Thursday, November 24, 2005

Bliss, extended?

Have you heard music that stirs your soul, plucks at your heart-strings, and before you can grasp what it is, it fleets away. The way
it comes in the background in some movies, beautiful and fleeting, and leaves you yearning for more. The music that flows in 'Sarfarosh'
whenever they show Naseeruddin Shah doing 'rihaaz' in his 'pushthaini' mahal or the one that flows in 'Devdas' as Madhuri prepares to dance
or the pieces scattered around 'Utsav' or the brief piece of tamil song that plays in 'Kaadhal kavidhai' when Prashanth enters a music shop
in England. All these have a magical quality...
 
I am just back from a Shubha Mudgal concert (part of 'The Hindu' NovemberFest music festival). I first knew that she existed when i saw the
video of 'Ab ke saawan'...and i bought the cassette.When i heard the album, i fell in love with her voice (and more with her song
'Bhai re, rishthon ki dagar hai mushkil'). Today's was a concert of 'Khayal', 'Thumri' and 'Dadra' (semi-classical styles, google helped me
know this). I dont know the next thing about Hindustani music, just went cos i like her voice. When the concert started, the music sounded
like those magical fleeting sounds i had mentioned earlier. Except that they dint go away. To start with, it felt surreal and i could've levitated
if i wanted to. This was what i had always wanted. When those movies used to replace heavenly music with human chatter to take the story
forward, i used to curse the director and wished the music played for ever.But here, as the music persisted, it changed from this magical
soul-stirring music to just good music and an impeccable rendition from a perfecionist. I enjoyed the concert all the same.
 
I guess the impact that those pieces of music i talked about earlier have,  have as much to with their beauty as they have,
with their brevity. Bliss cannot be extended, and if you try to, it ceases to remain bliss, it would be just lazy happiness or
sometimes, boredom. Extremely beautiful music is brief, and so is orgasm and so are flight take-offs, and Tequila shots are small.
It is probably the pattern of the world, and it feels right too.
 
 

4 comments:

Prerona said...

"Have you heard music that stirs your soul, plucks at your heart-strings, and before you can grasp what it is, it fleets away"

yes :)

but i like the idea of lazy happiness

extended bliss. like lying in the sun on a winter afternoon.

frissko said...

prerona - "extended bliss. like lying in the sun on a winter afternoon."..that is 'lazy' happiness for me:)..

smyta - thanx..and thanx..u could go to an earlier post called 'Rechristened' where i've tried to rationalise such naming...i dont insist, but since u mentioned the blog name...

Prerona said...

hi. thanks for droppping by and passing judgement :) if you had read the post you might have noticed i said i am changing - working on my current template. i have a bug in it and i put my old template in its place to see if the bug persists. anyway, nevermind. dont be so quick to call people names - its not nice at the receiving end - specially at 5 AM ;)

Anonymous said...

Touche!