss aside from the existence of the night mess. I’ve waxed eloquent about the night mess several times, but as my time as an undergraduate student comes to a close, it is perhaps the right time to enquire: what was the greatest thing the night mess gave me?

There are several candidates for this coveted title. There’s all of the friendships I formed at the night mess, which have, contrary to my wildest expectations, become the most enduring. There’s all the moot practice I did at the night mess – round after round of saying speeches, and hearing the same feedback again and again. Implementing it as best I could before returning there. There’s all of the memorial submissions. Then there’s the committee meetings – the ones I attended, as well as the ones I didn’t attend.

However, I think the greatest thing the night mess gave me was the security of knowing I would be able to get my hands on a snack no matter how late my cravings struck me. More importantly, that this snack would be oily and unhealthy, and wouldn’t fill me up as much as they’d satisfy the craving for cheesy delights, or fatty substances late into the night.

I craved one of these snacks today and made myself some cheese chili toast. To give it flair, I used coloured capsicum. It was outstanding, worthy of the night mess’ memories. Soon, I shall make a Bombay Sandwich. I believe I will be all-conquering then.

GloPoWriMo 2020: 1/30

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With tradition in mind, we embark on a fresh edition of GloPoWriMo. Last year’s Challenge was quite lovely, insofar as my mother participated alongside me and shared poetry daily – leading to a self-published anthology of our poems, dedicated to my father. It was a really wholesome family event, especially because we released the book at a celebration of my dad’s 50th birthday, and my mum recited a spoken-word piece we weaved together for that event.

Today’s prompt is “Metaphors”. The challenge is to write a self-portrait poem that makes an action that occurs in specific circumstances a metaphor for my life.

Can You Hear Me?

The world and I coexist harmoniously thanks to technology,
Telecommunications devices and the Internet, but invariably,
On calls, I ask, “Can you hear me?”
Not “Hello”, or “Is everything okay?”
Rather, “Can you hear me?”, seeking affirmation
Instead,
Responses splutter across interrupted time and disrupted space,
Weaving blurred videos and buzzed tones
Offering up a patchwork of known faces and voices
Yet breeding unfamiliarity.

“Can you hear me?”, I ask once more,
Pixels move and reorganize, and in an instant,
Echoes and lags relay through warping time to synchronize and
Restore normalcy.

That repetition, however is a foe, for it,
Makes those seconds feel like supereons and, success feel like failure, because
Connections are never made to be broken.
But words do not always reach intended faces, and images rarely reach familiar ears
Yet, simultaneously, repetition nurtures security as the
Conversation moves forth and I answer “I can hear you”
Feedback creating growth.

Learning the Guitar

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I received a guitar in May 2017, from a kind-hearted neighbour who was also left-handed, and heard about my desire to pick up the instrument. Being left-handed presents interesting challenges when it comes to certain circumstances: hockey is learned a little differently, as are all stringed instruments – and I had never figured out how to get around the entire need to have a different kind of guitar if I ever wanted to learn. My neighbour sorted out the dilemma, which then meant I didn’t have too much of an excuse. There was nothing stopping me from actively learning the instrument as such. I had the internet, a lot of friends who played the guitar, and the instrument itself.

However, May 2017 was the last summer I properly spent in this city – in my house. Since then life has been a little bit of a whirlwind, and I never thought I’d have the time to sit and follow through on one of these whims and passions at University. Of course, my piano lessons since January have changed my perspective drastically, but at the time I didn’t feel that it was worthwhile transporting a guitar to Gujarat. Leaving it in Bangalore meant infrequent access, so most of my desire remained intact but unperturbed and not acted upon.

I’ve had a penchant for portable instruments for a very long time. This stems out of the fact that the piano isn’t portable and largely relies upon the existence of a piano in a particular place to be able to perform. I’m not much of a performer – I dislike performances because I feel like my relationship with the piano stems out of more struggle than anything else, and it’s difficult to showcase that struggle through a performance of any kind. However, I feel like I would perform more if I had a portable instrument with me. In a circuitous attempt to rewire my brain, I told myself I’d learn a portable instrument one day. The guitar, the violin, a flute, perhaps? Or even a trumpet, or a saxophone. My love of instruments means I’d like to be learning new ones constantly.

This quarantine period has really been a boon for me. University not figuring out online classes has given me the time to practice my piano for a few hours and spend time on all of these new drills that I’ve learned over the past few months. Aside from that, my friends are also free – and my childhood friends have really rallied around me to help me out with this guitar learning business. They’re taking it really seriously, which means I’m spending time actually practicing properly as well. It’s gotten to a point where we discuss things about the instrument: on design and theory, aside from figuring out more practical mechanics and exercises to help me along on the journey. I find this really fascinating because these folks are people who have obviously played the instrument for years, but neither of them are teachers or anything of the sort – but they’re putting in the effort to understand things I’m struggling with and tapping into their own memories to help me improve upon these basic chords. It’s been about 10 days now, and we’ve covered so much already, I’m super excited about it all.

The other really fun thing about this entire project and involving my friends in it is that there’s a shared joy in sharing that knowledge they possess. It’s also given us a fascinating, fascinating way to connect each day. We catch up at the end of my day, and at the beginning of theirs, talk about what the past 24 hours have brought us – and then move on with the lessons. It’s fabulous.

Turning now to the entire performance thing. I realized this evening that I won’t actually get to perform the guitar as much because even though it’s portable and there are more guitars lying around than any other instrument – my left-handedness means I’ll need to have my own instrument around at all points to play. The circuitous route hasn’t borne fruit for me after all.

All jokes aside though, hopefully I’ll be a little Paul McCartney soon. Or an Otis Rush.

Sharing Music

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When I was younger, I watched a lot of these shows that weren’t animated. Lizzie McGuire, Hannah Montana, That’s So Raven, The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, and several others (Boy Meets World, Naturally, Sadie – the list is really endless). These shows had several on-point cultural references for the times, things I can only truly appreciate now looking back at those references. They were also my first window to life in North American high schools, and ended up becoming the kind of things I imagined my “high school life” would be – even though this was not remotely true. For starters, kids in those shows never studied for anything. There was no academic conversation whatsoever. How inaccurate, and deeply deceiving.

However, one of the most common tropes surrounded the manner in which high school romances, and romances in general developed in those shows. While the chit-chat and the romantic tension was built up carefully, there was always the exchange of music. Most frequently, this took place through a cassette or a CD. A mixtape of music conveyed so much in these shows.  They were tools to tell someone how you feel about them, to tell someone the kind of music they reminded you about, or to share with them music that you found fascinating – to move the romantic tension along.

Even a book I read recently, Eleanor & Park, continued that trope. The protagonists clearly had a romantic relationship ongoing, and Park made a mixtape of music he enjoyed to share with Eleanor, to create a fresh point of conversation with her.

To my mind then, mixtapes and music offered up the perfect way to show someone you cared about them. The identity that music possessed was so intertwined with this idea of appreciation for me – because it was physically impossible to think about sworn enemies exchanging a mixtape before war to convey how much they detested each other.

Today I had the opportunity to receive music recommendations from a friend, and give music recommendations to another friend. While this wasn’t romantic by any stretch of the imagination, all I experienced today was the joy that coincides and is so well-contained when you share music with someone. Long may this continue.