xoxo

A recent post that i wrote for jugnistyle.com got me thinking about voices and revisions.  I wrote an article about an art exhibition at the ROM museum on Ragamala paintings and i tried writing it in a voice that was wistful and interrogative and introduced the story in a tangential/stream of consciousness manner.  I don’t know if it worked or not but I raised an interesting point about different voices for different audiences.  in a sense, my entire introductory paragraphs were taken out.  Not that i’m too tied to them and I’m not sure the connections i was trying to make, make sense or sound pretentious (v.possible) but i enclose the full the article for  you here.  I guess it’s more of my english lit background and how excited i used to get when i found different versions of the same poem or passage (why were changes made, what are silences, what is left out, how is the message changed?).  The medium is the message and when time and space are of the essence, one can’t dilly dally.  The shorter version of the article can be found ici.  Sit with a cup of chai and tell me what you think.

Can you paint an opera?

Vikram Seth speaks to this when he writes in An Equal Music that even in playing the scales, the movement from one note to the next provides a great opportunity for individual flare.

Musical notation was used to standardize the language of music and make it decipherable across the barriers of language and time. In a sense you’re translating a sound and associating it with an icon that represents a beat, a time signature, a note, everything that allows a song to be replicated. At its heart, this trust in based on a kind of magic. There is a magic associated with writing and the written word that plays into notions of exactness, authority and truth.  But can the very act of writing create that?  How do you translate a creative pause? A baited breathe? When Pavorotti intentionally breaks from singing Nessu Dorma to passionately underscore Vincero (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ovcNw8xr64) for dramatic effect, how do you write that down?

Hidden in the back of the Sir Michael Ondaatje Gallery at the Royal Ontario Museum is Ragamala: Garland of Melodies an exhibition on South Asian miniature painting from the 16th to 19^th century that illuminates the art of translating.  This modest collection (some of the ROM staff didn’t even know about it) is a rich selection of paintings and musical instruments that describes the unique phenomenon of painting music.   Described as a “confluence of music, poetry and painting” this exhibition is a must see for lovers of Indian art and a chance to discover depictions of love and romance that are hundreds of years old.

And how do you paint a Raga?

A Raga can be defined as compositions based upon structure and improvisation that respond to certain musical ideas but that also evoke certain emotions.  Paramount in this selection are images of love: romance, longing, celebration, separation. The exhibt makes interesting claims about the potential female audience for these paintings and one can’t deny they are the focus of these works. For instance Lalita Ragini is described as a devotional, morning raga.  While this could be interpreted in a variety of different ways, this painter chooses to depict a hesitant lover looking back towards his beloved against a burning orange sunrise.  The painting speaks to deeper messages in the raga itself – the pain of separation and the hope of reunion.

Another painting done in the mode of Madhumadhvi Ragini depicts a woman running for cover during a thunder a lightning storm. The fury of the moment is nuanced by the delicate portrayal of three peacocks seated in a nearby tree, one of which lovingly caressed by the woman’s hand.

Likewise the legendarily fire-starting Dipaka Raga on one hand appears to depict a simple scene.  But a closer look at the intently focused eye contact between the two lovers, the swooning gaze of the attendant and the approaching storm clouds beneath a crescent moon speak to different levels of flames and desire.

Much like the nature of a Raga, because these paintings don’t desire to be note-perfect, they open themselves to that speak to historical musical traditions but also fostering a personal and intimate relationship. To some degree, these artists have moved beyond the structure and form of the ragas itself and are searching for something deeper: a way of embodying the emotion behind the music. Ragamala: Garland of Music runs until the end of November much like the ragas themselves, with room for creative improvisation.

Being in Montreal for the SSRCH conference makes me feel like an immigrant again.  Although close to 90% of the people i’ve talked to speak english fluently, I still assume that i’m surrounded by french speakers who i won’t be able to communicate with or who won’t be able to communicate with me.  It feels alienating.  And I feel like an alien here, too (there was a sign for “etranger” at the airport).  Although normally in a new city i wouldn’t start conversations with random strangers. In Chicago I did start talking to a woman in front of me in line at a sandwich shop, but that was only because she had just come with an invitation letter to the Los Angeles auditions for “So You Think You Can Dance”.  She was in line since 5:00Am and that 1:00pm meal was her first one of the day.  The thing about Montreal is that even if I want to speak with someone or not, I feel that sense of choice is missing.  It’s circumscribed.  I feel hesitant to talk with starbucks employees, bus officials, hotel workers.  I get the same sensations I had when I first moved to Toronto…with out the KDS ~ Toronto.  Figuring out transit schedules, street routes, restaurants, deciphering French language newspapers till i get a headache, slowly trying to remember my grade 12 french, realizing what people are saying to me only after I’ve thought about it 5 minutes after it happened.  It gives me a greater appreciation for the immigrants who came here (in any city) who didn’t know the native language and had to pick it up, learn enough to get by, as a survival mechanism.  It also puts me in the shoes of past and present immigrants who feel out of place in new countries and even their own homes.

PS Having said that though there’s something interesting about the way that I feel at home on university campuses all over Canada.  There something about being in those spaces; bookstores, office buildings, art galleries, classrooms, that makes me feel at ease…. interesting.

I stayed in the French Quarter when I was in NOLA one or two months ago, with the understanding that the Quarter was neither French nor a true indication of New Orleans. Rather, the French Quarter is THE tourist district of the city, replete with chain clothing stores, high-priced cafes, tourist shops, massage parlours, strip bars and a lot of Louisiana hospitality. One morning sticks out in my mind the most. I was on my way to present a paper at the ACLA conference at Cafe Arnaud, a restaurant famous for its Louisiana fare, and through its decor, reminded me of colonial times. I walked through the French Quarter early, around 7:50am, and the narrow cobblestone roads were still wet from their daily washing and the air smelled fresh and reminded me of a village in Punjab. Then I turned a corner and ran into a group of marathon runners, in town for the annual Easter Marathon, and who before even running the race, were drinking beer in to-go cups. At 7:50am. Only in NOLA?

I had a contentious relationship with the city. The people were friendly, with staff at different shops and restaurants all calling me “Sugar” and “Honey.” It made me feel loved . The French Quarter – I’m not one who enjoys constructed, contrived “historical” experiences, and that’s what I felt the French Quarter was about. It was difficult to get a real understanding of the real history of the area (colonialism, subjugation, segregation, etc) because it is such a commercial area devoid of any real meaning. But I can’t be completely unfair to NOLA – the people were interesting, the food was rich and delicious (especially the fresh seafood, although I’m not sure how that industry will be affected after the catastrophic BP oil spill), and when I did venture north into the heart of the city one afternoon, I experienced a slow-paced, pretty town full of antique shops, cafes, restaurants and little shops selling organic and vintage dresses. At the same time, I knew as I walked shop-to-shop, that I was in a neighbourhood outside the devastation, poverty and racial segregation of the quarters hit by Hurrican Katrina. NOLA is a place of opposites and contradictions, where a tourist enjoy daiquiris-to-go and completely ignore the real history and stories of the people and area.

A line from Rushdie’s Satanic Verses came to mind :  ”The world, somebody wrote, is the place we prove real by dying in it.” the overwhelming reality of it. its realness, its absolute truth.  showing how somethings are not constructions, imaginings, discourses, superstructure…. how some things are very immediate and real without the added layer of signification afterwards.  yes, there’s irony in the line in that one only realizes the world is real when one is not there.  would the opposite then be that one imagines the world to be a dream?  perchance to dream as hamlet says.

i watched hamlet two weeks ago.  the full 4 hour kenneth bragnah  version and all i got was huge headache watching the play in a way it was never meant to be presented, ie. with everything from all three versions put together.  i always liked hamlet’s short interaction with horatio in act 5 better than the major soliloquy.

Hamlet:
Not a whit, we defy augury. There is special providence in
the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to
come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come—the
readiness is all. Since no man, of aught he leaves, knows

what is’t to leave betimes. Let be.

in a class once, just for fun, i argued for a whole hour that hamlet never learned anything and that these lines were a lie he was telling himself.  i never believed that, i mean he spends the whole play coming to this realization.  but i argued out of stubbornness and for the sake of arguing.  i always believed in these lines ever since i first read them.  it answers the questions that he raises in to be or not to be by just saying  ”let be”.  one can’t worry about if our actions are absolutely morally right or wrong.  all we can do is make the best decisions we can and leave the consequences because it’s out of our hands.  it’s not delegating responsibility for your actions away but instead letting go of that need for intense control and surety in every action.  one can’t defy fate.  since we don’t know when we are to die, what is it to leave early?  is there such a thing in the first place?  could one leave late?  again, it would just be a time. quoting the play “nothing is either good or bad only thinking makes it so”.  that thinking is the “spin” or “imagining” that gets grafted onto the event after the fact.  and again an event that is very real and immediate.  and perhaps because it is, it needs some sort of understanding framework.

in his, “let be”, i can also hear ” let go”.   if there is a guiding hand in the (perhaps/seemingly?) small event of the fall of a sparrow then could there not be a guiding hand in our lives too?  i do think so but it’s not as neat and tidy a logical step as i make it out to be…hence one reason why hamlet is so long, too.  that let be is very “gita-ish” in its advocation to just do one’s actions and leave the consequences.  i guess it’s also very zen buddhist.  there’s also (future) echoes of the beatles and “let it be” in there too.

i walked by the sidewalk an hour later and there was no trace of the event.  but i don’t want to write this in a cutesy manner that makes some pseudo-profound statement about how everyone just went on with there lives and only i was affected by it.  because it’s not true.  i went into chapters while it was happening to look at books; partly because i was already in a melancholic mood and partly because of the sense of intrusion i felt.  wrapping someone’s life into a bow like that seems like the ultimate insult.  because it’s not about me.  it’s not about me privileging my experiences that are “better” or “more insightful” than someone else’s.  it assumes an end game. an end to the story that continues on beyond me in both directions.

the most immediate feeling i felt was that it seemed like a very sudden and unworthy place to die.  i remember when my grandfather passed away, we walked across the middle of the street from the crematorium to our cars and cars stopped in both directions as we passed.  i liked how we were bringing a sense of finiteness and infinity to the lives of the people who stopped for us.  more than that i also felt grateful that there was a respect/ a sense of humanity that would let us walk down the road in the middle of the day and not be honked at or yelled at for disrupting people’s days.  i try to return the favour whenever something like that happens to me when i’m driving.  the way his body was convulsing from the electric shocks reminded me of when my naani passed away when i was 8 years old and the paramedics came to our house to save her.  i never saw them working to save her, but i guess i assumed this is what it must have looked like.

At LG Fashion Week here in Toronto, tip-tapping away at my laptop in the media lounge. So many bloggers, tweeters, web content writers furiously writing between shows. Just caught the LOVAS show, and coming up is veteran Pat McDonagh, followed by Lundstrom and Evan Biddell.

From outer appearances, LOVAS is an intimate collection, inspired by memories of designer Wesley Badanjak’s grandmother. Up close, the ready-to-wear collection featured several office-ready knits and jackets, and a couple of uninspired sequined shifts and leggings. The highlight of the show were the trio of floral print charmeuse dresses & top. Overall, I felt that the jacket-trouser/skirt combos were dated.

I’ll post pictures and videos after the shows – although my camera is being very temper-mental at the moment. Feel a bit star-struck as I spot my favourite Canadian fashion bloggers in the audience. Oh, time to be seated for the next show – back to the requisite techno-fueled “fashion environment.” – Manjot

Siddhartha once asked the Ferryman, “Have you also learned the secret from the river that there is no such thing as time?

A bright smile spread over Vasudeva’s face.

“Yes, Siddharta,” he said. “Is this what you mean? That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean, in the mountains, everywhere, and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadows of the future?” (83).  To this I would add that the river is also the clouds in the sky, the moisture in the air i breathe and a part of me, too.

I don’t know why but this passage reminded me of the song Chingari Koi Bhadke from the movie Amar Prem.

“Chingari koi bhadke, to saawan use bujaye,

Sawan jo agan lagye, use kaun bujaye?’

If a spark is lit, then the spring monsoons will extinguish it,

A rainstorm that ignites a fire, what can extinguish that?

There is a line at the end of the song that goes:

Majadhaar jo naye dole, to madhi paar lagaye,

Madhi jo naav duboye, use kaun bachaye?

When the river rises, then the ferryman can take you across,

The ferryman who sinks his ship, who can save him?

The word “mahdi” is used in arabic to mean “the saviour” as in the Mahdi of Sudan.  But there is a long running tradition of seeing ferrypersons/sailors as saviours (the Christ-like sailor in Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner for example) and there is something to the acquiesence/faith that one gives to another when they are directionless.  There is a grace in both actions.

But the last lines bring up the idea of a sailor who sinks his(her) own ship. On one level this reflects the idea of self-destruction, superficially demonstrated in cinema through the romanticized image of devdas.  although originally this may be an echo of the sufi idea “aag ke dariya hai, doob ke jaana hai” – “there is an ocean of fire, one must drown to pass”. This sinking is perhaps both physical and metaphorical…going deeper into oneself, almost obliterating oneself to come out more knowledgeable, saved, cleansed on the other side.

these ideas of cleansing and anhilation are interlinked.  purging oneself in an immolating fire.

In Ovid’s Metamorphosis, heracles wins deianeira as his wife. On his return home, the centaur Nessus offers to ferry her across a fast flowing river.  Heracles is strong enough to swim it himself but while she is on his back, the centaur tries to abduct deineira.  In anger, heracles shoots nessus with arrows tipped in the poison of a hyrda killing Nessus.  Before he dies, he gives his blood soaked shirt to deianeira promising her that it will make heracles love her forever.

years later when deianeira reweaves and gives him the shirt, nessus’ blood carries a curse that burns heracles alive. in excrucianting pain, heracles makes a funeral pyre for himself and throws himself onto it.  ovid continues that heracles’ mortal side is burned away leaving only his immortal soul to arise to mount olympus and live with the gods.

T.S. Eliot wrote a series of poems about his travels around the east coast of Massachusetts during the second world war.  these travelling poems are known as the Four Quartets.  One of these poems is entitled Little Gidding.  its fourth section contains the lines:

the only hope, or else despair

Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-

To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.

Love is the unfamiliar Name

Behind the hands that wove

The intolerable shirt of flame

Which human power cannot remove.

We only live, only suspire

Consumed by either fire or fire.

]]> http://torontotutti.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/a-consideration-on-the-motif/feed/ 0 naveengirn http://torontotutti.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/1980-a-great-year-for-hockey-and-me/ http://torontotutti.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/1980-a-great-year-for-hockey-and-me/#comments Tue, 16 Feb 2010 09:34:08 +0000 manjotbains http://torontotutti.wordpress.com/?p=332 ]]> I squealed when I saw this poster set-up as part of a larger collection of Olympic-themed Omega posters on display outside the Vancouver Art Gallery. 1980. A great year for 2 reasons: face-off between Russia & USA’s Olympic Men’s Hockey Teams, and my happy birth year.

Yes, I’m a Russia/Soviet hockey fan, and the USA won the above match and would go on to win the Gold medal game against Finland. But this poster is so eye-catching, with each nation’s flag makes up the body of each player, and even more so because of the Communism VS Democracy undertones.

Also of note at the Vancouver Art Gallery is a curious installation by Michael Lin called, “A Modest Veil,” which covers the facade of the former courthouse that now houses several Canadian art collections. If you’re in the area, the Gallery also has a special Da Vinci collection on loan from the Queen of England herself.

A Modest Veil - Installation on facade of Vancouver Art Gallery by Michael Lin

Things I’ve noticed:

1. You can’t really criticize the Vancouver 2010 Olympics unless you want a fist in your face. You may even be called anti-Canadian or other strange names.
   

   Oh, Canada. It's you.

2. Even though it’s slightly obnoxious, I kind of love the big Canada flag stuck to the side of Hotel Georgia.
3. People either lie or are weird because they think the Opening Ceremonies were a-m-a-z-i-n-g. It had its moments (all 2 of them).
4. Despite wanting to remain cool and collected, I also jumped up for joy at Robson Square when Bilodeau won Gold. Patriotism can’t be beat.
   

   Crowd at Robson Square during Bilodeau's Run

5. Everyone is wearing Olympic gear. EVERYONE. I’d say it’s a little nuts, but then I’d have a fist in my face.
6. You can’t see the Olympic torch/cauldron unless you walk to the top of the hill. It’s behind fences. It’s disappointing.
   

   Olympic Flames Behind a Fence

7. The police here are scary. And some are really nice.
8. It feels like a big party on the streets.
9. Sometimes I want to be Russian. I LOVE and seriously covet Team Russia’s shoes. And I’m not-so-secretly rooting for the Russian hockey team. Goes back to my crush-on-Pavel-Bure-in-Grade-7,8,9 & 10 days.

Semi-Secretly Coveting Team Russia's Sneakers

Vancouver 2010 Olympics = fun for spectators & most/some Vancouverites, and fodder for bloggers & amateur photographers.

Coming up next: will possibly blog/tweet from Stephen Colbert’s taping of the Colbert Report at False Creek on Wednesday/Thursday if my research schedule permits.

I’ll be checking out the Surrey Celebration site tomorrow evening and will post pics & videos if I can catch any footage. Otherwise, I think I may venture out to Downtown Vancouver on Sunday or Monday to report on and experience the Olympics in Vancouver.