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Quid Pro Quo With The Gods

Discussion in 'Cheeniya's Senile Ramblings' started by Cheeniya, May 20, 2017.

  1. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

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    On Singing

    You mentioned elsewhere also about your humming, ahem, your singing. I think you are a trained classical singer. Was it in that beach post that you recollected your youthful days of singing in Marina Beach? Usually, when people reveal that they can sing, I inquire 'sing' as in 'sing sing' or 'shower sing'. In your case, I can sense that you are no bathroom singer but a veritable concert singer.

    In my case, if I were to compete with our cavorting donkey who is now a permanent fixture of this thread, she will win hands down in singing. When my dad inquired song or music or dance, I didn't have any option there. It ought to be dance, I neither have the voice nor the ear for the other two. It has been a good life though. In schools, we were usually divided into singing band and dancing troupe. I used to hang out with the hoofers because of that segregation during school festivals. Childhood is some experience! Funny, how innocuous selections become defining parameters later in our life. Imagine if I was in singing team instead of dance team, then I would have had a different exposure, a different set of friends, and a different life and identity. You might think that these choices are trivial but in fact they have a pronounced impact in life.
     
    Last edited: Aug 9, 2017
  2. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

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    Hehe! I cannot think of a single aspect where Google can claim to be a male. Only a high-strung female will dump 25,270,000,000 results (0.76 seconds) when you enter "0" in the search box. That is a woman's overworked, go figure out for yourself tantrum! Google as a man would have sympathetically inquired, "Can you make your query more specific so that I assuage your anxiety around nihilism".

    upload_2017-8-8_21-40-43.png
     
    Last edited: Aug 9, 2017
  3. Cheeniya

    Cheeniya Super Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

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    @Iravati
    When I asked Google the same question, it offered me about 15,450,000,000 results (0.96 seconds), 10000 million less than what it offered you! I must check up again asking my daughter to raise this query. If it is the same as it gave you, I'll sue Google for gender discrimination!
     
  4. Cheeniya

    Cheeniya Super Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

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    @Iravati
    You again remind me of Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne! If this donkey doesn't inspire you, nothing will!

    I used to love singing but my voice does not cooperate anymore! Further after the stroke, even I can't hear what I am singling! My left ear has gone into a world of its own! Did not Maria make even her gruffy husband Captain von Trapp sing and even gave the family musical troupe his name? My mum would often say that the longer we let our childhood memory a part of our life the longer we would live!
     
  5. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

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    You mean, Google is not just a female but a discriminating female who is fooling men? You must sue Her. It also fetched fewer results while squandering your 0.26 seconds. So typical of a woman ...dawdling ..and batting eyes ...lazy sigh and not being effective at the end. Google is already marred by this viral gender memo. Perfect timing to slap our grievance and make it more challenging for them.
     
  6. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

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    Your left ear would have interested and been a good case study of errant ears to our Oliver Sacks, the famous neurologist who passed away in 2015. He had written extensively about musical maladies in his book Musicophilia. He cites the case of Che Guevara who is was tone-deaf that he would dance a mambo when tango was played. I am also one such person who cannot discern rhythm. I would dance to every noise and not know a thing about melody or pitch. I would fail to distinguish even the musical notes. On the other end is our Sir Frederick Ouseley who is so sensitive to musical notes that he would rattle off imperceptible facts like the wind hissed in D minor, the thunder roared in G major so forth. Upon inspection, his observations were found to be so accurate there is a condition to denote these extreme auditory revelations: absolute pitch. These extraordinary souls can describe every sneeze, flatulence and burp in clefs and stave. Is that extreme sensitivity a curse or a blessing?

    Julie Andrews was a singing sensation in The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins. I liker her more in Mary Poppins. What is with singing nannies that they win the hearts of children and adults alike in no time? Perhaps, all homilies and edicts could be driven faster in playful songs than pedagogic speeches.

    In the same book Musicophilia, Oliver Sacks mentioned that our "music memory" is the strongest. As we age, we tend to lose our semantic and episodic memory but music memory is the last to fade away. In that case, memories of a childhood filled with music stays longer and to the very end. You are lucky to have had a childhood suffused with music. You are blessed save for an errant ear!
     
    Last edited: Aug 10, 2017
  7. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

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    When OJ cited an old post of yours, I was intrigued. We search for a lot of things, some attainable and some evasive but "solitude" is neither this nor that, it seemed like a hovering apparition to me for a long time. When I heard that you had blogged on "In search of solitude" I had to dredge up the trail to meet that apparition. What did I meet instead? Voh! I met an "It". This is no Stephen King's shape-shifting "It". This is a never before seen perception of "It" metaphor.

    It didn't take long to find out why OJ considered this post as a hallmark in writing. GK Chesterton wrote in Everlasting Man of our undertaking in offering a voice to the silence around us. He wrote, "We have to speak of something of which it is the whole point that people did not speak of it; we have not merely to translate from a strange tongue or speech, but from a strange silence." That happens to be one of my favourite quotes. That is exactly what you accomplished in that blog. A hushed night, a discreet bathroom visit, a quiet gaze and you turned that strange silence into a creature's biography. You do that adeptly with tangible creatures like flies and lizards but in this instance you have not only fitted a voice to an undefined creature but a voice unlike seen before for "It". Has "It" travelled to escape insufferable bores of its community or "It" aspired beyond its mediocre existence to skulk around human acquaintance. What was the motive of "It" for this transgression?

    Chesterton was only talking of bestowing voice to silence, but you have pumped life, breathed voice and knitted a blog out of that reticent "It" encounter that a decade later your blog is still recounted for its vigorous take on a mediation on solitude. I am with OJ on this high praise because this is exactly the kind of writing that escapes my wayward fingers.

    They say, it takes one to know one. Sure, it takes a flustered rambler like me to spot a perfected ramble like you. That sentence is alchemy of sensations drawn out of silence that even Chesterton would not have foreseen. I realise why OJ pointed to this particular blog. Just keep doing what you are doing. Don't ever change a thing about you. You have one of the most imaginative and sensuous minds that I have seen in a person. Repeat: Don't change a thing about you.
     
    Last edited: Aug 10, 2017
  8. Cheeniya

    Cheeniya Super Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

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    @Iravati
    I would have assured you with a 'I won't' but the fact is I can't even if I want to! Once a boss of mine in the Bank said about me in a meeting 'He may be talking utter nonsense all the time but it is interesting nonsense if you have nothing else to do'
     
  9. Cheeniya

    Cheeniya Super Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

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    @Iravati
    What stunned me in this reference of Oliver Sacks was the striking resemblance of our hair! When I was young, I too was like him except for the clean-shaven face:
    upload_2017-8-10_15-9-53.jpeg
    At his advanced age, he resembled what I am today:
    upload_2017-8-10_15-11-49.jpeg
    I feel very gratified for this reference of yours to a great medico.
    There are two kinds of music lovers. The first kind loves it and the second knows it inside out. The first is usually silent and the second has to keep talking about it and never allow the first kind to listen to it peacefully! I have been victims of the second kind in many a concert. The moment the singer starts essaying a Raga, they would snap their fingers and declare the name of the Raga distracting all the other lovers of music. These guys become noisier if the singer essays a rare Raga and they are able to identify it as Hradini!
    You can say that again! Most of the local music lovers started buying discs of light western music after hearing Julie's songs.
    I was broken hearted when I came to know that the songs of My Fair Lady were sung by Margaret Nixon McEathron for my idol Audrey Hepburn. This girl also sang in movies like The King and I as well as West Side Story, a great favourite of mine!
     
  10. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

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    On West Side Story

    You are killing me now with the kinship! You and I watched similar kind of movies just that you watched more than I did. I have so much to talk about the modern day romance of our Capulet and Montague in West Side Story. America happens be one of my favourite musical dances. More later.
     

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