Thursday, February 26, 2009
pre exam musings
Gosh, I absolutely LOVE The Who. Behind Blue Eyes? That was more than just genius, you cant even label it genius and then slide it aside, no no, it has a very eerie quality to it. In its quiet, seething anger. Melancholy but bubbling at the surface.
Piano, piano, piano, piano, buildup, climax, BAM! BAMBAM! BAM! BAMBAM! Omg absolute and utter LOVE. This song hits me SO very hard and I'm absolutely in love with it. And not just the intro. The best part is picking out the various variations in key during the intro, feeling with every nerve the anticipation. It's enough to drive anyone mad - the best kind of music.
I really need to learn how to play Baba O'Riley/Teenage Wasteland...I would so teach myself but I have no piano! *cries* If only I were back on res. I used to skip the caf (and actual people) and go up and play coldplay all afternoon. I miss res...or rather, I miss being on campus. The all night study session...the coffee rings on my books. It was grungy but enchanting in a strange way.
I traded all the coolness and freedom for good meals and roof over my head. And a steady inflow of television. And my own room. Godamn, I am SUCH a sellout. What they say about students - that they're starving and maniacal and will go almost anywhere for food? - is true. If I wasn't so sickly complacently placated with things like not having to pay rent...I would be disgusted with myself. But somehow I don't think an Arts degree is worth 20K. No offense arts/humanities kids...I feel your pain, i do. blame the childhood indian guilt-tripping, okay?
I really do hate this place though. The worst is having left and then having to return. shit. okay. an end to this pointless post. Just to say - really need to find myself a piano.
Oh - on a side note: I'm heading to London for the weekend. First weekend I've had off in a very long long time. i hear western's the place to be HARHAR. Shall...nerdly party with ter and whatnot. Long live the lost weekend? I'm also excited for july - montreal + russell peters! holy crap! We're most probably going to absolutely paint the town an invisible shade of red. For now, I must go study for Bio. I have House M.D. on in the background as I work out pedigree and genetics charts. It's a nice catalyst <3. Gawd, I do love this show. And wow, this is such a nonsense sporadic post. Oh well. Sense is for sods.
Cheers.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Sunday, February 1, 2009
(Au)Oral 808s
One of the reasons that I love lofts is their ability for excessive echo. To me, nothing is more sexier than an expensive set of best-that-money-can-buy speakers filling an entire space - every nook and cranny, every converging corner of a space - with beats. With music. Those 808s, the lovesounds, the aural manifesto.
It don't matter whether I'm bleeding Jazz or seeping Soul, if I'm in the mood to dance to pseudo-rave or dance to house. Sometimes it is undefinable and guilty of genre tripping. Every gram of music that hits me, I fall in love with. I would be absolutely no where without it. This is one love affair that will possibly never end - I'm in too deep.
Music puts me in a whole other world; it is an alternate universe where everything is logical and flows so well all at the same time. Some people use music to set a mood. I say allow it to respond to your mood. When everything is quiet in my mind, like a gas within a test tube, my mind fills with an orchestra of my most cherished sounds. I crave better headphones to be able to track and feel every single twist and turn, every shot of instrument. It flows in my veins and fills even my breath with a beat. It challenges my pulse, sedates me and prods me at the same time. I've never met such a flighty temptress as music, nor ever had the pleasure to play second fiddle to a more commanding mistress.
My awareness of music started at a very young age, on the merits of the 90s and a very strange relationship with my father. The double advantage of having two mother tongues, two identities made me open my eyes, to a quality of music that transcended mere words or regions. It began in Bahrain, every Wednesday night Hollywood musicals and Bollywood singsong. It manifested into a fondness that solidfied in Queens, New York. It returned to London, just off of Kilburn and trickled through the streets of Hounslow and Southhall in a garishly obvious manner. Then, it was silent for quite a while, awakening every year in the summer of Manhattan. I do not know when music became about textures, flowing in ribbon-like rivers; when it became about a defining stance, or when it transformed into a heady drug.
When I arrvived in Canada, I became very self-conscious about my music. I began to brand and classify. I began to hide it all away from others. I didn't expect many to understand. At first, I didn't understand the true spectrum of the essential listening. There was so much standard music that I hadn't even heard of.
Aural tradition and I slowly picked up the pieces. I understood the great fashioners of rock, the Kurt Cobain, the Stairways, the Doors. My curiosity piqued at trips to the then-Soho with The Ramones playing out of lofts and that's when I knew. It didn't matter if I was listening to A.R. Rehman or AC/DC. It was all just one in the same language, utterly beautiful in its creation.
I'm very close to my music. I love my iPod not because of its quality or its feature (well maybe a little because of that) but just its sheer ability to set my scene anywhere I go. For me, it is like a piece of me. That sounds conceited but when I lost my first iPod to the wiles of this world, I grieved like I would grieve for a friend. I was so lost without it. I had to have my music. It was my only comfort in a world so forgone. I still believe that the thread of music spells out my life.
So where did this all come from? Well, I was sitting on the bus one too-early morning and amidst all the mediocre music I had put on for the sake of it and out of the blue came 3 by 5. I don't know how, but a day that was doomed spun and turned on its head. And I partially attribute that to music for its strength (though Don Miguel Ruiz may have had something to do with the other part).
Because music is so important to me, like anything that loves too deeply, I let it blind me. I couldn't stay open to music because I had such a severe definition of what music should be and do. I became an elitist and expected music to have and be and do something for me other than just being itself. Without even realizing it, I cast out music that I didn't understand (like Rap) and my extreme dislike for the obvious slaying this genre of music was doing to the very definition of music turned into a gavel for my judgement.
But eventually I realized. Music frees all borders. It brings you closer. It's beauty is that it can fit in a genre and then yet completely not conform. It is malleable and undefinable in its definity and possibly the only definite thing about any sort of music one listens to is that it is all subjective. What I like is a direct reflection of me. What someone else likes is a direct reflection of them. It is a characteristic, a consequence but it should not be used as a judgement.
Today, I absolutely revel in its undefinity. Every track that I have, that I have the privilege of being able to to listen to, is a spiritual journey for me. Sometimes it's sad, sometimes healing, sometimes funky. But always it is music.
Other people fall out of love as they grow older. It becomes a collection of the greatest hits or current UK Top 40s for them. It is a trend. Their lives take over. I don't feel that happen yet, with me. Music matters to much for me not to want to explore and hear more than the Singles chart. I wouldn't have it any other way.
May the era of Aural 808s live on.
It don't matter whether I'm bleeding Jazz or seeping Soul, if I'm in the mood to dance to pseudo-rave or dance to house. Sometimes it is undefinable and guilty of genre tripping. Every gram of music that hits me, I fall in love with. I would be absolutely no where without it. This is one love affair that will possibly never end - I'm in too deep.
Music puts me in a whole other world; it is an alternate universe where everything is logical and flows so well all at the same time. Some people use music to set a mood. I say allow it to respond to your mood. When everything is quiet in my mind, like a gas within a test tube, my mind fills with an orchestra of my most cherished sounds. I crave better headphones to be able to track and feel every single twist and turn, every shot of instrument. It flows in my veins and fills even my breath with a beat. It challenges my pulse, sedates me and prods me at the same time. I've never met such a flighty temptress as music, nor ever had the pleasure to play second fiddle to a more commanding mistress.
My awareness of music started at a very young age, on the merits of the 90s and a very strange relationship with my father. The double advantage of having two mother tongues, two identities made me open my eyes, to a quality of music that transcended mere words or regions. It began in Bahrain, every Wednesday night Hollywood musicals and Bollywood singsong. It manifested into a fondness that solidfied in Queens, New York. It returned to London, just off of Kilburn and trickled through the streets of Hounslow and Southhall in a garishly obvious manner. Then, it was silent for quite a while, awakening every year in the summer of Manhattan. I do not know when music became about textures, flowing in ribbon-like rivers; when it became about a defining stance, or when it transformed into a heady drug.
When I arrvived in Canada, I became very self-conscious about my music. I began to brand and classify. I began to hide it all away from others. I didn't expect many to understand. At first, I didn't understand the true spectrum of the essential listening. There was so much standard music that I hadn't even heard of.
Aural tradition and I slowly picked up the pieces. I understood the great fashioners of rock, the Kurt Cobain, the Stairways, the Doors. My curiosity piqued at trips to the then-Soho with The Ramones playing out of lofts and that's when I knew. It didn't matter if I was listening to A.R. Rehman or AC/DC. It was all just one in the same language, utterly beautiful in its creation.
I'm very close to my music. I love my iPod not because of its quality or its feature (well maybe a little because of that) but just its sheer ability to set my scene anywhere I go. For me, it is like a piece of me. That sounds conceited but when I lost my first iPod to the wiles of this world, I grieved like I would grieve for a friend. I was so lost without it. I had to have my music. It was my only comfort in a world so forgone. I still believe that the thread of music spells out my life.
So where did this all come from? Well, I was sitting on the bus one too-early morning and amidst all the mediocre music I had put on for the sake of it and out of the blue came 3 by 5. I don't know how, but a day that was doomed spun and turned on its head. And I partially attribute that to music for its strength (though Don Miguel Ruiz may have had something to do with the other part).
Because music is so important to me, like anything that loves too deeply, I let it blind me. I couldn't stay open to music because I had such a severe definition of what music should be and do. I became an elitist and expected music to have and be and do something for me other than just being itself. Without even realizing it, I cast out music that I didn't understand (like Rap) and my extreme dislike for the obvious slaying this genre of music was doing to the very definition of music turned into a gavel for my judgement.
But eventually I realized. Music frees all borders. It brings you closer. It's beauty is that it can fit in a genre and then yet completely not conform. It is malleable and undefinable in its definity and possibly the only definite thing about any sort of music one listens to is that it is all subjective. What I like is a direct reflection of me. What someone else likes is a direct reflection of them. It is a characteristic, a consequence but it should not be used as a judgement.
Today, I absolutely revel in its undefinity. Every track that I have, that I have the privilege of being able to to listen to, is a spiritual journey for me. Sometimes it's sad, sometimes healing, sometimes funky. But always it is music.
Other people fall out of love as they grow older. It becomes a collection of the greatest hits or current UK Top 40s for them. It is a trend. Their lives take over. I don't feel that happen yet, with me. Music matters to much for me not to want to explore and hear more than the Singles chart. I wouldn't have it any other way.
May the era of Aural 808s live on.
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