Blogs and Bloggers - Vijaya Sundaram

So, I missed writing yesterday (the 12th), and today (the 13th of January). Actually, now it’s officially the 14th, since it’s past midnight, but since I’m not in bed yet, it’s still the 13th! So there, ye Gods of Time! Take that and that and that!

So, shall I swallow strychnine?

Rend my garments and wail aloud in despair?

Toss in my lot with the “lotos-eaters?” (Yes, yes, I know it’s lotus, but Tennyson didn’t!)

Take up good works?

Live under a bridge?

Say, “writing is an indulgence,” and work in a prison?

Stare guiltily at my Facebook page, wondering how to never, ever, ever be screen-sucked again?

Grade papers? (Naaaah!)

Go to bed?

Oh, yes, that.

Bed it shall be.

But I managed to write — sure, just this sad, lonely piece about being a bad person, who didn’t write on the 12th AND the 13th (but today’s still the13th until I actually retire to bed, remember?), but still, it’s writing (of a sort, anyway).

Besides, I’m tired.

I taught all day on my feet.

I led the Green Team in its spirited recycling efforts after school.

I read to my daughter.

Fixed dinner.

Practised (and that IS the right spelling of the verb form of the word) guitar.

Practised kathak.

Sang with husband and daughter, playing guitar again.

Surely, I can be forgiven for my lapses, ye Gods of Writing, and ye Gods Who Induce Unwanted Guilt-Feelings!

Well, that’s all for now. I shall retire and nurse my sorrows in private. Sleep will soon drown them out. Then, the new day will begin, and the clockwork of my days will keep on moving, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, year by year, until I say, along with J. Alfred Prufrock, “I can hear the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.”

Only in my dreams, tonight, I hope.

____________________________ The End ______________________________

Tags: excuses, guilt, lame excuses, not writing, the desertion of my muse for a couple of days

Bad Writing Day

Apr 5, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Blogs and Bloggers

Today was a bad writing day.

So bad, that when I wrote a poem with the title “A Bad Writing Day,” the damned poem disappeared after I saved it. I searched everywhere. It’s hiding somewhere among the pixels.

So, in effect, I wrote my “poem a day” for April Poetry Writing Month today, — and it ran away from me from embarrassment.

Now what?

A cop-out, that’s what. I dug up an old one, and stuck it in my blog (the post just before this one in terms of chronology).

Hey, at least I know I wrote my poem today – even if it did disappear!

So, that should salve my conscience, right?

Actually, even if I had posted it, I’d have been so mad at myself for such a bad poem that I would not have been able to look myself in the eye for quite a while.

Some days are good poem days, and other days are bad poem days (sort of like “good and bad hair days.” )

Ultimately, it all depends on the weather, and how much sleep you had.

So, I’m off to get mine — sleep, that is. (And perhaps tomorrow, perhaps on Sunday, I’ll make up for today’s lack by writing two poems.

Well, goodnight, dear blog and bloggers!

Dreamers of Dreams

Tags: #Blogging, almost NaPoWriMo, bad writing days, good writing days, inspiration, poem a day, poetry-writing

When We Wove a Tapestry … A Reminiscence by Vijaya Sundaram

Mar 28, 2013 Blogs and Bloggers, Essays on Music and Musicians

Weaving Time – Original Composition by Warren Senders, 1994. Performed by Antigravity, in Pune, India, in 1994 at Ishvani Kendra Studios

When We Wove a Tapestry — A Reminiscence

©By Vijaya Sundaram

March 28th, 2013

The beautiful composition on the mp3 attachment above is by Warren Senders (photo, center), and it is one of my all-time favorite compositions (and I love all of his music).

We had a lovely time at Ishvani Kendra, in Pune in 1994, towards the end of our year-long stay that year. Every day, we would get there in the morning, and most days, we’d be out at twilight. We’d sit there and play our hearts out, recording take after take. That was a kind of meditation in itself.

Then, after a particularly intense session or two, we would emerge into the heat of the afternoon, just to breathe air that wasn’t musky with concentration. The intensely bright haze of noon would glow gold and red in our eyes, and the beautiful flowering bougainvillea plants vied with each other to create a psychedelic feast of color.

It was truly a marriage of true minds for all of us during that week or so at Ishvani Kendra. All of us loved each other, because our language was that of music — we understood each other perfectly. We practised and recorded Warren’s compositions. We practised and recorded mine. I had been nervous, because I wasn’t sure whether the older gentlemen in the group would accept my direction after having been used to my being their colleague, not the composer/director. I should have known better. There was no question of ego. They gave their best and utmost love and attention to the music composed by Warren and to my music. It was pure and Apollonian. I had never been happier.

This was the context: Warren and I had taken a year off from our lives in the U.S. to go to India for the sole purpose of studying music, and composing / recording our original pieces. Our practice, in general, was to live carefully, save up money for two years and go to India to live for one year. We did it only twice – and the first time we went back to India for a whole year, we didn’t need to save that much, because Warren was awarded an AIIS (American Institute of Indian Studies) scholarship, which lasted us for that year.

Independent of each other, we composed several pieces that year (mine are on DAT tapes, and are not yet uploaded to this computer, so I’m putting up Warren’s compositions. I promise to do some blog posts which include mine. I hope you enjoy them).

During that year, which was pretty intense, we took Hindustani classical vocal lessons with our Guruji, the late Pt. Shreeram G. Devasthali. By afternoon, evening and night, we’d compose or practise, take walks, prepare dinner or go out to dinner, and then practise again. Most evenings, we’d hang out with our musician friends, and we were as one being. On weekends, we’d visit my grandparents and aunt, and also go for concerts.

In short, that was an idyllic year — for the most part. Like any other year, it also had its frustrations — for example, we searched high and low for a drummer, and finally, towards the end of the year, came across a gem of a player, Nikhil Sohoni, and everyone heaved a sigh of relief. There were also unaccountable periods of sadness for me for a few months, early in the year, and I revived only when I did music. I don’t dwell on those as much as on the long, long periods of beautiful music-making, which we did with our teacher, and with our friends in the group which Warren had named and founded years ago: Antigravity.

Before this Antigravity, Warren had formed the American Antigravity in the 1970s, and that group was dynamic, with Phil Scarff on saxophones, Bob Pilkington on trombone, Tom MacDonald on drums, Dee Wood on guitar and Warren on bass.

When Warren had first come to India (to study Hindustani classical vocal music) on an Indo-American Fellowship in 1985, he set about forming his Indian chapter of Antigravity. Although some of the personnel had changed over the years, the core group consisted of the following people since 1986: Ramakant Paranjape, violin; and Ajit Soman (now late), flute; Warren Senders, bass; then, along came Rajeev Devasthali, tabla, then Atul Keskar, dilruba and sitar, and finally, yours truly on guitar. Nikhil Sohoni (percussion) was new to us in the year 1994. As new to the group as him was our friend Caroline Dillon, cellist (missing from the group photograph) — she had had to fly back to the U.S. after her three-month stay in India.

Back to Ishvani Kendra and our insanely long recording sessions. We recorded and practised, ate, chatted, drank endless cups of tea and coffee, laughed, got frustrated at times, laughed again, practised with redoubled concentration, and gave our hearts to the music, which was complex, demanding, difficult and brilliant.

The result? Warren Senders’ CD: Boogie For Hanuman.

Another result? My cassette tape (we didn’t have enough capital for two CD productions that year): Magic Realism.

I look back on that year, and feel a sense of accomplishment. We came back to the U.S. at the start of 1995, and began our work lives again. We also did radio shows (WGHB, Emerson Radio, WBUR, etc.), plus performances of Indian classical vocal music together. We gave concerts with the American Antigravity which featured our own compositions as well.

As the song goes, It was a very good year.

And the time that we wove into it became a beautiful tapestry into which all our lives were woven, a tapestry in which our spirits and imaginations made intricate patterns, and through those complex patterns, love glowed in the music.

I hope you enjoy it!

Thanks for listening!

~~~~~~~~~~~~The End~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

P.S. Once I upload my own music, I’ll do similar posts for my pieces. Hope you enjoy them!

Tags: #Music, Antigravity, Indo-Jazz Synthesis, Ishvani Kendra, Original Composition by Warren Senders, Recording sessions, Reminiscences about Pune

Pissing Matches with Skunks

Mar 26, 2013 Blogs and Bloggers

Pissing Matches with Skunks

March 26th, 2013

I made an error of judgement.

I inadvertently ended up engaging in a “pissing match with a skunk,” to invoke a vividly apt image used by someone I know well. The skunk in question thinks it won. In a sense, yes, it won. Not because it was right, but because it simply stank so much, I had to leave. How can one make someone see sense, if that person simply turns around and accuses one of something horrible?

The context was this: Someone who “followed” my blog, (and hence, curious, I “followed” his), made a controversial post. I won’t bother going into it, because I don’t actually want to use my blog to have a controversy; I use it to write poems, stories, musings, journal entries. I prefer to leave my deeply held beliefs out of it. They are private.

Unfortunately, not remembering this policy of mine, I responded to the blogger whom I follow, after waiting for a day or so, and then deciding that it was worth a shot to respond to his post.

The blogger to whose post I was responding, was gentlemanly and gracious, which I liked. Although he clung to his opinion, he welcomed that of others. Clearly, he likes debate, and was courteous with those who disagreed vehemently with his stance.

However, along came a strange, trollish, insulting, boorish, misogynistic person, who flung insults at me about what I had posted in my response — whereupon, I replied (big mistake!) to this newcomer saying that I did not wish to engage in dialogue with someone who sought to insult me. The next thing I know, this person says that I insulted him (possibly because I refused to be drawn into his juvenile taunting and invalid arguments. He basically shouted at me online and because of that, he thought his remarks carried more weight and logic. He added that I had therefore shut down the argument with my remarks, which, in his view, was “typical feminist claptrap.”

He also exulted, yes, exulted (how puerile is that?) in thinking that he had “won” the argument.

Alas, he’s not a very intelligent person, I’m afraid. He’s someone who appears belligerent, and trolls people’s blogs, seeking to fight.

So, yes, the insulting misogynist whose blog I don’t read and don’t follow, sort of won — because, after that, I quit following the first blogger whose work I had been responding to. This was in part because I really didn’t like the boorish mentality of some of the people who were responding, and it wasn’t worth my while to engage in dialogue with them.

It didn’t matter to me that the skunk-troll was “winning.” It clearly mattered to him that he “won.”

Poor, poor skunk. Someone must have caused him great mental anguish, some woman, who probably didn’t care for his deeply hateful attitude towards their right to choose.

He has my pity. However, I won’t go anywhere near him. I value my right to lead a skunk-free existence.

Thanks for reading!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The End~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tags: insults online and the like, Other People's Blogs, pissing matches with skunks, Trolls, Unsolicited opinions

Vijaya Sundaram

Poet, Musician, Teacher, and Amateur Visual Artist

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