Dear Rahmaniacs,
First of all, let me say I'm humbled by all the wonderful responses you have
sent. I have saved each and every one of them and thought I'd use one email to
respond to all of you.
Anand: Yes, being in touch with your own spirit and its connectivity to all of
life is the key to reaching higher consciousness - it is really about
self-awareness. There is so much beauty to be experienced at each higher level
and we need profound minds like Mozart and ARR, who push us subconsciously
through their music and Einstein and Tolstoy, who illuminate the true nature of
our universe and humanity to help us reach those levels consciously.
Dinesh: I will try to post some of my feelings on ARR and his music in the
future as and when I find the time. I have always been grateful to Gopal and
this forum, which when I joined had less than 200 fans, for giving me the
opportunity to share the wealth of feelings that ARR had inculcated in me
through his music first, then through his personality and thoughts. I'm happy
to have woken you up from your slumber: as Kailash Kher says - Jaago! :)
Padmini: The song I analyzed was Uyirum Neeye and not Kehna Hai Kya. Since
there are so many new members here, I will re-post it. Perhaps, I need to load
articles like these in a shared location in the group so that fans can read it
at their leisure. I would love to have Swapnil's musical reviews in one place
if possible too. As I always experience at work, good ideas just come and go
because we don't store them in anything else, but emails, which are really hard
to manage.
Neena and Raghu: I think above, I answered your interests and concerns
regarding the request to start our own journal on ARR's music. Yes, Gops is
already doing so much for this group and we can't ask any more of him. I think
we just need to organize our resources already flowing through this forum and
make them easily available and accessible to the thousands of fans who are a
part of this group. I'm sure that would be something we can do fairly easily.
Gomzy: I think your point is fair regarding the lack of originality, but I used
the word in the sense of innovativativeness more than genuineness. I doubt I
will ever have to question ARR's sincerity.
Siraj, Suresh, Krishna Kumar, Vithur, Chord, Avinash, Shanavas, Durbha and all:
thank you again for your kind comments, they'll help me stay motivated to write
more of these, and before that, finish this one! :)
Like some director once said (forget who exactly it was), ARR is like an
ocean..so calm and so deep. If we can explore how much creativity is conjured
up by him in those moments of spontaneous revelation, which I feel is what he
experiences, we can grow a little deeper than we are now, achieve a little more
awareness of ourselves and the world around us. If I can help in that quest by
writing these articles, then that will be my gift to ARR.
Take care and thanks again,
Dasun
To: arrahmanfans@yahoogroups.com
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 12:41:40 +0000
Subject: [arr] Re: ARR's Standard Deviation - Part II - Aesthetic Judgment
So well and rightly said. It was a sheer bliss reading your
write-up!
Thank you so much for this wonderul post.
--- In arrahmanfans@yahoogroups.com, Dasun Abeysekera <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>
>
> Aesthetic Judgment (Taste)
>
> I don't have to tell you that ARR's taste is of the highest
possible kind compared with composers of all time. I mean how many
composers the world-over has ever had the privilege of being compared
to the ideal of Mozart, let alone being called one? Not even the
kings of melody of the West – Richard Rogers (of The Sound of Music
(59) fame) Sir Francis Lai (Love Story (1970)), Maurice Jarr (Dr.
Zhivago (1965)), or even Ennio Morricone, who have written some of
the most soulful and moving music I have ever heard, have been told
they are like Mozart, at least not to my knowledge. Most music
lovers, and all great minds, Leo Tolstoy and Albert Einstein among
them, have acknowledged unanimously that Mozart's music is the most
perfect and the most universal imagined, no, let me use the word
conjured, by any human being; because imagination, to many, could
still mean there's some conscious involvement in that process of
creation; perhaps, it is still a conscious process, but it is a far
superior sense of consciousness that, by average human standards, it
cannot be called one. If anybody here has seen the Oscar-winning
movie Amadeus (84) by Milos Forman, you can see why it is so:
Mozart's music, to use a phrase Einstein once used, seems like have
simply been `plucked out of the universe'; the great scientist who
adored Mozart and used to play his Sonatas on his little violin when
he wanted a break from his scientific pursuits, says that compared to
Mozart, Beethoven's music feels `too personal, almost naked.'
Tolstoy, in his polemical book `What is Art?' destroys the kind of
conscious creativity that he believes Beethoven and the followers of
the Romantic movement that he charted, Richard Wagner, for example,
brought about to Europe, overthrowing the musical dominance of the
spontaneous and universal music of Mozart.
>
> In essence, Mozart's music and its perfection are not a result of
conscious processing, they come from a superior sense of natural
harmony and an extremely rare capability of letting go of one's self
and connecting with the universal spirit and listening to it in all
its infinite beauty. There cannot be a more fitting description of
ARR's music and how he has conjured his magical output over the
years; and it is no accident that the West would offer up their ideal
for comparison with the best the East has offered to date. That sort
of taste, a sincere kinship with the natural harmony and beauty of
the universe, with God, if you will, years in an industry cannot fade
away or dilute, and, if anything, I can confidently say that ARR's
taste has, over the years, been refined like fine old wine, and I
have not witnessed an instance where his aesthetic judgment, given
the proper opportunities, has faltered beyond identification. In his
choice of movies, directors, and lyrics, there maybe exceptions, but
I will address these in a later category.
>
> It is difficult to pin down one or two works from the 92-96 period
in which, like Rano said, beauty oozed out of every single phrase
that he weaved, but I will pick two of my favorite songs `Kannalane'
from Bombay (95) and `Uyirum Neeye' from Pavitra (94) in which I
think ARR achieves the highest form of perfection. Sometime back, I
analyzed the beauty of the song Uyirum Neeye from a conceptual
viewpoint, so if anybody is interested, let me know and I will send
it to you or post it on the forum. Kannalane (or Kehna Hai Kya), I
hear, has entered the music textbooks in certain parts of the world
(Canada, if I recall correctly)! Yes, these are songs of superior
beauty that they have that universal appeal that Tolstoy hailed as
the finest ingredient of the greatest of art.
>
> What about now? What are the ARR compositions within the past 5
years which evoke the same feelings in me? Piya Ho from Water (2005)
and Do Kadam from Meenaxi (2004) for sure are my favorites from this
period with Tere Bina from Guru not too far off. When I refer to the
perfection of these songs, I mean that I don't feel that I need to
remove any part, any phrase, any instrument, sound or note,
everything is in the right place at the right time! If anybody felt
differently about these songs, I would be curious to know which parts
destroy the perfection of these songs. I can write an essay on the
song Do Kadam and will do soon so that I can back up my feelings just
like I did with Uyirum Neeye. Do Kadam is so personal for me that I
don't want to hold it up as universal! This song symbolizes what ARR
and I share in silence without speaking a single word with each-
other, but by connecting to the same universal spirit that we both
trust wholeheartedly and by whose mysterious ways we are awed day in
and day out. The highest taste, as Immanuel Kant defines it, is
always subjective, but universal, and it will always flow from God
and only God; Not only is ARR connected with Him, he can articulate
His beauty with such ease and finesse that it brings many a tear to
my eye thinking how much of my faith I owe to ARR; Even as I share
this very personal story with you, I can feel a warm tear roll down
my cheek. Now if that's not beauty, I don't know what is.
>
>
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