Tag: Daily Blog

Equanimity

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This is a word that’s been floating around a lot in my vocabulary and the literature I read over the past few months. I haven’t actually ventured forth and written down my thoughts about the subject because I didn’t feel like they had formed entirely. I do, however, use this blog as a place to keep track of the way my thoughts progressed, and in a sense, it seemed appropriate to write about this as well.

I’m trying to be more equanimous in accepting reality as it occurs. This is difficult, for there is always a version of things in my head – the way things ought to be. For me, I build off of what I envisage taking place, and where that does not occur, I struggle to cope with that. It places a stress on me that feels inescapable when things anticipated or expected do not take place, and in the past, I have fallen prey to that stress.

It’s impeded relationships with other human beings. My relationship with my own parents, for example, very often, slips into conversation where I begin doling out information on what I believe should be the response to a particular situation – and not as a matter of opinion, but rather as a matter of fact. It feels to stray into the absurd very frequently, when I remove myself from the scene and view it as an outsider.

Learning about equanimity, the word – and the depth of interpretation that arises to the word has injected fresh perspective in my life. At present, all I feel about it is that I mistook the phrase and the attitude to mean surrendering to reality completely. My original understanding of the expression was one of nonchalance, that you stopped trying to impact reality – because you accepted this is the way things were. I can’t accept that because it feels purposeless, and observing things around me without impacting them feels like being a spectator and a participant in the game of Life simultaneously. I can’t do that.

I understand today, however, that equanimity is accepting reality as-is, to fully understand it, and internalize it – so it does not push you to extremes in any decision-making, or activity, or life at large. It doesn’t mean you stop impacting reality, but rather, you do so with heightened awareness about what that reality is.

I don’t have much else to say about it yet. If I do, there may be a part-II.

Sincerity

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Yesterday, I wrote about how much I disliked playing catch up to all my writing, about how it made me feel insincere to something I loved so much, and loved so much about. That idea, and notion of sincerity, in my head, is something that’s been on my mind all day.

I try out several things and take on a lot of things at once. This comes out of the fact that I enjoy multitasking, and hold a genuine interest in a variety of subjects I know far too little about but am fascinated by. Coupled with my love of productivity, I end up consistently feeling like there’s this mass of information out there that I have accessed 1% of. That 99% I don’t know, I want to know, yet it feels like there’s so little time to do all of it. While not often, that feeling gets overwhelming and leads to procrastination.

I’ve half-assed several things before: by which I mean I’ve started out giving things my best, and being sincere about the effort I’ve put into things, and then either piggy-backed off others’ efforts, or dipped the amount of my own time I’ve spent on things. That is natural if I lose interest, but something I learned at University is that I ought not to take on work that ends up affecting other people, if I’m not going to follow-through on it to its completion. But I’ve half-assed personal projects too. That feels worse somehow, because I feel like I’ve let myself down by not being able to sincerely follow through on something I was so interested in and so passionate about.

This doesn’t happen frequently though. I’m usually okay with multitasking. However, it shouldn’t be happening at all. One of the things I want to improve is eliminating the possibility of giving up on an interest of mine. To do so, I think I’m going to try being a little smarter in making decisions about how to allocate my time. Most importantly, I think I need to revisit the number of personal projects I take on and prioritize them. Whenever I think of new projects, the question I’m going to ask myself first, from now onward, is going to be: where does this fit into existing priorities?

If it ranks below than an existing priority, I think I need to keep a tab on the number of things that pique my interest, and revisit that page as often as possible when I have free time. That way I think I’ll be able to explore all of my interests when I have the bandwidth to do so, but also at a time that my interest in the subject is high. In a sense, this method of decision-making, to me, is likely to counteract the ebbs and flows that come with my interests and hobbies.

It’s odd to me that I’m trying to be so systematic about something that, at it’s core, comes down to asking yourself three questions:

  1. Do you like it?
  2. Do you want to do it?
  3. Do you have the time to do it?

But those questions seem like they aren’t enough for me anymore, since the decisions I make seem to not account for how sincere I can be while doing things – although the third question is meant to.

Not anymore. I hope I can be successful with this. At the very least, I hope to be able to be more sincere in all the endeavours I take on – so they’re equal in terms of how much of myself I give to the activity.

Playing Catch-Up

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Over the past three years, writing has become an integral part of my life. Days feel incomplete without it, because it feels like I have failed to articulate or structure, or really do anything with my day. On days that I write, even if I’ve spent the entire day on RuneScape, or watching Netflix, I feel accomplished, instead of looking at the time that seems to have flown past with terrible graphics and a lot of nostalgia. However, like I’ve mentioned on this blog before, I procrastinate from time to time. Last week was just one of those weeks, where every day, writing seemed like a struggle.

I didn’t even realize a whole week had gone past. A combination of the lockdown and a lack of effectively implemented deadlines (or strictly implemented, rather), has meant that my only actual realization of how long it has been. It’s been close to a month since the lockdown began – and to this date, it has now been one month since my last University in-person lecture took place.

I didn’t write for close to a week. Then I decided it was time to write, that my lethargy really could not, and should not, last any longer. Today was the day I played catch-up with myself. Honestly, the way I saw it was that I could have ignored all the writing I missed. It would not have affected anybody at all – particularly because I don’t think too many people read this blog religiously anyway. For me though, taking that easy route out would have represented giving into the challenging times this lockdown has placed me in. You see, for me, working and consistently doing things – being on the move, so to speak, gives me the most joy. I can sit still and quiet down when I need to, but I thrive more, in terms of happiness, when I have the opportunity to express myself.

I’m privileged to be safe and healthy at present. I need to keep expressing myself for my own mental health at this point, because otherwise I will give into the fact that my hobbies cannot replace traditional notions of work. That is untrue, fundamentally, because my hobbies are enough to keep me going. Writing everyday serves as a reminder of that.

Writing today, I’m determined not to play catch-up ever again because it makes me feel insincere to this craft I am trying to doggedly pursue and perfect.

Plus, honestly, writing more than these posts a day is quite exhausting. There’s no need to do so much in one day when you can consistently do a little each day.

Rediscovering Runescape

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I’ve waxed lyrical about Runescape several times on the blog. This is one such post.

This evening, while catching up with my high school friends, one of them mentioned that he had started up playing Old School RuneScape again. In an instant, I told him I had an active account, and we set up within 10 minutes to play together again. In an hour, we had convinced the other member of our little trio to set up his own account and join us in the same world.

For 2 hours, we did nothing but mercilessly combat goblins. As we each combated goblins, we traded information about our statistics, all got banned from trading items, and repeated a mindless cycle of, find goblin, attack goblin, take coins, take bones, bury bones. All the while, we explained things to our third friend – since he was new to the game, and planned out what adventures we’d go on, including Quests, the next time we all played together (in my mind, this is likely to be tomorrow).

This was an extremely, extremely, mindless activity. I did 0 application of brain, and my mouse pretty much did everything for me. I had an audiobook of Lord of the Rings going in the background, which I thought was perfect company for a game like RuneScape generally, since there are so many fan theories about how Middle Earth and RuneScape intersect – particularly in terms of their timeline. However, the activity itself used 0 brain cells or creativity of mine, especially since it wasn’t as dynamic as say, smithing, mining, or even woodcutting and fishing.

Speaking of, as a quick aside, it is worth mentioning how I sold my parents on the idea of the game aged 7. I informed my parents, while signing up to the website, and while playing, that I learned essential survival skills in the game. For the most part, this remains true. I incorporated words like “tinderbox” into my vocabulary the first time I played the game.

Turning back to playing RuneScape itself. When I played it through October and November, I played alone. None of my friends were playing at the time, so while there was a lot of nostalgia involved in the activity itself, and rediscovering all the information I had stored in the treasure trove that is my brain, none of it was shared. That absence left a void in me, and prevented the access of a very important, associated RuneScape memory.

You see, RuneScape is an MMORPG. A Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. A large part of what attracts people to it, and makes it a success, is/was it’s ability to share the experience with friends. I spent hours playing with friends who I went to school with, who stayed in the same building in which I did – and that was a very important part of the game. In front of my friends, I consistently felt like a noob, because with my internet restrictions at the time, I hardly had the ability to devote myself to the game in the manner they did. Nonetheless, there were evenings where we logged on at the same time and I learned things about the game from them, and even once where I remember spending an entire evening watching two of them play and access Member-Only features, since they were Members.

Playing with these two today opened up all of that for me, and I’m looking forward to accessing the Multilplayer components of the game with my friends.

I’ve convinced a friend from primary school – my best friend, to get back to the game too. Hopefully he follows through.

My days will lose all structure then.

Gated (II)

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The previous piece I wrote about the gated community I lived in was exclusively about the kind of privilege and protection this place offered me – aside from the obvious shelter it has given me for the last 12 years. I’ve now been here for three weeks. Since I moved out of Bangalore for University in 2015, this is the longest amount of time I’ve spent in my house barring one month in May 2017, which, despite the lockdown and everything, offers some time to think about how much time has actually passed since I’ve come here.

This is the only “home” I’ve known in India. Of course, there’s the family house, and well, the first house I visited in Bangalore where my dad resided, and places in Pune where family stays. However, none of those places are where I have grown up, or places where I have space all to my own. Actually, I’ll amend that. I do have space all to my own at my chikamma and uncle’s home – and I’ve laid down a marker for a future space all to my own wherever they are at all times. However, those places will not hold the emotional attachment I share to this house, even when its empty. Even when I return home to an empty house, and I have to maintain all of it, I consider having it a privilege, and I am oh so grateful for everything it has given me.

It is very difficult to think that 12 years have transpired since we relocated to India as a family. In several ways, both geographically, and emotionally, a small piece of my heart rests in the Middle East. Despite that, I have grown to love India with everything I can give to it, and love Bangalore especially. I have forged strong senses of identity here, for my city, my State, and my rural, outskirt, suburb, which is closer to another town than it is to Bangalore City proper.

None of this identity, or sense of belonging would be possible without a sense of community. I spent the first 10 years of my life in an apartment building, with several friends, but no real sense of community because “community gatherings” and celebrations, so to speak, didn’t necessarily take place in a manner that involved everyone in the building. Of course we played games and hung out with a large number of kids in the evenings, and naturally, sharing common spaces bred some amount of familiarity, I do not recall being able to identify very strongly with the values of the people in that building. It is a given that I was younger then, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that nothing really aimed to foster a community spirit. My sense of belonging to that building comes out of the infrastructure it has and the memories I created, as well as my parents and the fondest memories I have of the both of them from our time in that place.

Moving to India was very different to that experience. We lived in a larger community, which meant more people to share space with. When we first moved in, I recall there being 30 families – and a lot of empty houses. That meant you knew everyone in the complex. You knew which houses and lanes were unoccupied and were free-for-all cricket territory. That knowledge and familiarity bred so much security, and so much joy. You had a constant set of friends, and a constant set of activities to do. Age-groups were non-existent: we were all just one big blob, classified as “children”. Of course, those below 6/7 kept to themselves at the time, but the rest of us, right up to the eldest at 17 and 18 – we all pretty much played in the evenings together.

The community grew larger though, and as communities grow, identities change. This was no different, and groupism became prominent – everywhere. It wasn’t as easy to identify every person, because people came in and people moved out. The place was in flux – and still is, to this day. However, assimilation and understanding, or retaining that identity, for the most part, was easy. It was just a question of compromise. From the mundane: which sport to play in the evening, to the larger questions that adults fought over – a lot of it just boiled down to compromises being crafted.

Today, to me, I hardly recognize much in the community. In my mind, oddly enough, I’m able to live in the time that this community was just 30-50 families. They form this core that I believe the rest of the complex has grown around. It is natural that newer families will not feel this way – and after all, everyone has their personal history, but I remember those 30-50 families with a fondness that feels odd to extend to anyone else. This doesn’t mean I’m hostile toward anyone, not at all. But nobody knows the struggles of having to wait for the railway crossing to open up, or the pain of going 8km to get groceries like that first bunch.

In the past 12 years, as is natural, people have grown and changed. Take me – for example. I’m almost done with my degree. I came here aged 10, and I’m sure people who knew me at that age struggle with reconciling the image of me at 10 with me at 22. Even if people don’t, I do. I looked – and sounded, so different. For me though, it’s the kids I saw aged 2 and 3 who are now in their teens that make it seem like I’m far too old to consider myself a child. It’s rather odd, that these are people who in my teens I could not relate to at all, but with whose struggles I can now relate to far more than much else. For me, a mystery of the Universe will always remain why it’s tougher for a 12 year old to relate to a 5 year than for a 22 year old to relate to a 15 year old.

My hunch? Board exams.

Common enemies unite even the most distant of cousins – and so it goes with all people.

My identity though is so forged by this community, that seeing these little people grow up to become bigger people has really punched home that hard reality that I am, myself, a little person who has grown up to become a bigger person. My surroundings clamour that I ought to accept this – it is but natural. The little kid in me refuses, but relents. He cycles around cheerily with a half-functioning bell and waves to everyone he knows.

Unlike the adult who thinks four times about whether a walk to the gate is worth it.

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.

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.

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.

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

Tejas RaoLeave a comment

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.