Sleepful night

It feels good after a relatively sleepful night, doesn’t it?

The coffee seems to come out better and you seem to get things done better. You seem to reach places on time (or before, in my case) and you receive good words from physical therapists.

All of this happened. Happenstance or coincidence. But it did start with a night of restful sleep.

That too, one after watching the wonderful movie Awakenings. Not sure how I didn’t watch it until 33 years after its release. Robin Williams and Robert De Niro are exceptional.

My physical therapist did say good things — that I can get rid of my walking stick right away and I can be off brace in another two weeks. I really hop that I can soon start jogging or brisk walking in the park that I used to frequent.

Then I went, with J and his close friends, to a new breakfast place I kinda randomly discovered. Expensive but worth visiting, especially because there will be doggos around. I spent about 10 minutes petting someone’s dog in the hour and a quarter we spent there.

I spent the afternoon learning sketching and water coloring. Pretty disastrous results with the latter. Feel like a total amateur, especially trying to attain some definition.

Evening meal at Bademiya. Didn’t enjoy it at all. There is no nostalgia for me especially when things are so fucking loud in the popular joints in Mumbai.

Tomorrow I’m back home, which means more sport-watching and sketching.

Two months

I have been away from the blog for two months or so. In those two months, my life has changed for the better.

• September 25th: I went to Rajasthan to perform with a Bollywood playback singer, Kshitij Tarey
• September 26th: I met Joseph Anthony Ruffino, my boyfriend! <3
• Late September: I start going on a diet and gymming regularly!
• September/October/November: I finally have sex!
• September/October: I had many gigs with Cirkles and Overhung!
• October 5th/6th: I had two gigs with Monali Thakur, a Bollywood playback singer!
• October 15th - I lose 2 kgs and 2 inches everywhere!
• October 22nd - I contract dengue fever with thrombocytopenia.
• October 24th - 29th - I get admitted in a hospital and undergo supportive treatment and platelet transfusion.
• October 29th - My sister flies in for my discharge. I catch up with her.
• October 31st - I install an AC in my apartment
• October 31st - My parents fly in to stay with me for 5 weeks.
• November 1st - I buy a gas connection.
• November 7th - I turned 32 years today! Wish me happy b'day! And I join back work!

Sweetness from New York

For those of you who don't know me well enough, this might not be boring. And the rest, well, you will just have to act cool and pretend that you enjoyed this.

Since I and Vinokur fell in love a year or so back, we wanted to meet each other badly. Fair, anyone would say. Even animals would want to do that. [But, do animals fall in love?] We made our initial plans to meet up for our common birthday which falls in early November. But that did not work out and the visit was postponed to late February this year. Since I'm a brown, Indian boy with a beard but without savings in the bank (read 'no VISA'), we decided that he would fly down to Mumbai first and live happily ever after with me.

For that we had a masterplan; new apartment with the faintest tinge of luxury etc. But because of his extensive back-ground of health problems, the three week stay in India was far from memorable. It included hospital admissions and resulted in an extensive period of amnesia. These days, during our conversations, I periodically check if he has started getting back those memories. Yesterday, I asked him which was his most memorable moment during this visit.

He said 'The first time we kissed each other at the apartment.'

As you would expect me to, I asked him to elaborate his version.

He said 'I kissed you passionately!'

I was shocked. I wanted more background, more build up and attention of minor details like the lighting, smell etc. I asked if he could be more descriptive, like a writer. What he said in response startled me. And it made me laugh hard.

'My lips met yours. Mine were below my nose and yours were below your nose.'

This is the kind of humor that he has. It's hard to get I know. But still, what can you do to such a guy but love him!

Me, an asshole

Thanks for all of you who tried to help me out! I'm afraid, that is not working out. I'm going through all kinds of feelings right now. I feel insulted, hurt, aimless, indecisive, egotistic and selfish. I acted like an asshole and I left the mixing session in rage after finding out again that there was no point in me trying to tell my band mates what I felt like. All it leads to is more conflicts and less productivity.

I am sure I must have acted like an ass to get the response that I got from my band. I can understand that. But the thing that I fail to understand is why the fuck was I spending my time there in the first place? I could have easily been at home doing something. Maybe even studying. The rest of the band could have easily sat together and done the mixing that had to be done. I act like a depressing thought-block to my band. We don't get anywhere. We just simply waste time and money. The end result is something that the band cannot totally agree with, a lot of built-up frustrations for the members and a lot of mental agony for me. The fact is that I'm weak, but not meek. Despite being the eldest member of the band, I act like a child. I'm hard to convince and I'm very hard to agree with.

Even today, Vinokur gave me his advice. 'Don't try to change things that can't be change. Choose your battles. Just play along if it's not going to help anything.' Everything is so true. Just that I was stupid enough to not see the light. Just the same way that I fail to see the light when my band members suggest anything.
What it resulted in is that I am totally lacking in confidence, self-belief and self-esteem. I think I should turn back to good old 'antidepressants'.

(PS: I'm sure that I'm going to get shouted at for posting this. I think I should start another blog, where I could bare my heart fearlessly.)

The changes in point of view

Have you ever felt that your point of view was not being understood? Have you ever felt that you are bad at convincing people about something technically right but it just escapes your skill level? Have you ever felt like you way of thinking is so unique that nobody else will relate to it? Welcome to the club. In my alter-career of music, this happens daily.

I'll give you some examples. During the initial phases of our recording, there were many times when I was possessed by my wanting to edit some very obvious errors as soon as we recorded the cut. I felt very strongly that we shouldn't sit back and wait until the last phases ie. during mixing and editing to correct this. But every time, I was snubbed and almost insulted by my band members on this point. The reason - we can do it later and our engineer is tired. He needs to take a break after a recording session.

Initially I felt that they were not getting my point. Then I understood that they thought that I was, as usual, in their view, being just insistent on a point in a unshakeable manner to be ridiculous. Obviously, I felt bad. Today, as I'm getting ready to go to the studio, it feels 'nice' in a dirty way to know that the band's point of view has changed as now 'we' feel that we should insist on getting these changes done despite the tiredness levels etc.

Then it came to some of the suggestions done by the engineer about our arrangements. We didn't have a producer for our album and we ourselsves were to be deciding at crucial junctures. Most of our 10 songs in the album had been written and arranged long before and we were very happy with what we had. Believe it or not, just a frown from the engineer was enough for inciting a wave of guilt within the band about that part/arrangement. There wouldn't be a the slightest bit of hesitation before conceding to the suggestion made by the engineer.

Most of the times, I was stubborn and confident of the parts being good in the way they were. All of the times, I was the criminal. I still feel bad about this and in the course of the recording, decided to curtail my opposition just because I thought it was getting conflictive. Of course, Vinokur has had a lot of part to play as a mentor. But now, the band feels that what we feel is right should be pushed. We wrote our music and we should demand what we feel for.

Finally, there is a lot of differences within the band about what to play for our gigs. Here the problem is two-pronged 1) About playing our softer, mellower songs to a college crowd 2) About selecting some popular Bollywood/IndiPop/IndiRock songs as cover songs.

I am very bull-headed about the first point. The softer songs are in my opinion, a part of our music which needs the as much promotion as the others. I believe that being a professional band, it's important to play the music that we believed in while writing the songs. The argument against this is that the tone-deaf college crowd (I don't understand this term though) will only root to those faster, peppier tunes and will boo a band which plays some toned-down, soulful songs. They seem to believe that once this happens, our professional career as a band will also go down.

My point of view is that we should play what we want. This I say on the belief of knowing that our song-writing is strong. There are people who are bound to like a certain type of songs. Why wouldn't you want to play such songs to these people, even if they were the minority? The collective point of view is that such songs still are not good for college crowds but only for private audiences.

On the point of selecting songs to cover, I firmly believe songs shouldn't be banal. They should be good enough for us to be respectful of the music. The song-writing and lyrics should fit in some criteria. Come whatever may, we change the song and play it a different style as would all artists who cover other people's songs; to provid their interpretation of the song. But again, I wouldn't want to play popular Bollywood tracks like 'Pappu Can't Dance' etc. The band believes that this is the only way that we can get the crowd excited enough to sing along.

With almost all such songs I feel disappointed that we are doing such songs. The only way that such songs will make sense is if we make a satire out of playing them by changing lyrics and showing that we think lowly of such mediocre bull-shit of such stuff coming out from Bollywood. Most of the times, because of the music and because I feel that I'm being a road-block in the band's quest to move forward, I agree and slowly get used to the traumatic process.

After elaborating all this, I feel that I'm still 'wrong' in most practical senses. That's not because of something that I feel deep inside but because of what people have made me feel. Don't you think that we should me more confident of ourselves and play good music?

The importance of being tidy

I have had a rough time in the last month or so. My life is in disarray. I have had an erratic 'working' schedule with the recording at the studio and rehearsals. My studies have taken a backseat and I have not been going to the library. I have been chatting with Vinokur late into the night and despite trying to sleep early, it hasn't worked so far. I have done a lot of blogging around in the free time that I have had. And on top of that, my social life was also kinda hitting a high.

I am not hitting the gym and I am worried about gaining back a flab that I had lost in the first few months in there. Wondering why I am not gymming? 1) Because I have tendinitis of my left hand. I don't want to injure it in anyway as we have gigs lined up. What I'm hoping is that I can consult with my doctor at the hospital, a reputed orthopaedician, if it is safe to hit the gym again. And I need to do that soon. Probably this Tuesday as I have a day of mixing at the studio. 2) I can't really follow the high protein with fruits and fancy things because I'm running low on finances.

All this meant that my usually organized self got disheveled. I don't have a regular schedule of getting up, going to the gym, going to the library, studying and then having the whole evening to myself. Well, not just myself; the band, Vinokur, friends, Internet friends etc. Someone might point out that I have too much going on in my life and I should cut down on something to get back into the groove. Tell me, what can I sacrifice? Band? Vinokur? Internet? Myself? Sleep?

Nothing really. Well, it's not that I have not had enough to organize myself. But I haven't been able to. I have tried probably a little lazily. But with nobody to really push me around even I did a lot of 'slouching'. And every now and then, I felt bad about it myself and I had decided to do something about it. Alas, something or the other comes up.

Yesterday, I was feeling the worst about this and I decide that I had enough. In homage to that decision I turned down 1 each of movie, hang-out and dinner invites from my friends yesterday night. I also turned down an offer to meet up with an old college friend of mine who happens to live just a couple of blocks from my apartment. Yeah, on Saturday night, just like a loser, I spent my time alone. Well not really. But with Vinokur and with my Internet friends. This gave me the wonderful opportunity to sleep early and I did sleep by around 1 am in the night. The result was fantastic.

Sunday morning, I did start brightly. I got up nice and early and after the formality of the Sunday Times with coffee and toast, I decided to finish up a truck-load of chores. At the end of the afternoon, I feel nice and fresh with my shampooed hair smelling good and I'm surrounded by a nice and tidy apartment. And I did do this while watching Seinfeld and Friends (after I got bored of watching the test match that is).

After my practice session which got postpone from the morning to evening, I can probably re-start my studies. I will turn it around this time. Yes, I will!

On a tiring day's night

Today is the first day in many days that I feel tired. Tired enough to not write on the blog. But as I'm waiting for another band meeting (at this insane hour of half an hour before midnight), I feel that I have time to rant on something. Something that might be a misconception.

Most people presume that those who involve them in cool careers like journalism, photography, radio-jockeying etc have an easy time going about their lives. Glam lives, parties and other niceties are tagged on to them so easily. I myself am in the vicinity of two such ventures; of a surgeon and another as a professional musician.

The surgeon's life is glorified by because of being morally binding social service. Saving lives whilst doing super-human like feats in the operating room all the melodrama of explaining relatives the success of the surgery or lack of it; we get to see that a lot in the media (remember Reader's Digest?). Some of the actual happenings in a surgeon's life, especially during residency have been captured, somewhat realistically, in TV series like ER, Scrubs and Gray's anatomy.

But it's not the truth. Nobody cares about the years and years of slogging before medical school. Or about the time in medical school where the lives are simply severed from social structure. Or about the inhumanly hours of continuous work during internship and residency which actually lead to decreased quality of care to patients. Or about the struggle once you become a 'doctor' to establish ourselves as a renowned physician. All such things are not well known and at times seem to be pushed under the rug so as to avoid the glare of the reality.

Similarly, the life of a professional guitarist is also not all that cool. It takes a lot of effort in the first place to be good enough to play at the highest level. It might be fun learning the instrument, I agree. But after that, it's a real struggle to find like-minded individuals, to form a band, to write together and to play together. A lot of ego clashes and conflicts happen regularly. It's hard to find a place to rehearse and once we seem to have prepared ourselves for the live concert scene, there aren't any takers for us.

If you enter the next stage ie. the stage of recording and releasing your work and it's impossibly difficult. Everyone loves to give you the boot. 'No, your music isn't our style' 'Your music can't sell' and other comments are spewed relentlessly. And besides, you don't have the kind of money required to go to a studio and pull it off yourself. Not to forget the kind of poverty that you have to deal with at the start of career.

Somehow or the other, let's say, everything has worked for you. You are recording an album. It's still tough work at the studio. Hours and hours of sessions lead to injuries to your hand (as in my case tendinitis of my left hand). The stage of mixing and mastering are even worse. It takes a lot of mental energy. You simply get tired of listening to all the stuff again and again and thinking about how it could sound better with a tweak here and there.

Such has been my day. I didn't do anything laborious in the physical sense. But I'm tired like a dog! I even said no to a dinner party for the gay boys, by the gay boys. And my work day ain't over! Another couple of hours of brain-storming to make sure that everything in the album sounds just right!

Whew, good night!