Friday, September 22, 2006

Somewhere Me

I wake up feeling lost and empty
Something tugging at my heart... an incompleteness
Fear of the unknown, worry of the known, dread of the sure .... all loom over me
Teetering on the brink of sanity I search for me, somewhere

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

CURLY FRIZZY UNRULY

CURLY FRIZZY UNRULY
that's my mane
drives me insane
conditioners and hair serum ... all down the drain
efforts to straighten the frizz are all in vain
mum sez 'its lovely hair!'.. i say its a pain
with a dowdy long plait i look like a plain jane
the frizzy rings behind my ears
move me very near tears
the frizziness atop my crown
gives me endless reasons to frown

Friday, September 15, 2006

Bohemian 'Symphony': Mozart's 38th



Courtesy (www.stevenledbetter.com)

Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart composed the D-major symphony late in 1786 for the city of Prague. The score calls for two each of flutes, oboes, bassoons, horns, and trumpets, plus timpani and strings.
The Prague symphony exists because of the long and happy relationship between Mozart and the music-loving citizens of the Bohemian capital during the last years of the composer’s life. Almost a year before composing Don Giovanni for Prague, Mozart wrote a symphony for intended for that city (true, it had its premiere in Vienna, but it was heard in Prague a month later). Like the later opera, it is in the key of D and begins with slow and powerful opening music in the minor, with tension building almost to a breaking point through dissonance and chromatic harmonies. Mozart had evidently learned a great deal from Haydn’s symphonies, because the first movement of the symphony, built out of arrangements and developments of motivic figures more than “themes” per se, is almost monothematic. Mozart avoids any hint of monotony by his brilliant reworking of all the ideas throughout the movement. The Andante is also based on motivic structures to an unusual degree, and its sweetly lyrical character sometimes seems on the verge of being overwhelmed with more tensions like those of the introduction to the first movement, until the chromatic harmonies disperse and the sun reappears from behind the clouds.There is no Minuet movement in the Prague Symphony. In any case, it is unusual for Mozart to write a symphony with only three movements, and we do not know exactly why he did so. The very first idea of the lively and brilliant finale carries with it the suggestion of operatic comedy; the theme seems to evoke physical gesture on the stage. The first audiences can hardly have failed to imagine that Figaro and Susanna, favorite characters from the Mozart opera they had loved so much, were back again, here in a purely instrumental guise.

The 38th Symphony was a temporary return to the three-movement, Italian-style symphony, but it is imbued with some of the musical ideas of The Marriage of Figaro, which was about to be staged in Prague. It is considered one of Mozart’s greatest symphonies. Several steps more advanced than anything in that genre he had composed before, it was wildly appreciated by audiences in Prague when it was premiered.

Saturday, September 09, 2006

yellow curtain

I got my yellow curtain from Sarojini Nagar market. It was the kind I was wanting for some time then. Checked, cotton, with wooden buttons. When I spotted one, it made my day.

Putting it up was one task. As my window was bereft of a pelmet, I had to have nails hammered on either side. Without a hammer, I did it with a crumbly brick (how clever of me). So, several percussions and lots of brick powder later I managed to get the nails in, but realized (too late) that I had to get the spring and the curtain in BEFORE the second nail was hammered in. Now after much tugging, I got one nail out and did the needful. But ever since that, the second nail is precariously perched in a cave of sorts (the hole for the nail widened into this gaping thing) and the spring bearing my beloved yellow keeps falling off.
Now its been behaving itself. I hammered the incorrigible nail with a giant Vaseline jar and... bingo.. it worked!!

Friday, September 08, 2006

Crumpled thoughts

More gashes across the mindless disconnected sentences. More crumpled paper balls. Yellow crumples, pink, powder blue, and now I’ve reached the green pages of my notepad. Before I construct a rainbow of sorts, I’d rather stop. And what’s the fun in doing it on a computer? After the painful cycle of deleting and restoring from the recycle bin my attempts at rudimentary prose, I empty the darned bin so that the rubbish is lost forever. 0’s and 1’s lost in an unfathomable silicon maze.

Memories of my puerile attempts at rhyme, insisting that the last two words of consecutive lines rhymed thus twisting the sentences into syntax horrors - descended upon me. I’ve been trying for some time now, to put pen to paper for reasons FAR from academic. But words don’t come out. My thought process and imagination have been eroded by years of wasteful rusting... imbibing whatever was taught to me and faithfully exuding those imbibed fluids onto examination sheets. Unquestioningly, in a manner expected of a good obedient student, I have been corroding my intellect by that continuum of absorption and desorption, interspersed with periods of blank, thoughtless idleness. My thoughts amble like aimless blades of dried grass meandering in the mini currents of a stream. Some wisps adhere to the muddy bank, while some, enmeshed together, gather bits of skeletonized leaves from here and there. Others disperse and get lost in the gurgling rush. No thread of continuity.

Thursday, September 07, 2006

hungarian dance 5

Move over Amadeus
I think I've fallen for Brahms
I don't think he's Aquarius
But i'm just in love with 'Hungarian Dance'