What an evening, after having refrained to visit one of the watering holes of Calcutta produced...
Thoughts take me back to Paris. Whenever I hear the voice in Beethoven’s Ave Maria- the voice soaring above , fills up my mind, my thoughts and in this occasion reminded me of Paris. And prompted me to write. How nice it always feels to write , as if I can in my own way reproduce the harmony in sound that the music of Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin have.
What a wonderful city. So many of civilizations thrown together, although mostly those which have had their origins from Europe. There is this thing about old civilizations, the way their culture and arts are developed, its like old wine gets better with age. And how well I can experience and feel this, lived as I have in Gurgaon , a recently developed concrete jungle near Delhi- but unfortunately just that and nothing more and the stark contrast I feel when I come to Calcutta for my short holidays. Oh the people in Calcutta can live and express and give full energy and do full justice to the creative energies that remain bottled in all of us.
Thoughts had taken me back to the nearest metro station, Cite Universitaire, from our residence in Paris and I remembered the time when we had gone for our ballet. Two Russians and an Indian spend and evening in Paris and are mesmerized by the rendition of Coppellia, the sheer fluidity of the three main characters. Never have I seen a male form dance with such elegance and flexibility , swaying so wonderfully to the tunes of the orchestra in the well in front of the stage.
I had the good fortune to see a few cities in Europe and I must say that none of them have the air of mysticism an air of promise arising out of the atmosphere pregnant with beauty as if nature had decreed it to be the way it is that Paris has. Everything seems to be so much in synchronism with each other, the tree lined pathway in fall near the Sacre Couer in Montmarte leading down, with a row of Victorian street lamps running down the middle – oh so prefect that it would seem as if it were the gateway to heaven.
If I ever felt regret then it was when while reading the fictionalized biography of Michelangelo by Irving Stone and why I didn’t read it before going to Europe. He describes the fever which overcomes Michelangelo when he is sculpting. He is at one with the rock, acknowledges it to be the master and is so often guided by pure instinct and the closeness he feels with the rock and his work to again and again carve out for the world statue after statue , not only real like- nay it would be an insult to describe his work in such a manner , but so pregnant with the message conveyed by the expressions he had carved in it.
It also struck me that what Michelangelo experienced and gave full expression, to full freedom to, this God given fury to create , to carve, and how his oneness with the rock and with his piece had similarities with what Robert Pirsig had so tellingly argued about in his book a good three centuries afterwards. To be able to capture this meeting of the heart and mind , such that they were no longer different entities tearing one apart in opposing directions, but the one and same, shaping and cutting and chiseling and overcoming minor hitches on the way and designing without even stopping to think as if , even before he strikes the hammer at a place he knows how to do it, as if he is seeing the entire thing before him, no as if he is living in this well conceive dream of his where things are sighted and righted before they go awry.
The last few days have been rather lackluster. It seems that doing nothing is no longer good enough. Engaged as I have been the week gone by in spending time with my family whom I very rarely see, playing around with my sweet, cherubic ,angel like niece, so full of energy and innocent wants and desires, so easy to make her happy, she’ll flash you her full smile, her eyes dancing with joy and yet all this doesn’t satisfy me. There’s that feeling of something missing.
Spending the evening with the classical music flowing behind you, unobtrusive when you want it to be yet all calming and serene, collecting your thoughts and writing and experiencing those moments those bursts of inspiration when even before you have thought about what you want to write your mind or maybe some other force races ahead and forces your fingers to give meaning, bring to life all that you wish to convey in ways so simple yet poignant. These are the moments I fully give of myself what is best in me, nothing is held back and the joy derived is out of the creation and it is ever so long lasting. Reading a few of my own writings often serve to cheer me up and reenergize and revitalize me when life has had one of her victories over me.
Its so funny that we conceptualize life in the female form. Come to think of it all things which have about them- fate for instance- a shroud of mystery ,a twinge of excitement ,of forbidden promises, yet one can never be sure. The oasis may magically transform itself, that which we dive in may turn into a bed of thorns and we fortunes fools land hard , to be battered and bruised and pick our selves up for the next leap into an oasis which hopefully doesn’t dry out before we fall. Sustained throughout all this by a hope of things perfect just as a solitary straw symbolizes for the dying man ladder to a heaven on earth.
My feelings while listening to an assorted collections of Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin
How wonderful it is to create something, to give something to the world that enraptures and thrills, holds spellbound and transports generations after generations from the dreary everyday existence to a world more heroic, more beautiful.
Offers those few moments of bliss in the various war ravaged agony ridden hunger struck parts of the world.
What a wonderful city. So many of civilizations thrown together, although mostly those which have had their origins from Europe. There is this thing about old civilizations, the way their culture and arts are developed, its like old wine gets better with age. And how well I can experience and feel this, lived as I have in Gurgaon , a recently developed concrete jungle near Delhi- but unfortunately just that and nothing more and the stark contrast I feel when I come to Calcutta for my short holidays. Oh the people in Calcutta can live and express and give full energy and do full justice to the creative energies that remain bottled in all of us.
Thoughts had taken me back to the nearest metro station, Cite Universitaire, from our residence in Paris and I remembered the time when we had gone for our ballet. Two Russians and an Indian spend and evening in Paris and are mesmerized by the rendition of Coppellia, the sheer fluidity of the three main characters. Never have I seen a male form dance with such elegance and flexibility , swaying so wonderfully to the tunes of the orchestra in the well in front of the stage.
I had the good fortune to see a few cities in Europe and I must say that none of them have the air of mysticism an air of promise arising out of the atmosphere pregnant with beauty as if nature had decreed it to be the way it is that Paris has. Everything seems to be so much in synchronism with each other, the tree lined pathway in fall near the Sacre Couer in Montmarte leading down, with a row of Victorian street lamps running down the middle – oh so prefect that it would seem as if it were the gateway to heaven.
If I ever felt regret then it was when while reading the fictionalized biography of Michelangelo by Irving Stone and why I didn’t read it before going to Europe. He describes the fever which overcomes Michelangelo when he is sculpting. He is at one with the rock, acknowledges it to be the master and is so often guided by pure instinct and the closeness he feels with the rock and his work to again and again carve out for the world statue after statue , not only real like- nay it would be an insult to describe his work in such a manner , but so pregnant with the message conveyed by the expressions he had carved in it.
It also struck me that what Michelangelo experienced and gave full expression, to full freedom to, this God given fury to create , to carve, and how his oneness with the rock and with his piece had similarities with what Robert Pirsig had so tellingly argued about in his book a good three centuries afterwards. To be able to capture this meeting of the heart and mind , such that they were no longer different entities tearing one apart in opposing directions, but the one and same, shaping and cutting and chiseling and overcoming minor hitches on the way and designing without even stopping to think as if , even before he strikes the hammer at a place he knows how to do it, as if he is seeing the entire thing before him, no as if he is living in this well conceive dream of his where things are sighted and righted before they go awry.
The last few days have been rather lackluster. It seems that doing nothing is no longer good enough. Engaged as I have been the week gone by in spending time with my family whom I very rarely see, playing around with my sweet, cherubic ,angel like niece, so full of energy and innocent wants and desires, so easy to make her happy, she’ll flash you her full smile, her eyes dancing with joy and yet all this doesn’t satisfy me. There’s that feeling of something missing.
Spending the evening with the classical music flowing behind you, unobtrusive when you want it to be yet all calming and serene, collecting your thoughts and writing and experiencing those moments those bursts of inspiration when even before you have thought about what you want to write your mind or maybe some other force races ahead and forces your fingers to give meaning, bring to life all that you wish to convey in ways so simple yet poignant. These are the moments I fully give of myself what is best in me, nothing is held back and the joy derived is out of the creation and it is ever so long lasting. Reading a few of my own writings often serve to cheer me up and reenergize and revitalize me when life has had one of her victories over me.
Its so funny that we conceptualize life in the female form. Come to think of it all things which have about them- fate for instance- a shroud of mystery ,a twinge of excitement ,of forbidden promises, yet one can never be sure. The oasis may magically transform itself, that which we dive in may turn into a bed of thorns and we fortunes fools land hard , to be battered and bruised and pick our selves up for the next leap into an oasis which hopefully doesn’t dry out before we fall. Sustained throughout all this by a hope of things perfect just as a solitary straw symbolizes for the dying man ladder to a heaven on earth.
My feelings while listening to an assorted collections of Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin
How wonderful it is to create something, to give something to the world that enraptures and thrills, holds spellbound and transports generations after generations from the dreary everyday existence to a world more heroic, more beautiful.
Offers those few moments of bliss in the various war ravaged agony ridden hunger struck parts of the world.
posted by shantanu | 2:50 PM
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