I don't know from where but the other day, out of the blue, I was really vividly reminded of the House of Usher - remember Poe?
Now, I am not a lover of the macabre or the horrible in stories and all who know me can testify to that. I watched Evil Dead in the crook of pa's elbow with a carefully positioned cushion before me and am still fanciful of peskies and ghosts. A mild horror film will give me atleast a week of sleepless nights! To be succinct, I'd rather not watch any ...
Yet I have and have always had a morbid fascination with Edgar Allan Poe. His tales of mystery and horror leave me spellbound and the eerie atmosphere pervades long after the tale is over. Poe was probably dissed in America and it took the Europeans to bring it to their notice. Yet because of the generally depraved persona ascribed to Poe, he was treated with some distaste. Yeats went as far as to call him 'vulgar' apparently.
Anyway the point is that I am trying to understand what about the stories of Poe is so fascinating. The Fall of the House of Usher is actually quite magnificient in its construction and execution. The story takes you in. The house is palpable and you can feel it come alive. The tension is so real when Madeline actually appears. The story is a story of a house - the house is the character. There are so many undercurrents to it - none explicit, yet you feel them. Incest, mental illness, death, resurrection - all find a place. The house itself, the protagonist, is displayed in very anthropomorphic terms. Its windows are likened to eyes, and in the end it dies along with the siblings. Another striking thing is that you don't know much about the narrator and even Roderik and Madeline Usher except for their quirks, paranoia and strange reflexes and yet you don't really notice because it grips you with elements that are so trivial if you think about them and yet the mainstay of the story - like the state of the garden.
Apparently also, Poe thought that it was important to depict stuff as undercurrents rather than explicitly state everything. I think he revelled in confusing all the senses - and bringing about a sense of complete overload - a kind of "totality". He absolutely loved bringing in intensely melodramatic psychological manifests of conscious and subconscious actions including dreams. He spins stories that transcend the boundary between a person's surrounding and head - like it's one environment and fair game. Besides Usher, I really find the "Telltale Heart" and "The Moth" fascinating. Poe is the master of the art of short stories. Slowly the story develops and it's magnitude dawns upon you much later on; Poe's isn't an obvious art in my opinion and I think that's what I love about his stories.
It seems that Debussy tried to write an opera on The Fall of the House of Usher. Unsurprising really ... it is a fantastic story to set to music. Still, it's an opera about a house - a morbid, decaying one at that! Debussy never completed it though. For Poe - dreams were more real than reality, he was a pre-cursor to the Symbolist movement and celebrated in France. All Debussy wanted was to focus on operas for Poe's : The Devil in the Belfry and The Fall of the House of Usher. Neither was completed. However, Poe’s literature, including The Raven, was inspiration for Rapsodie, that Debussy did complete. The play off between the orchestra and the saxophone make for the perfect intersection of Poe's prose and Debussy's music: apparently a reflection of the composer's own life at the time.
Anyhow, I digress. As lightning strikes the House of Usher and the narrator looks back to see the lightning, the crack through the centre and the destruction of the house, everyone leaves to draw their own conclusion. Therein I think lies the beauty of Poe's writing: he never imposes what he thinks is the story, the story is individual to each of us as we draw our own conclusions in the overactive, imaginative, fanciful corners of unreality.
Wednesday, 18 March 2009
Thursday, 12 March 2009
Ek Kahani, Rangon ki Zubaani
Yesterday was Holi. The festival of colour - bright hues, sweetness, a heralding of Spring ... So to bring some more colour into the day I decided I'd dig out the ol' easel and a have a bit of a jolly...
That set me thinking; while I was retrieving the tools of the trade from behind the bed, where they're stowed I was thinking about inspiration. Every painting starts with something, a need, an idea something set off like a flashbulb in the dark. At first there is nothing, or maybe something dull and passive , tunnel-like, beckoning yet not enticing ... And then all of a sudden, out of the blue, out jumps this vibrant image, luminous in its intensity ... . Then, just as quickly as it came, the vision blurs and disappears; the image recedes. It's as if the flash is a vision of foreverness - it has been forever and will be for ever after ... it was here before the Universe itself and has seen all its perturbations - the painting that I can even hope to reproduce is but a feeble shadow - a mindless corruption and yet a reflection of me in the vastness of infinities stretching beyond and more.
Anyway, regardless of that, I start trying to capture what I think is my part in the vision that was ...
Thursday, 5 March 2009
Musical Tales
What is this life if full of care
We have no time to stand and stare ...
Yes indeed. I am rushing around like a headless chicken, trying to get things done, assignments finished, project ideas pinned and so is everyone else I know. However, it leads me to wonder, what about the wall staring time I need to hone the brilliance that will be my idea for the discovery of the millenium. Hmmm, maybe the world will just have to wait for me to have that kind of time ;)! Now that the self effacing being that I am is done with all the self congratulation, I can get on with spewing other stuff that's not on my mind but so wants to be on it. This blog is a self indulgent thing. All I want with it is to write something beautiful and unrelated or nonsensical by turns. Today is the day of the beautiful, I rediscovered Scheherezade.
What can I say about Scheherazade. It's such a romantic tale spun into such a beautiful symphony. The Arabian Nights - was such a tale ever told - the sultan who, after being cheated on by his wife, decided to marry a new girl every night, and execute her the next day. One fateful day he married Scheherazade, a storyteller. So magically did she weave her tales every night that he could not tear himself away from the stories she told, until dawn came and she left him in such suspense; he could not execute her for he had to know the end of the story. For a 1001 days did this saga continue until he fell in love and could not imagine life without her. The stories included some of my absolute favourites, Sinbad and Aladdin and Ali Baba were the stuff of childhood heroism, but the real hero was Scheherazade!
To this story, in the summer of 1888 did Rimsky-Korsakov, the Russian composer, write the symphony suite of Scheherazade. A strong and brawny theme is the opening of the piece's first movement, reflecting the power and ego of the Sultan, almost defying the listener to explain his presence and kneel to him in subservience. The ambience is intimidating and yet magnificient.
The response of Scheherazade, is a violin solo, a musical trance that weaves through strands of the beautiful instrument, caressing the bow so effortlessly to show the spirit of the princess and the storyteller: the passion and the beauty of this creature who was holding on to her life with all the wit and charm she could muster. The mesmerising effect is emphasised by the harp that transports one to a hypnotic trance in three chords - in the palatial decadent room where worlds were being carved and populated and the sultan was being brought under the spell of the sweet, melodic tones of the bard. I can sense the emotion, the sensuality, the sheer magnetic force of a world so far from your own and yet so alluring that even if you have everything in the world, you can't give up a good story.
The tales start with "The Sea and Sinbad's Ship." The undulating waves, rushing intensely in and then retreating to the far reaches of the ocean to form newer more powerful variants, every one of the transitions is a suspenseful twist in the tale and the symphony tries to capture and capitalise on each one to reflect how Scheherazade herself must have told the story, to capture the essence of her imagination and constantly make the listener uneasy and on edge. Like the story the music seems to go towards an important point and then step away just as I think it's going somewhere and there is something in sight.
The true quality of Scheherazade comes through in the movement final: "The Festival at Baghdad; The Sea; Shipwreck on a Rock; Conclusion." The sultan, now at the end of his tether, the music personifying his impatience with Scheherezade, his urging Scheherazade to complete the story, his agitation and impatience to know what happens next ... Each morning the executioner turns up at the palace doors, each morning the executioner is sent away with the instruction to come the next day and yet the next day she weaves another splendid tale that leaves him wanting more .. she weaves all the strands together from all the movements before, into this glorious one: tying every bit of music thus far into glorious symphony. At this point the Sultan forgets to tell the executioner to return, the last piece is his low voice finally mellowed by Scheherazade's love.
It is such a beautiful story and it comes alive, in full colour and rich glory in the playing of the music. I don't know how I ever stopped listening to it!
We have no time to stand and stare ...
Yes indeed. I am rushing around like a headless chicken, trying to get things done, assignments finished, project ideas pinned and so is everyone else I know. However, it leads me to wonder, what about the wall staring time I need to hone the brilliance that will be my idea for the discovery of the millenium. Hmmm, maybe the world will just have to wait for me to have that kind of time ;)! Now that the self effacing being that I am is done with all the self congratulation, I can get on with spewing other stuff that's not on my mind but so wants to be on it. This blog is a self indulgent thing. All I want with it is to write something beautiful and unrelated or nonsensical by turns. Today is the day of the beautiful, I rediscovered Scheherezade.
What can I say about Scheherazade. It's such a romantic tale spun into such a beautiful symphony. The Arabian Nights - was such a tale ever told - the sultan who, after being cheated on by his wife, decided to marry a new girl every night, and execute her the next day. One fateful day he married Scheherazade, a storyteller. So magically did she weave her tales every night that he could not tear himself away from the stories she told, until dawn came and she left him in such suspense; he could not execute her for he had to know the end of the story. For a 1001 days did this saga continue until he fell in love and could not imagine life without her. The stories included some of my absolute favourites, Sinbad and Aladdin and Ali Baba were the stuff of childhood heroism, but the real hero was Scheherazade!
To this story, in the summer of 1888 did Rimsky-Korsakov, the Russian composer, write the symphony suite of Scheherazade. A strong and brawny theme is the opening of the piece's first movement, reflecting the power and ego of the Sultan, almost defying the listener to explain his presence and kneel to him in subservience. The ambience is intimidating and yet magnificient.
The response of Scheherazade, is a violin solo, a musical trance that weaves through strands of the beautiful instrument, caressing the bow so effortlessly to show the spirit of the princess and the storyteller: the passion and the beauty of this creature who was holding on to her life with all the wit and charm she could muster. The mesmerising effect is emphasised by the harp that transports one to a hypnotic trance in three chords - in the palatial decadent room where worlds were being carved and populated and the sultan was being brought under the spell of the sweet, melodic tones of the bard. I can sense the emotion, the sensuality, the sheer magnetic force of a world so far from your own and yet so alluring that even if you have everything in the world, you can't give up a good story.
The tales start with "The Sea and Sinbad's Ship." The undulating waves, rushing intensely in and then retreating to the far reaches of the ocean to form newer more powerful variants, every one of the transitions is a suspenseful twist in the tale and the symphony tries to capture and capitalise on each one to reflect how Scheherazade herself must have told the story, to capture the essence of her imagination and constantly make the listener uneasy and on edge. Like the story the music seems to go towards an important point and then step away just as I think it's going somewhere and there is something in sight.
Scheherazade's voice starts off the second movement, but this time she's more elaborate, almost more confident in the sound of her tones .. it sounds like she knows the embellishments and tweaks that he loves and is now playing him like a master ... the sultan is in her power and she knows it. The movement is known as "The Tale of the Kalender Prince" and this time the use of exotic solos from the Middle east is made extensively in the woodwind instruments. The sounds are foreign and so heartfelt. As I listen to this bit I feel poignant and thoughtful. It's as though Scheherazade was exploring her own world through the stories she was telling and living every minute of them. I can smell the bazaars in the desert with spices and bright silks and crowded, dusty streets with so much life and bustle.
The true quality of Scheherazade comes through in the movement final: "The Festival at Baghdad; The Sea; Shipwreck on a Rock; Conclusion." The sultan, now at the end of his tether, the music personifying his impatience with Scheherezade, his urging Scheherazade to complete the story, his agitation and impatience to know what happens next ... Each morning the executioner turns up at the palace doors, each morning the executioner is sent away with the instruction to come the next day and yet the next day she weaves another splendid tale that leaves him wanting more .. she weaves all the strands together from all the movements before, into this glorious one: tying every bit of music thus far into glorious symphony. At this point the Sultan forgets to tell the executioner to return, the last piece is his low voice finally mellowed by Scheherazade's love.
It is such a beautiful story and it comes alive, in full colour and rich glory in the playing of the music. I don't know how I ever stopped listening to it!
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