If you had to read One, this is it.

I used to have a blogspace over at msn about three or four years ago. I updated it with a neurotic ferocity – posting at intervals of no longer than two to three days. I was also given, not entirely without reason, to believe that people did pop over and give it a look over every now and then. The only problem with that blog though – available to me only in retrospect (naturally), was that pretty much every post was a recap of the day that had gone by – which I guess, is something a lot of people see as the fundamental nature of the blog – but it was just something I implicitly promised myself I wouldn’t do once I started this one. Basically, there wasn’t going to be much “So today I.. happily ever after.” Great rule for substantial posting.

Except:

 

Today, Monday 20^th September - might just have been the luckiest day of my life. It’s the closest I’ll probably come to interacting with divine intervention or tangible cosmic favour.

Right up into the late evening, I was pretty much having the most non-descript Monday. I woke up too early to - rain, a postponed morning rehearsal and an upcoming test the day after. I spent most of the day escaping the three in sleep or bitching about them in consciousness. I cribbed about rehearsal because the song we were going to play (Megalopolis – Chris Potter) was doing my head in;

I whined about the upcoming test because the text on which it was based was (is) not in my possession – and neither was it online. That finally left: the rain. Well, the rain was actually great, it was just that I wanted to do nothing and stare at it. 

8.00pm: I get in the car with my saxophonist and head out for rehearsal. It’s been raining for a while and my mood is just like the weather: grey and soggy. 

A little over half way to the music school we practice at – I realise that I’ve left my wallet – with my license behind. This isn’t much of problem, except I know that it is inevitable for me to go through a police checkpoint close to the school – and seeing as how the fucking commonwealth games are going to flush on soon – things weren’t looking good. Still, game-face on, I pushed on and decided it was on the early side of 8, they weren’t going to be keen on stopping people yet. Nobody’s going to be high.

My prediction : Not So Fucking Hot.

The checkpoint is bustling – with atleast 8 cops - that’s 5/6 more than the usual. I’m flagged to stop the car almost immediately. I can just about hear Nicolas (the saxophonist) swear ‘puutaaan’ – right over my own deafening realization of the bleakness of my situation.

There wasn’t going to be any easy way out here – this was the PR kind of shit. I play with the idea of darting it but decide it just isn’t worth it. I open the glove compartment and pick up the ziplock bag full of registration certificates and insurance/pollution documents, get off the car and shove it into the head cops hand – I tell him, “everything’s in there”, and I go back to the car to get it off the road.

I inch the car ahead, try to get my words and head together but before I can get off, one of the cops has come to my window, with the envelope and has told me I’m good to go.

Fuck Me.

 “Lets GO”, say Nicolas over the more deafening sound of thrilling relief.

The usual protocol at check-posts is always, always: license first – everything else after.

--

If that wasn’t enough – 

 

Cut to about 11.45pm: A seemingly productive rehearsal has concluded and Chris Potter’s Megalopolis has gotten off to a fine and functional, but somewhat misunderstood, beginning. It’s been raining hard the entire time. I very hesitantly decide to let Nicolas drive home, because I’m not remotely keen on pushing my luck any more. Though he owns a bike in Delhi, which he takes out all the time, it would be his first car drive in India – and his first time in a right handed car. France is all left. Regardless of this though, he had his international license and I had squat.

We head back out to the car and I realise that i’ve left my keys inside – I lean the bass against the back of the car and I head back in. Still playing with the idea of whether I should drive or not. Inside, (drummer) Reuben's packing up what equipment's left out and he tells me I look worried - I smile and I decide to just let Nicolas drive.

I grab the keys, toss them to Nicolas, sit in the passenger seat, help him with the wipers and headlights – and as we back out of the driveway, I feel like he’s going over a speedbump which I never noticed before. I figure it’s just taking him time to adjust to the drive and he's grinding the curb. I look out of the window to see Reuben screaming.

He's saying one word over and over: ‘B…!”

Oh. My. God. No. Fucking. Way. Shit. SHit. SHIt. SHIT. 

   (11:50pm: my Mind - the Hindenburg)

I dart out of the fucking car to see my bass lying on the wet floor with dirt treads all over it. It looks like Road kill. I die on the spot. I just ran over my bass. It’s life flashed before My eyes.

The four of us gather around it – I feel the look a crowd would give a kid’s parent after they let them do a sprint across the highway. I didn’t even want to look inside. I unzip the soft case excepting to see a wooden train wreck – but the bass was intact and everything was still .. intact.

The drive back home felt like an eternity. Nicolas drove great, but the rain was coming down so fucking hard, I could barely see a thing – and all I wanted to do, was get home, setup, plug in and see if I still had a bass.

 ---

3:20am: It’s still raining – and the bass is fine. I checked every part of it. The G-string’s suken into the bridge a little, so the action’s gotten a little lower – and when I did set up the bass, the entire tuning had gone down by a step and a half. It’s going to be a while before I can breathe easy about it. I have this cartoon image of playing a certain note and the whole thing is going to disintegrate infront of me.

 

… Big thank you to the Cosmos today.

 

Man oh man.

 

 

 

Warning: Extremely Selfish Post

If you listen to and have a wide vocabulary of jazz, or really any form of music – then maybe you can sympathize with the familiar situation of some one asking you what your favourite song is. Or to be fairer, atleast your favourite album or artist. If you’ve done your listening – the hypothetical naturally being operative - then the question can be staggering – in the face of the plethora of not only talent, but just evocative material out there.

What I have noticed though, is after a considerable amount of time – and ofcourse this process is one that is subject to evolution – the musicians I know and the listeners I know, manage to find certain artists that really just cut through. Now I can sympathize with the idea that really ‘choosing’ with a capital C, your favourite artists is really quite a self-indulgent and self-important act. But maybe in an ideal situation, or atleast personally speaking, the act is not public until some one asks – and making the choice isn’t just making the choice, insofar as a personal preference – but instead: a clear indication that something in that music speaks to you, or brings something out in you.

It’s one thing when some one says their favourite composer is Miles Davis, because that’s the thing to say; or their favourite bassist is Ray Brown, because again, that’s the thing to say. But it’s a whole other idea, when the person at hand goes out there and listens to a lot of material and then returns to where they started. The basis on which the big names are the ones that usually cut through as favourites isn’t devoid of reason. They cut through simply because they speak to you.

I know enough people who would downplay jazz – and that’s fine. I am in full awareness of the temptation to be romantic – but this transcends that.

I’m not really talking even talking about music as much as art altogether. The actual discovery of a book (passages in a book), or a painting or whatever your medium of choice is not exclusively material. The relation between the work of art and the perceiver of it is : intimate, unique and inimitable. When you find something that doesn’t let you Go, it’s worth either enjoying it – or figuring out why you’re still listening, reading or watching. Ideally : both.

It is about self-discovery – and whether the emotions or sensations that you experience when engaging in something are communicated to you by that work of art, or whether that piece of art brings it out from inside you (something that was already there)– is a question worth asking – and is fully indicative of the complexity of the transaction.

Enough developments in science can now tell you, that I don’t see/hear/feel the same way about the same things as you do. Whether one sees that as an assurance of idealism (everything is in your head and the supremacy of the subjective experience) , is a secondary topic. I remember in my third year of college, I studied a text by Martin Heidegger – called Origin of the Work of Art. It would be immensely helpful if I could remember a single thing about it – but what I do remember, is that for Heidegger art was a dynamic agency. It was seen as independent of the work of art and the artist. I know this is redundant – but you should go look it up.

I digress. What got me writing this was me thinking of who my favourite composers are. I can think of two, that cut through everything for me. The first being Bill Evans – and the second, being Pat Metheny.

Evans is a pianist and Metheny is a guitar player. On a very personal level, I subsume both under the same categories – even though their approach, style and era are have considerable amounts of distance between them.I love Bill Evan’s piano style. Miles Davis said that his delicate playing sounded like crystals falling down a waterfall (I misquote slightly). It’s an odd metaphor, but it’s scarily accurate. What that says about me, is that I like delicate and controlled playing. 

Pat Metheny, who I’ve been listening to a lot lately – and who is really sparking this off for me, writes these heart wrenching melodies and when I listen to them, it’s like melancholic ecstasy. Drift has been working on this tune called Question and Answer – the head or melody for it, makes every musical fibre in me lose the plot. His other album with Charlie Haden, who is one of my favourite bassists, called Beyond the Missouri Skies, is a guitar – bass duet. It’s musicality has the same reaction on me. I don’t understand what it is about his music that does what it does, but somewhere it’s reassuring to feel that surge. 

Question and Answer - Pat Metheny