.I write this post as a
lament...not
regret, but more as an expression of
grief, although it's often tough to segregate the two.
The past one year
had held a lot of promise, primarily, in the music scene of my life. Having taken a long hiatus from live performances, while in Singapore, i pretty much played alone (except for friday nights). All this musical wanking, i hoped, would eventually lead me to a state where-in, if i were to be part of a band sometime in the near future, i would be 'ready'.
I couldn't have been more wrong.
Playing alone for nearly two years, and the events over the last few weeks has made me realise one thing:
I am selfish, hence i make music only for my personal pleasure and growth. Here, growth and pleasure are not mutually exclusive, and strangely, either one begets the other.From this, i know,
playing music is not just some hobby that i'll run to after a hard day's work, nor is it something that i'll ever
want to do under inebriation. To me, playing music is sacred. This means, i dont care if the music i make is heard by anyone else or not. The only thing that matters is the process of 'creation'...if i may even call it that. After all, any song of
absolute music is either a note-re-organised,augmented or reduced version of any other song...and pithily, that's all there is to it. Yet, i find it so sacred and this i can't explain...yet.
There is more to how music and the human mind works. Any 'familiar' tune i listen to, 'brings back' memories of times when i first got familiar with it. This process of bringing back, transcends almost all barriers of time. I remember VERY vividly the colour of the sky and the 'setting sun' one evening, while i was listening to 'The Carpenters' at the age of Four. I remember at the age of Six, the warmth (or the lack thereof) of water during chilly Bangalore school-mornings when my Father religiously played those select few 'foreign' tapes accessible to a typical middle class family by means of relatives in distant lands. I remember at the age of Seven, playing at home with 'action figures', and my Mother returned from the market, carrying a brand-new, wrapped-up G.I. Joe Bike, while Konkani folk songs played-on in the background. I also remember at the age of Ten, observing how my Brother would lay back and read all those books while listening to tapes of Grammy Award artists of the 80s & 90s...tapes he procured by cajoling my folks...
tapes that i owe my entire life in music to. I also remember at the age of Eighteen, falling in love head over heels, while The Beatles' "Abbey Road" and Queen's "Greatest Hits" spun like merry-go-rounds in my hormonally influenced mind.
In,through and out of all these memories, it was never the words/lyrics of a song that actually made me relate with the moment. It was always the 'tune'...the absolute music aspect of the song. This is what i cant explain. Further, it hurts that i can't explain something which evokes such emotions from me; Something that can drastically change my mood
literally by the flick of a switch. Music has always been there, its presence shameless and very evident,but its
purpose? ...always mysterious, clouded and often contradictory to whatever reason i could attribute. Like a puzzle, music has driven me on a search and has subsequently lead to a near rabid hunger for the answer. Though unrecognised at first, of late, it has reached a different level, both, with respect to the recognition and the intensity of the search. From what i recall, and what i figure,
the first step i took towards this search, was inadvertently but undoubtedly, hours and hours of fooling around with my keyboard (also read piano). Hours and hours of playing songs...ANY song. I just wanted to play. I liked the sound, i loved how it made me feel. It generated a great sense of accomplishment to play a song that i heard on a 'professionally recorded tape', and to play it perfectly, 'JUST LIKE THAT'...hence the phrase 'tape-perfect'.
But, there is only so much you can do with playing someone else's song. You may bend it, twist it, shake it and even rock it... but it still isn't yours. The obvious
next step is to reach a 'state' where you start playing whatever you feel; An accurate description of this act would be :
"Transcription of thought into art". Towards this state, i have been
inching , for the past few years. Mastery over this state will be, according to me the ultimate achievement. For accurate transcription of thought into art, should imply the reverse from anybody's senses and not just the creator's.
The only problem with this, is that
step one lingers, and rather stubbornly. We will always get back into a phase of 're-living' those moments through the thought-transcriptions of others.
Step one is also a nasty and easy way out to instill a pseudo sense of skill. I stand by this belief.
It is this feeling that drives me towards solving a problem: something i cant see, hold or worse, explain. For music which has meant so much to me, it is the least i can do: solve the problem.
Follow my art to the end of my dreams, and then even more.
I cant even fathom what happens after
step two, but i sure will pen it down, if i figure it out someday. But, by the looks of it,
not someday soon.
Over the last one year, i wrote music, toiled, gigged and 'made merry' with a band. I believed that as a band, this would lead to a permanent detachment from
step one...it nearly did. Unfortunately, this belief did not sustain. A band, no matter how 'skilled', may need to compromise, and go through reaping the myriad plastic fruits of
step one in order to move on to
step two; but as long as step two is in the cross-hair, the band will
be. Even the focus doesnt matter...its just the direction...'for now', so to speak. Sadly no such thing figured in the cross-hairs. Fame is pseudo and subject to current trends in society, whereas true recognition comes only through original contribution...Recognition does not necessarily imply fame, and according to most people, a band can't survive on recognition alone. As defined by most people, fame for a band is not just a thrill, but a necessity.
I don't define a band that way.
Which is why i am in pain.
Mostly self-inflicted.
Refusal to accept.
