My Generation

My Generation. The name of the hit song by the British band The Who from sometime in the 60s. Never did like the song that much, but am not averse to using it as the title for this posting of mine.

In my estimation 'My Generation', apart from the fact that it sounds cliched like hell, are the folks born between the mid 50s and the early 60s. Like me. We were not Salman Rushdie's 'Midnight's Children', born a decade before. We were not historical in that sense even if we were born in historical times. But then again, which times are not historical? History is everyone's interpretation, version, of their times. This is mine.

We were raised and parented by a generation born before Independence who were torn between the attractions of the era they were born in and the new, uncertain, yet promising era of when they were becoming increasingly aware of a changing world around them. And perhaps not being able to come to terms with it. We - my generation - grew up in their shadow. Greatly influenced by their thoughts and deeds, and still wantonly rebellious of it because of the times we were growing up in.

My generation was growing up at a time when the world was trying to forget the 2nd World War. But not quite well enough. It's called Post-Modernism these days. We grew up when the USA decided to wage wars on other peoples because of the conviction of their rulers that America was the natural ruler of the world. (Not that they don't so still.)

We grew up at a time when Communism, especially the versions espoused by the Latin Americans like Che and Castro, Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam, Mao in China, not forgetting our home-grown Naxalite movement, influenced so much of our lives, directly and indirectly, more so if you happened to be in Bengal's Calcutta at the time.

We grew up at a time when quite a large section of us were pleasantly surprised by the responses and reactions of some Western thinkers, writers, musicians and artists to the way their governments were handling the inevitable relinquishing and devolvement of western (read: White) supremacy. But not quite. (Perhaps not ever?)

My generation's times too were full of expectancy, naivete and confusion in newly independent India. Our own multiple cultures and sub-cultures were on edge and in varying stages of mutual discovery at that time. Western impaction and a burgeoning Indianness clashed within our sensibilities. I believe at that time, globally, a similar situation prevailed. So much was being learned and discussed, discovered and disseminated, reviewed and re-envisioned all over the world that within the perceptible chaos kernels of similitude evolved.

There were some of my generation who took sides one way or another. Like those who preferred Western thinking and lifestyles to abandon the confusing but evolving Indianness and emigrated. Others caught up in being more Indian, in causes and issues, becoming what we liked to term 'inverted snobs'. And multitudes like me, an ignored minority nevertheless, not swayed by either one or the other, opting to live in a conscious state of indetermination, of no immediate identity, subconsciously in a sphere of no ambition, of no particular political or ethnic leaning, paying heed only to our instincts and impulses, our often self-conscious desires and ideation. We wanted to be rebels without causes, even hippies, anti-establishmentarian. A lot of us achieved this. Most didn't, and didn't want to.

And those who didn't want to are those who are the decision makers and influencers of opinion today. They are those who are trying to re-live and rebuild our parents' dreams and hopes, whatever that is worth. They are the ones, who while currently making significant changes mainly in the economic and political arenas, have not yet been entirely successful in evaluating and determining social change. And so are doomed to repeat the errors of the previous generation. Maybe generations.

I qualified a paragraph ago, (a deliberate distinction), that there were some who didn't want to, and some who didn't succeed in attempting to achieve a state of rebelliousness. Even without a cause it has been a preferred condition for me (although I personally didn't achieve it), but I wonder at others of 'my generation' who have since discarded, even disowned such thinking.

All this raving has come about from the anniversary occasion dated today - September 13 - the Founder's Day of our school. I have no nostalgia for the school other than I made friends for life who continue to think the way I do, or just empathise with the way I think. Yes, the school has contributed immensely to our upbringing and education but it has not been as significant as others see it, despite the many years we spent there. If for some reason their lives have not been more interesting beyond schooldays then I see them as losers in life. Dead before their times.

My generation, in our heydays, believed itself liberal, changemakers, contrary, and convinced. Today I see them as never really having learned from history despite their education and learning. Today I accuse them of being culpable in raising an elite educated, but unlearned next generation. A generation raised to be extraordinarily selfish and demanding. A new generation seeking facile solutions in a superficial globalisation that is more colonial and fiscally motivated than it has ever been. A generation absorbed in the novelty of technological innovation that seeks to destroy cultural sensitivity and replace it with a boring sameness of plastic, virtual reality.

But of course there are exceptions. It is grand that we are human after all; thinking, egoistic animals. And so 'my generation' is divisive; in some way keeping to our early commonality of learning and upbringing. In some way fulfilling the expectations we shared. And with this we have progressed in ways not positively identifiable currently, yet influencing changes to come.

I have hope. I am not completely disillusioned or depressed. There is a path of chaotic change that can, must, and will be traversed. A path that will break the boundaries of tradition and norms. There will be a way that will cross barriers of distinction and ignore established ideology.

'My Generation' will live on in some. And may that tribe increase.

ZAWINUL - R.I.P

Joe Zawinul has died. Only 4 hours ago in his homeland of Austria. When a musician I love passes away, it's like a piece of me also goes.

For those who were adventurous with their music listening in the 70s and 80s in India, and had moved beyond The Beatles, rock'n'roll, Southern rock et al, jazz was the sound you were getting to know.

Zawinul, Pastorius, Acuna, Shorter, Badrena: Weather Report

Weather Report was certainly a band you would have heard. I know I did. Their 1974 album - Mysterious Traveller was the first recording I ever heard of theirs, and they barged into my heart and my spirit was inflamed. They became, and have remained, one of my favourite bands of all time, regardless of the genre they were reputed to represent. With the likes of Wayne Shorter on sax and the incomparable Jaco Pastorius on bass, as well as Alex Acuna nd Manolo Badrena on drums and percussion, it was no wonder that downbeat magazine of that era called WR the best jazz band in the world. On their break-up in the late 80s, I was saddened, as much as I was sad when The Beatles broke up. And then with the vagaries of international music distribution, such as it was in this country, especially for new and modern jazz, I lost touch with Zawinul as a solo artist and didn't even know he had a band called Zawinul Syndicate. Until the mid-90s when New Delhi, my home then, hosted an EC Jazzfest.

The European Community Jazz Fest was held at Pragati Maidan in the Hamsadhwani open air amphitheatre and featured some wonderful musicians from the continent, including some I was hearing for the first time like Britain's Django Bates and his incredible piece - Food for Plankton. The last day featured the greatest - who else? Joe Zawinul and the Zawinul Syndicate!

The previous two or three days of that Fest is overshadowed by my memory of ZS. Here was my musical icon playing live for me, surrounded by his keyboards, and of course his mind-blowing band. Because of the friends I had in the press who had access to the best seats in the house, and a backstage pass for after the show, I was so thrilled to be in the presence of greatness that I was struck dumb! For me that was a concert to die for. Towards the end when Zakir Hussain came on for some impromptu jamming, I was breathless. His tabla trading beats and rhythm with Manolo Badrena's Latin percussion and Zawinul's keyboard licks were like musical heaven on earth, a fitting finale that I, and all the audience didn't want.

I know I sound like a fluffy teenager as I re-read what I've written, but it's what I felt and even now, that feeling though quite dissipated, is still somewhere in me, in my head and my heart. In my soul.

I've just finished listening to Zawinul on Miles' album In A Silent Way, and now I'm going to listen to my entire Weather Report collection, as I wait to download a double CD called Brown Street from 2006 which is Zawinul Syndicate recorded live in Vienna. I'm downloading this from a torrent site and I am eternally grateful to all the powers-that-be for the invention of this facility to do so.

Weather Report in performance in 1978

What made Zawinul an icon in the music world? He wasn't so just for me, but for all music fans who love jazz, and not what my good friend David Mac calls plink-plonk! Zawinul introduced the sound of the electric piano and subsequently the synthesizer into jazz while playing with Miles Davis. But he went beyond jazz, or should I say he epitomised what jazz began to mean to many of us from other cultures. It was no longer the domain of the Americans. It became "world music" as we term it today. The line-ups of Weather Report, and later Zawinul Syndicate itself are indicative: American, European, Latin American, African, Indian, other Asians. He brought back to jazz (perhaps not single-handedly) what it was always meant to be - a melange, a melding, a melting pot of musics and sounds from all over the world, which when played together by like-minded musicians assumed an identity of its own, becoming a living, breathing thing we can only call... JAZZ. In that sense "world music" is a misnomer. Jazz was it before we began to split hairs.

So in honour of Zawinul, and others who have gone before him, and the yet-others who are still around doing their musical bit to bring the world truly together with peace and love through melody and harmony, this posting is my small contribution to the cause they espouse.

What Makes You Happy?

Alfred E Neuman's smile made me happy when I was young... and still does!

David McMahon wrote in the linked blog asking us to write about what makes us happy. To start with, having known Dave since age 6 or thereabouts is quite a happy feeling! And strangely enough, I don't have him on my Blogger blogroll even though he is linked on my Yahoo 360. So I'm making amends now...

Quite a lot of things make me happy. Just being happy tops the list. I mean, haven't you sometimes felt happy for no reason at all? But here's my happy list:

2. When my daughter tells me about her day. (Actually my daughter makes me happy any way!)
3. People who smile at me, especially children and strangers.
4. Listening to my kind of music when I'm down and blue... and even when I'm not.
5. When friends tell me they love my optimism...even when I'm not.
6. The woman I love... and for several other reasons that are too intimate to get into now!
7. Remembering snippets of the past - the happy past.
8. Imagining, (or should it be foreseeing?), a happy future!
9. Just happy to have had the parents I did.
10. Sunrises... sunsets... especially in the mountains.
11. Thinking about what makes me happy... just happy to be alive and still kicking!

60 and running...still!

Ten years to go to hit 60 years. But this is my 60th post. No, I'm not trying to make an issue of it, just been thinking of it and thought I may as well write stuff down, blog it you know?

Random thoughts bring me to friends. Who are friends? How do they fit into my scheme of things, my life? One gets all these rotten emails telling me to forward it to other friends I have, including the one who sent it to me, failing which I shall not have the luck and/or fortune that is predicted in those emails. The folks who send me such mails are really way down in my list of friends. They are people I can do without. They are the people I can cadge a drink or meal off every few years or so, laugh about the silliness we may have experienced together some time in the past and then move on.

I can see friends, the really good ones, including those I've never met, but are in touch with on the mail, are the ones who want to genuinely share with me. They want to share my joys and sorrows, my mundane news or my important things, and do it all without judgement. I'm lucky to have such friends. Because that's the way I share with them as well.

Being friends seems to be a political thing to me these days. Somehow there's an ulterior motive to "being friends" with someone. I have friends, not many, just a few, with whom I can spend hours very comfortably, and not have more than ten sentences of conversation with them. There are others who claim friendship, and it's only later that I realise they have used me for some gain from which I never benefited. Which of course includes this real friendship that I'm talking about. Like there's this "friend" who got me to do a voice-over for a film he was making on his own money. Yet the instant he got himself a big sponsor, a Japanese television company no less, he began to avoid me, and now I hear he's finished editing it and still no word from him.

Or take the other guy who needed me to work with him on an advertising-cum-marketing deal. In fact after our first meeting with the client, he even went so far as to tell me that the client expressed interest in giving him the business because of my off-the-cuff presentation and my knowledge of computers and the internet and how all that fitted in with the client's requirement. After many such meetings, discussions and brainstorming sessions, I asked him whether it would be possible to get some money for the time I'd spent on this, (not the entire money he was willing to give me once he got paid by the client), but just a bit so that I would not feel frustrated or demotivated. Since then he's not even bothered to call me, someone who would earlier speak to me almost 3 or 4 times a day. I hear he's got the business now but somehow I haven't fitted into his scheme of things.

But it's okay. All these years have given me an insight into the human psyche which I'm consciously aware of, and yet, even though I fall for sob stories quite sure of their inevitable result, I still go ahead and do it. If for no money, at least to keep my mind stimulated, and to keep motivating myself that I have the wherewithal to continue in the direction I have given myself.

So friends... who are they really? I know I have some, and I'm happy with them.

For Those Who Were Not There...

Front page of Calcutta's The Telegraph Metro supplement on 30 July 2007.

This is for those who were not there... or maybe were there and read some other newspaper. And you can see some of their photos here.

Here's another review of the show which was published in the HT City edition of Hindustan Times 31 July 2007. (I added this on 1 August 2007).

I'm hoping that the audio CD recording of the 28th July concert of Bertie and Pink Noise will be available by this month end. Those who still don't have a copy of the Bertie Mel & Fuzz show of 12th April contact me for the DVD. What you see below is an excellent cover designed by Rahul Ganguly for the DVD. Thanks, Rahul!

Midnight Thoughts

Clouds race into dark night's oblivion behind me. Overhead, they are wisps of fluff breaking off a huge mass ahead of me, a formless entity that threatens to bring storm and rain, even fire and brimstone.

She brushes her long, long, black hair at the window, looking into a mirror that I can't see placed right next to it. Her white nightgown covers her modestly, but in the street lamp's glow filling the window behind her, the shape of her naked body beneath the cotton is all too evident. I find the stirring in my loins has taken a holiday. Even the young, impudent, pert breast that is outlined in the strange play of light and shade as she stands at her window, perfectly aware of my presence on the terrace next to the building she lives in, does nothing for me.

Other than of course writing these thoughts at midnight. Or 6 minutes to it. As I watch her. The thrill, I think, is in the voyeuristic pleasure rather than its outcome.

Most men are obsessed with their libido at all ages. And I mean all ages. Even when one is a child unknowing of penile erections and its associated consequences, one still considers one's libido in a most immature, though fascinated way. If one was to explain in detail, one might stray into the forbidden territory of child pornography, so one shall abstain. Even if they are my own nonage experiences.

Libido and death. Procreation and destruction. Today I heard of another close to my age who has died, someone I had known briefly but well, and stayed in touch with his news through common friends over the years. Tonight I sit on a breezy terrace in a monsoon soaked city and pen lines on my libido, or the lack of it. Temporary, I also hope. Today too, someone talked of those who talked of sex and those who didn't. The ones who didn't, he said, were getting it. This he said with reference to our age, us half-centurions and nearabouts. Do we talk of sex as much as we do it, or do we just talk anyway?

Well past midnight I'm drinking Goa's feni sent with love by a friend through another who had visited. It's an acquired taste I'm told. Well, I seem to have had no problems acquiring it!

Why am I writing all this? Its not that its a diary of any importance. I have a computer, I am literate, I probably have too much time on my hands, and my mind is a ceaseless traveller. Random thoughts inspired by a combination of feni and Himachal's green gold can form into presumptuous literature in the dark under these circumstances.

Today we discussed the concept of “the creative explorer” - jargon if there ever was one. Yet beneath jargon there is truth. A conscious, and therefore curious acceptance of an acknowledged reality couched in the language of those who misuse it. Somehow the discussion of such esoterica is work for me these days. A far cry from my earlier days of hardcore marketing: meeting targets, achieving revenue collections, creating product/brand acceptance and consciousness, and being a pissed off piss-off to all and sundry. All at the same time.

Creative explorer is a term that encompasses the client we are working with, their brand, their brand's target clientèle, the way our client should work with the brand, the way we should, and the way we all – client, agency, client's customers - want the positioning of what the brand represents in our collective and individual consciousness. Not all of it can ever be in tune but it's possible to find common ground. At least we hope so if we want to earn some money.

All of this is so mundane, so trite, and yet given such priority because revenues are all important. Ho hum! Fee, fie, fo, fum, money do go and money must come. Or else all is undone. Rum pum pum! Truth, and the bitterness of it all. Could be a song, yes?

Bertie and Pink Noise: Postponed

This is just a small notice to inform all who may have been interested, that Bertie & Pink Noise will be performing as below:

Saturday 28th July 2007 - 8.30 pm onwards

@The Princeton Club, Anwar Shah Road, Calcutta

See you there!

By the way, DVDs of the Bertie Mel & Fuzz concert of 12th April will also be available for sale then.

Bertie & Pink Noise

Bertie da Silva again. With Pink Noise.

Live in Calcutta at The Princeton Club.
n the 21st of July at 8.30 pm. (one month to the day after World Music Day.)

Lots of new music, a new sound, and some good times are promised.
(They'll take care of the good music, you take care of the other good stuff!)

Pink Noise is Gyan Singh on bass, Amyt Dutt on guitar, Jivraj 'Jiver' Singh on drums and Jayashree on vocals. Those with musical connections to Calcutta - performer or listener - will have heard of PN and its avatar (or is it the other way around?) Skinny Alley. You would have even heard them in concert. PN is an alternative jazz band. That's the closest I'll go to defining their music, at the risk of upsetting them. Skinny Alley is an alternative rock band with a slightly different line-up.


This time though, both PN and Bertie together are working on some of Bertie's new songs and some of his already heard ones from the BM&F concert at the Princeton in April. I was at one of their rehearsals recently and I can tell you they're sounding good! Ok, don't take my word for it. Just come for the show on the 21st and hear them for yourself. In the meanwhile have a look at some of the pics I took that evening at their practice session.


Reminder: 21st July 2007 8.30 pm. The Princeton Club in Calcutta. Bertie with Pink Noise.

*****
PS:
DVDs of the BM&F concert of 12th April will be available for sale on that day at The Princeton. And you can mail me at pslghose@gmail.com to book your copies of the DVD.

*****
PPS:
Anjan Dutt - musician, film maker, actor out of Calcutta made a movie called Bow Barracks Forever. In it he acknowledges not just the debt many of us Calcuttans owe the Anglo-Indian community, he also explores this debt musically. He and his makeshift band - Bow Street Blues - have been doing live concerts of the music from the movie as well as other songs which were hits of that era. I loved the concert at Someplace Else and I also took some pics while enjoying myself. So you should go here for a glimpse of that concert.

The live performance of music by such alternative, niche bands and musicians is always a wonderful experience. It's because they put their heart and soul into it that you find yourself having a better time than you thought you would. (Something that commercially oriented, mass-market musicians are incapable of). And then when you want a CD of their music it's usually unavailable. The marketing of such music has always been of concern not just to the artists themselves, but also to their promoters (who are never the record companies) and to their fans. This has historically led to bands who hate the corporatisation of music to allow fans to tape/record their live performances illegitimately. The Grateful Dead were prime examples, as are others like Dave Mathews, Phish, String Cheese Incident and so on.

Here's a nice article about how someone like Prince, or the Artist Formerly Known As Prince, is also keen to beat the system. My respect for this musician is never-ending! Apart from the fact that I really love his music.

World Myuzik Day, Hey, Hey!

21st June - Summer Solstice - World Music Day, a French invention!

What? Music? Myuzik? (and other variations...)

And so I went to listen to a band on the day after WMD - (Weapons of Mass Destruction). Their name was Urban Reflections,. Yessir, you got that right, Urban-fucking-Reflections! They reflected what I don't know. Music? Myuzik? They were WMD (as in definition given in brackets above) is all I can say.

They destroyed whatever musical sensibilities I had. They also had the nerve to do stuff by Bill Withers, Roberta Flack, even Doobie-friggin-Brothers, and make it all sound like bad rock music played on an unreleased album which Joe Satriani/Jon Bon Jovi/Steve Vai will never make. I mean it takes a lot of guts to make soul and funk music sound like bullshit electric guitar-rock coupled with power drumming that goes nowhere.

Who are these musicians (and a host of others like them)? Have they actually paid any musical dues? Or are they the scions of indulgent Bengali families who feel that if their ward plays music it should be financed regardless and without question as it is the appropriate Bengali thing to do? They have no funk in them and yet they want to do that backbeat. They have no blues in them and yet they want to be seen doing 12-bar variations. They have well-fed, rotund Bengali paunches on them and look like mama's milk is still dribbling from the corners of their mouths. They only want to impress with their electronic gadgetry and leave their audience stunned with their skills. Skill, not talent, skill. O lord, give me a break!

If anything, I am most critical of such musicians. They have innate talent, but lack exposure, and yet make up for it by overconfidence. They re the kind who release an album because its the done thing, not because they have music on offer. They have myuzik on offer really. Sometimes their solos sound like muzak...

This is a rant about the so-called modern, contemporary bands in Calcutta. But if you look carefully it's about bands all over India. But because Calcutta is the erstwhile, and still-while capital of culture in this country, I write of this city. And if you want my rant on Bengali Rock - (which too does not exist) - go here!

Happy Music Day folks! I hope you get the music you deserve just like the government you elected. (Just in case you do happen to live in a country which has reasonably free and fair elections.)

Friends on Top

Sometimes you need to pay public respect to folks who inspire / motivate / enthrall and/or are just friends one feels good to have.

HFT - High Fuckin' Time - is a band of friends I'm pretty proud to claim. Arjun Sen on guitar and Lew Hilt on bass (in pix above) along with Sam Shullai on drums are a trio who refuse to label or slot the music they play. With almost a combined century of experience shared between these three outstanding musicians, you know for a fact that they have paid their dues and more! If you want to hear some of their music go to their MySpace page and listen. Listen, do you hear? Not hear, listen!

By the way, here's what Jeff Beck has to say about HFT: "I love that sound you’ve got going there, real good quality tunes pleased to see some people staying faithful to music. Keep it up." And if you're asking who Jeff Beck is, where have you been getting your music from anyway? MTV?

The other good friend who I need to shout out about here is Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Thak as many of us call him. He is a senior journalist, an astute political and economic commentator, and a best-selling co-author (with Shankar Raghuraman), with years in print, radio and television. He has recently produced and directed a documentary film in 5 parts of half an hour each on the Jharia coal mines of Dhanbad - Hot As Hell - in partnership with PSBT - Public Service Broadcasting Trust, which had its premiere on May 31st at New Delhi's India Habitat Centre. You would do well to pick up a copy of the DVD. Write to Paranjoy at: paranjoy@gmail.com or paranjoy@yahoo.com

Here's an extract from the synopsis of the film:

The documentary film series seeks to explain why underground fires – literally and metaphorically – are raging for so many years in and around the township of Jharia in Dhanbad district in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand. At a literal level, tens of thousands of residents of the town are living on top of a veritable inferno. At a metaphorical level, there are powerful mafia organizations that rule over this region and exploit the underprivileged – by mining illegally, supervising organized pilferage, running extortion rackets and bagging lucrative contracts.

Jharia, is one of India’s oldest coal mining areas and a major dot on the global map for fossil fuels. The area produces the most valuable coal available in India, known as coking coal or metallurgical coal that is used for making steel. Till 1971, coal mining operations in the region were privately controlled. Thereafter, coal mining was nationalized. Despite nationalization, the economic conditions of those living in the area have not improved significantly. Jharia is one of the most polluted parts of India, if not the world. Coal mining itself results in environmental degradation; underground fires have compounded the damage."

Pictures worth more words than I'd care to speak

Sometimes I get writer's block. Actually, not sometimes, almost all the time, which of course makes blogging a problem.

And then I discovered the joy of a digital camera and after that these words I'm writing now will be the last for a long time! (Or till I want to make my unread comments available on the web.)

Till then, you may want to check out my "phlog" - my photo blog at Picasa which is going to be quite regular from now on. Kindly to click on this obviously hyperlinked blue phrase and be transported to the Himalaya mountains, to Calcutta, or to some music concerts even!

To be Free

I think we need to protest about things we consider to be wrong, against narrow-minded politics, against various issues that go against the grain. Artistic freedom treads a thin edge and there are many within and without the arts community who appreciate and understand this. Go here to register your protest if you know what's going on: http://ifaforarts.wordpress.com/

On the other hand, artistic freedom and all other "categorised freedoms" must play second fiddle to the strong protest we should make against intolerance of any kind.

Not sure if I'm expressing it right, but nevertheless...

Bertie Mel & Fuzz: Redux

12th April 2007: 12 noon

I walk in and Bertie says he's feeling sleepy! Pre-show nerves I suppose. He wants to know if the sound is all organised. I assure him it has been, but a twinge of suspicion hits me. I'll call Moses the sound guy later and confirm. I call Mel to find he's just left his school so he's not going to be at Bertie's before 1 pm. And then Murphy's Law has to happen: if something can go wrong, it will. Potla, the guy who's recording the concert calls me to say that the PA system hasn't yet arrived, when it should have half an hour ago! I call Moses who assures me his guys left for Princeton a half-hour earlier.

This is Calcutta. You go with the flow. No point getting all worked up. Fuzz calls. He's desperately getting some last-minute shopping done and asks me to let him know when we leave Bertie's so that he can meet us on time for the sound check. Bertie offers me coffee, tea, Sprite and lunch in quick succession. Sensibly, I opt for lunch. He's quite a fab cook too. Rice, dal - thick and tasty the way I like it, mince curry spiced just right, and some vegetable pickle he made as well. Burp! We joke about opening 'Bertie's Food & Music' - "Ladies and gentlemen, the cook will now sing you a song!"

Bertie's getting restive now. He wants to load the guitars into the waiting hired cars. I suggest we wait for a call from Potla telling us that the PA's reached.

Bertie suggests I call Moses. I do, and find Moses has switched off! I smoke an after-lunch cigarette and call Mel. He says he's close by. We laugh. Mel's close by could be quite a few kilometres away. Arjun, Bertie's colleague, organises the loading in the cars. Mel arrives. He actually was close by!

Potla calls. The PA's arrived. We heave a collective sigh of relief. We will only be 2 hours late with the sound check! Finally we depart at about 2 pm. I let Fuzz know. This is one-way turnaround time for traffic in the city and as usual, its organised chaos! Taking a slightly roundabout route via Park Circus we go over the Gariahat flyover and are at Princeton by 2.30. Fuzz soon arrives and they set up, plug in, and get ready to check the sound.

The first few moments are always tense. If it's not something wrong with the cable, its the quality of sound, or a weird hum and crackle out of the speakers. Mel's guitar, which he loves because, as he says, "The touch is like makkhan", is playing up. The unwanted buzz is from his axe and it keeps losing its tuning. But then it all begins to come together. The necessary tweaks, adjustments, controls are made and they decide to do a full run-through as their sound check. I'm walking around all over the place looking for the 'sweet sound' point between the PA speakers. I find it. It's just in front of the bar!

We walk out to the lobby to find a storm brewing. As the firangs love to say: a sudden, tropical storm. Chotu Rawat, the man who manages Princeton wants us to start at 9 pm. His reasoning is that it's the middle of the week, a Thursday, plus the thundershower will obviously delay others. Bertie is happy with the thunderstorm. He's been wanting a maximum of 150 people and I tell him there is no guarantee for this. All indications point to a full-house, jam-packed to beyond capacity.

Family and close friends start trooping in. Then Bertie's students, current and ex-, dribble in before the deluge. Tubby Desai, with the band LUSH who are slated to play after BM&F, wants us to start and finally we do at 8.45pm. It's not a full-house but the place is teeming with people not willing to miss this one-night only comeback concert of Bertie, Mel & Fuzz.

***

Redux

The chemistry is still there. They sound so good. The small, unnoticeable things go awry but that's part of the game, and all said and done, the evening has been won! They open with a Bertie original 'Motor Car Blues', followed by Bertie's original 'Moonlight Lady" from '79. Mel does his gospel blues, 'Have You Been Loved'. They keep seguing into song after brilliantly played song. The crowd is going crazy. Gently. This isn't a rock concert. Its a music concert that's very different. Three guitars and voices that sound so full, never requiring percussion or keys at any level, and yet somehow rocks, funks, grooves and soothes simultaneously.

And that's what the younger generations don't comprehend. How does one play a guitar without gadgets, at least with the barest minimum like Mel does? Yet gets that clean, sweet, undistorted sound? How did Fuzz slap that bass without pushing a pedal? How did Bertie sing without electronic effects being added to his voice? Well, the answers to those questions are simple. They began to play music at a time when gadgets were almost non-existent. So that required they master the techniques without microprocessor help. Which meant hours and hours of finger-bleeding practice, sleepless nights till you got that right note, and the willingness to do music that needs skill and artistry rather than digitalised gadgetry. I think it's why the music from the 60s and 70s is still so greatly appreciated by all, and younger bands today keep covering songs from that era. It is why songs were considered poetry, and not lyrics.

I'm amazed at people coming up and thanking me for putting up the show. Strange. Shouldn't they thank the musicians for playing together again?

Jayshree of Skinny Alley/Pink Noise fame said "it was magic... as usual". "Great show, man!" was the copybook reaction though from the general janata. Yes, thank you. Now we can only hope it will happen again. Extraneous circumstances will seriously affect the possibility of another show like this.

Distances, both physical and not. Timings which don't clash. Regular income earnings which will. Sponsors who will express interest but will not pay. Life is fucked but why should musicians get screwed all the time? Fuck the pretend well-wishers! And the so-called music lovers who want free shows too. A bit of well-placed arrogance is always effective.

I'm glad I did the 1979 show with my own resources and I'm gladder I did this one similarly, without depending on external financial help. One complete, fulsome dickhead, who calls himself Mampi, and who does a supposedly "interesting" program of "world music" on a Bangla TV channel offered me free editing of the video shoot I arranged for this show, in exchange for televising my show on his show! And he would not pay. Free editing! What does he think? Everyone's a beggar like his Bengali self? Really, Bongs will never get past their supreme mediocrity. They can only dwell on their glorious past of Tagore, Bose and Ray. They don't realise that because those three (among others) went way past mediocre and petit bourgeois longings, they became innovators and pioneers in their fields, which were not merely due to their natural talents and skills.

Oh, by the way, did you know that Bertie, Mel and Fuzz are from the Anglo-Indian community? The community Calcuttans call "tesuwas" - a derogatory term for an intentionally marginalised section of people? The community that Indians in general look down upon? And what do non-Anglo-Indians do today?

The same thing that AIs did many years ago. They escape to foreign shores and climes for a better, more fulfilling life. So, one makes fun of, denigrates the few AIs still remaining in India. Ones who want to make the best of what they have on offer in this country. Which is a whole lot. Like a lot of us.

We Indians are some of the most racist, sexist people on the planet.

***

For photos of the concert, link here.

A Slight Return

In 1979, Arunda's canteen inside the St Xavier's College campus was our haven from the presumed drudgery of classes. Litres of tea, kilos of rancid samosas and chops, and the smoke of too many cigarettes fuelled our impassioned, and often indifferent, discussions about everything, and nothing at all.

And so it came to pass that a music concert was conceived in that ambience. Now this would not be just another rock concert where extremely skilled and talented musicians would play covers extremely well. This concert would stress on original compositions. And it would, through such musicians, seek to reinvent the wheel. Well, the blues, to begin with.

1979 was the UN's International Year of the Child. That year the Pol Pot regime collapsed in Cambodia; the Shah of Iran fled his country allowing Ayatollah Khomeini to return and seize power; the Sahara Desert experienced snow for 30 minutes in February; Bhutto was executed in Pakistan; Thatcher became PM in Great Britain; a tsunami hit Nice in France killing all of 23 people; China registered a population of one billion; the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan; Bipasha Basu was born; Mother Teresa got the Nobel for Peace; and an energy crisis hit the world in the wake of the Iran crisis.

Much happened musically that year too. Billy Joel's Just The Way You Are was the Grammy album of the year; Led Zeppelin released In Through The Out Door; Bee Gees, Donna Summer, ABBA, Rod Stewart and Earth, Wind & Fire performed a benefit concert to promote the UN Year of the Child; Norah Jones was born...

And in September 1979 history continued to be made. “Blues In The Basement” happened in Calcutta as a sold-out show, which was totally gatecrashed by a further 200 odd people. (As an aside, since that historic day, that auditorium no longer takes bookings for Western music shows till date.)

“Blues In The Basement” featured the late, great Dilip Balakrishnan backed by Nondon Bagchi and PC Mookerjee; the cool and suave Gyan Singh solo with acoustic guitar, as well as an impressive debut by a visibly nervous Robin Sengupta doing his originals. The rising star of Baul music in those times, Gour Khepa, opened the concert to a stunned audience.

The second half though, was what the concert pivoted on. Bertie Da'Silva, Melville Samuel and Richard Francis came on as the guitar-voice trio of Bertie, Mel and Fuzz, and they blew every one away in more ways than one. Since then, there has never really been a concert quite like that with these three.

In a riverine city like Calcutta, we all know about much water flowing under bridges. Bertie went into musical hibernation and gained repute in academia. Mel searched and found alternative songs of praise while he also formally trained young minds; and Fuzz went corporate away from Calcutta before moving overseas.

And then as destiny would have it, they met again - almost 30 years on. And those old feelings remained, dormant no more. They talked, played some music to each other, and they saw it was still good.

And hence: Bertie, Mel and Fuzz: Redux.
Bertie, Mel and Fuzz: A Slight Return.

When all is said and done, Bertie, Mel and Fuzz together again.

For one night only. At the Princeton Club on Anwar Shah Road. 12th April 2007. 8 pm.

How can you not be there? Tch, tch!

****************
For some new pix of the three, go here.

The Dead

Mortality is not for beginners. You need to have been through about half of your projected life span to understand that mortality is for advanced users. All the bells and whistles which herald the living becomes a silenced farce when you are faced with death.

Death. No, not the passing away of someone near and dear, regardless of the grief one might feel. There's always the acceptance of the inevitable in the circumstances, the logical end. I say death is the sight of corpses in a police morgue where the air conditioning is malfunctioning; the cloying stench of putrefaction feebly masked by chemicals; the stink of rot and decay, old spilled blood and entrails; morgue attendants going about their usual work much as we do with ours – that same indifference, the steadfast boringness of it all.

I say death is being the only one who does not object to going into the morgue to identify your dear friend's body. I died many deaths in the short period between October and January as I went inside two separate Calcutta Police morgues to take delivery of the corpses of two of my dearest buddies. Then I cremated one, and three months later, buried the other. And cursed them silently but strongly as I did so. Two of my exact age, two who were my closest confidantes, my intellectual foils, my partners in the vices we indulged ourselves. Their deaths were inevitable but should not have been so early.

They had lived about half their lives, and we had ideas and made plans about what to do with the rest remaining. Ranjan may have been unmarried with no progeny, but he had family, including us – a core group of buddies who went back more than 20 years, and we met as often as we could. Paul was married but separated, with two sons who live in another city with their mother. Because their deaths were recorded as police cases, autopsies were required to establish the cause of their deaths. I still do not have the results. I'm not sure I want to know, except perhaps to give me some false sense of closure.

Both lived alone due to circumstances they could not really control. Both were traumatised by their addictions. Yet they both had the sparks of life still to be lived. And then they went and died. Ranjan and Paul were serial numbers 2 and 3 in my roster of dear friends predeceasing me. Number 1 was Sanjiv, my namesake, in 1989, in New Zealand. He botched his own hanging and lay in a coma with life support for a year before the inevitable. We still have no idea why he committed (tried to commit?) suicide. And were Ranjan's and Paul's deaths also verging on the suicidal? Aren't all of us who are addicted to alcohol/narcotics/psychotropics suicidal in one way or another? Even when I claim I use it and don't abuse it? Brave words indeed for the dispirited.

Death is the stench of putrefying corpses randomly assailing me for a few seconds as I walk down a street, read a book by a window, window-shop in a mall...

Postscript: Monjit and I, (two of the remaining 3 or 4 of the core buddies bunch; part of the 90% of school contemporaries still alive), have decided to open a packing and moving company. Here's what the advertisement might read like:

M & P Packers & Movers
Taking care of getting your near and dear from this world to the next

We're sure there will be enough custom.

Unloaded: The Mind's Baggage

Music and all that
From where comes this music? Who sings it? What is the song about? When was it first sung? And why does it affect me so much?

Having asked myself the five important 'W' questions, I can now sit contented. I can wallow in the fallowness of perceived logic. I can now brave conjecture, rumour, established understanding, opinionated study. And simply believe in it all. Or not.

So I listen without reservation, perhaps armed with some scattered knowledge; and I like and I don't, because I do.

And so...

Why does music break me down? When will it not? What more can it keep doing to me beyond all the infinite things it has already done? Where can I go with it? Who will go with me?

***
Herbie Hancock & Wayne Shorter
They played at the Dalhousie Institute grounds on Sunday, January 14th. The entire community of western music lovers in this city could not stop talking about the event days before it happened. The press hyped it in their usual, boring manner. And then at 9.30 on the evening of the day, it was over. Just like that. They came, they played, they went.

HH & WS, with musicians from the Thelonius Monk Institute of Jazz performed for about two hours. An estimated crowd of approximately 2500 people thronged the space. There were irritants. Many with no interest in jazz spent a fruitful time socialising with no concern for genuine listeners. Others were there to be seen, to be able to say the next day they were there, just in case something exciting was reported in the gossip or review pages. But that's Calcutta. It happens at any event. Nevertheless, those who wanted good jazz, got it. In a healthy dose. And free of entry cost too!

While leaving, someone mentioned the poor sound amplification; someone else gave the show a rating of 6.5 on a scale of 10 for “after-show feeling” against an anticipated 8 or 9. Does anyone listen to the music anymore? I doubt it. Too many folks seeking criticism value and others trying to get in touch with “inner feelings”. A distinguished reviewer, a don at a university, known for his knowledge and avidity as a music buff, writing in Calcutta's highest selling rag, claimed it wasn't, at the end of it all, a good enough show. The savant speaks.

I heard Weather Report's Mysterious Traveler and Hancock's Watermelon Man when I was 17 years of age. Both were part of a large, varied, but limited collection I was exposed to, which would completely change my approach to music listening and appreciation forever. For the better too, I should add. Not having had the advantage of going to western shores and being able to choose the live music I wanted to hear, I waited for jazz fests and other like events to be able to hear some of the names I respected immensely. With no choice, I heard whoever performed. With that, my growing interest in the music expanded my horizons. A minuscule number of the big names came to India, only a few of them played in Calcutta, and it was not always possible for me to be present at their shows. Still and all, every moment and rupee spent at the shows I did go for was worth more than I'll ever have.

And the same is true of the Herbie and Wayne concert last Sunday. I had goosebumps for as long as the two played and for a long while after that. I sneer at every reviewer, critic and envious musician for their post-concert opinionated rot. I ignore the uninitiated, the chatterati, the social wanna-bes who were there, as they have no desire to know, or do, better. For me, that concert was a music event of a lifetime. I shall probably never see them live again and I'm glad I went.

I listened to the music. Did you?

***
Bag Stories
My friend slings a bag on his shoulder; a cheap, polyfibre thing available on most of Calcutta's streets for under a hundred rupees. It contains his spectacles in a case: tucked away when he must reluctantly admit that his eyesight is failing. To further compensate for age-related ocular weakness, the bag also carries a small battery torch; a penknife masquerading as a Swiss Army Knife; some nicks and some knacks; and more usually than not, a pint of whisky in its original bottling, or distributed among several small plastic bottles, (previously containing carbonated poison sold by brands whose values far exceed the economies of many of the countries they sell in), and now mixed with water. Handy at a movie or a jazz concert.

She carries one on her back, manufactured in similar material as mentioned above, but of superior quality; roomier; of a bright red hue; and handy on a trek down urban thoroughfares. This season, it contains a dark cardigan for possible protection against the city's winter chill; and its smaller, outer pocket hosts another small red case of the same fabric, containing her loose change, a stick or two of makeup and a comb, a scrunchy, and her cellphone. When the phone rings, sounding as if it were ringing submerged in a distant swimming pool, she goes through a ritual of un-shouldering her red backpack, zipping the pocket open, taking the smaller case out and unzipping it, then withdrawing the mobile to peer at the screen, and finally answering it with a frantic: “Ya! Hello-o-o-o!”

I remember her as she would wearily trudge past me as I walked to school. Muttering under her breath, constantly searching the pavement for something, she must have been in the poverty-stricken, malnourished age range of 30 to 60 years. Her shoulders and back were slung with cloth and jute bags, like shapeless, organic growths on her body. These bags were discards retrieved from garbage heaps, and all of them were stuffed to overflowing with even more cloth and paper. Plastic carrier bags were not common then, and it was incongruous to see the familiar logos and names on the few which she carried, which too contained stuffing. Bags within bags within bags.

Mobile phones. Another piece of baggage our age of technology has provided, suddenly the most essential thing that anyone carries. Suddenly people have begun communicating, after the centuries of silence which preceded its invention. And then you have all sorts of bags to carry this piece of baggage: around the neck, umbilically corded to a pocket, low-slung at your waist, in a case... And the phone too has its own bags within. Compartments which are cameras, music players, minicomputers, gaming consoles, TV screens, radios, web browsers, geographical locators. And some different kinds of baggage to complement the main piece: earpieces looking suspiciously like cancerous growth, wires spilling out of ears, people talking to no one in particular that you can see.

I want to live my life out of four suitcases. Two for clothes and stuff, the third for music and the fourth for books. Just replace the ones I'm done with, no adding on.

***
Save me
o god
save me from women who have it
and don't know it;
from those who don't, but believe they do

Hype to kickstart the New Year

With a tad less than 30 years working experience in the media industry, I would have to be all sorts of gullible to believe that opinion polls conducted by newspapers and market research companies have any significant veracity. Oh, there's truth in them, sure. Slightly over 1000 people spread over five major Indian metropoli certainly have opinions on the questions they were asked, there's no doubting that actuality.

Yes, such things matter when the spread of urban population in the states where these metros are located as their capital cities have the following 2001 Census of India statistics to vouch for them. Delhi: 93.01%; West Bengal: 28.03%; Maharashtra: 42.40%; Karnataka: 33.98% and Tamilnadu: 43.86%. The combined urban population in these states is 121,487,387. People polled for the opinion poll: 1031 - 0.00085%. Yes, such findings are of great import to us.

What is more important is the reason to suddenly spring these minutiae on a New Year readership. Really, how impressed are you to know that 14% of Calcuttans who were polled prefer money over job satisfaction and confusingly enough, social service over money? It leaves you gasping to be informed what the balance 86% prefer.

Seeing these results, I think back many years ago to what a boss of mine had said about Calcutta (read the East) being merely 25% or less of the all-India consumer market. In The Telegraph New Year Poll:City Scan, questions as mind-numbingly diverse as “Why do you want to earn?”, “What irritates you” to the über-cute, “I think...”, the Calcutta respondents hovered around the 20s percentile except when 66% wanted to help their family and 65% felt pleased that their knowledge was appreciated.

Mind you, I am not putting the Calcuttan down. I think this conservative, under-response only shows that my fellow citizens have their heads screwed on right, and are not overly concerned with owning iPods, cars, fashion, succumbing to peer pressure and so on, ad nauseam. If one must willingly suspend disbelief, Delhi and Mumbai-walas are extremely opinionated about such things, as are Bangalore-wasis, though not so much the Chennai folks.

I believe these idiotic polls are just a way of telling advertisers that the newspaper is a true reflection of Calcutta's urban attitude. It is part of a process that I call 'hype-as-myth-making', something marketing wastrels love. Just the age group of the respondents is enough to set the next quarter's marketing budgets a-flutter – 18 to 25 years.

Consider what, in the same day's edition 5 pages away, an erudite Mr Ashok V Desai has to say in his column Writing On The Wall. “So I am tempted to formulate the following laws of development under communism. The communist state is a slave of its trade unions. It is forced to rely on big industrialists because small industry cannot survive organized, militant trade unions. Amongst big industrialists, it prefers foreign ones who would have no constituency in this country. If it cannot get them, it will settle for Indian ones, but only if they accept CITU. And competition in product markets weakens the bargaining power of trade unions; so it would prefer firms that have a monopoly or a niche market.

These are stringent requirements; if the West Bengal government sticks to them, it may attract Tata Motors, but it will achieve little overall industrialization of the state. If I am right, Buddhadeb will face increasingly obstinate opposition within the CPI(M) family, will win ever greater admiration from the bourgeoisie, and will be largely ineffective. It is not his fault; it is the party he belongs to. He should bend it to his will, or split it."

One presumes that a newspaper so divided, and therefore balanced, in its approach to the new, resurgent Calcutta and Bengal, must be right somewhere. Or is dear, old departed King Crimson's, 'Confusion will be my epitaph...' the swansong? In either case the paper is certainly not helping readers like me to form opinions. Not that my opinions are required. I do not fall in the polled age bracket.

Happy New Year

The worst thing about the cellphone is its SMS facility. One becomes, the unwitting and unwilling recipient (victim?) of jokes, petitions, sales offers, jokes, bargain discounts, jokes, prayers, jokes... and often the reluctantly-obliged-to-respond, especially at this moment of the year, to insincere new year greetings composed/forwarded by short texting maniacs, in purple prose, trashy sentiment and shallow philosophy.

So the following two were ones I received which stood out because they were different, even if the first one is rather a weak attempt at schoolboy humour.

• "May 2 double-O 7 be the year of BONDing..."

• "Cheers to the New Year and another chance to get it right."

Whatever it is, Happy New Year, every year, to you!
-----

However, here's an interesting mail I've got from Rahul as a New Year greeting, which I'm reproducing verbatim:

"For those of you who follow the Gregorian Calendar, New Year Greetings, and wishes for a peaceful year ahead.

Delving a little into the history of the calendaring system (a fascinating subject, on its' own - intrigue, violence, emperors, donkeys and monks) is a source of much education and amusement.

The change from the Julian to Gregorian was not without incident - the original motivation was to ensure that Easter fell on the same day for the various Churches. Many countries therefore felt that it was a Catholic imposition, and resisted it - leading to much unrest, unwitting hilarity and the October Revolution actually occurring in November (ignore if you are an Orthodox Russian priest).

2007 will be the International Heliophysical year, studying the interconnectedness of the entire solar-heliospheric-planetary system - from what I understand, an analysis of the interaction between 'solar wind' and the surrounding environment. 2007 will also be the start of the clumsily-named International Polar Year which goes on all the way till 2009. Many geological phenomena, research into the atmospheric and magnetic systems will be started, and hopefully, many ID-ists will be pissed off.

Also today, Ban Ki-Moon becomes the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Between the 24th and 28th of this month, the World Economic Forum takes place, in Switzerland, so put on your protesting suits.

On the 14th of April, the Sir Arthur C Clarke Awards, the 'Space Oscars' are given out. Later that month, elections are being held in Nigeria. Later in the year, on the 30th of June, in an event just begging for badly written headlines, a calendar blue moon occurs; a full moon will occur twice in the month. On the 7th of July, the New Seven Wonders of the World will be announced - and votes are still being accepted. Sometime in November, the Large Hadron Collider will be switched on at the CERN.

Clearly, an eventful year, and one that we cannot but help find ourselves part of."

Moments I may have died and gone to heaven

One fine moment, in the middle of the forest at night, with no moon to bestir the soul, assaulted by a medley of sounds, safe in the unfamiliar.

Another day, wading out into the glaze of midday's sunburned sea, salt stung skin cooled by gentle waves splashing, and no distance to perceive.

Once upon a time, poised at the very edge of a cliff that rolls down to a snaking, roiling river far below, snow peaks ahead as far as the eye can see, when an eagle swoops in front riding on air currents, which carry the scent of deodar and rhododendrons.

In the colourless haze of a winter's dawn, a blood-red sun pops suddenly over the inky canopy of forest, bringing alive the shades of green, as the boat rocks on the pulsing tides of the mangrove delta waters.

Monsoon showers clean the streets, wash the leaves, and the dark gray clouds part reluctantly allowing the brilliant colours of a setting sun to paint the sky into darkness.

On a coir-rope cot, in a power-cut, humid night, to hear lizards scamper excitedly in the thatch roof, mosquitos frenetically dance to the sound of a nearby drum that steadies into an insistent rhythm, as a flute joins in, plucking out spaces in the beat.

Blagging

No I haven't misspelled it. I just had fun melding two words together. Wow! 'Melding' and all men! What big words you use, yah! Even meld sounds as if its two words interwoven. There! Another biggie! Melt + Mold (mould?) = Meld. Convincing? If you want to think so...

Blogging + Bragging = Blagging; Blah-blahing + Blogging = Blagging? Possibilities, possibilities...

Starting this blog was to get a first-hand find-out of what this blogging thing was all about. "Blogosphere" was already making its rounds in the print media pages. Undertones of envy, jealousy, competition, overtly dismissive criticism, passionate evangelism and doubts raised were getting far too much word count for me to ignore it. And having been in the print media business long enough for my curiosity to be indulged without killing any felines, I got myself a blog.

This is it. My headspace, as I'm fond of calling it. When the urge sets upon me, I usually give in to it. Like much of how I've led my life. So the urge to put pen on paper has now transformed itself to fingers on keyboard/mouse and the accompanying bullshit one must deal with. Like: an internet service provider that claims broadband capabilities, charges me as such, and then when they slip up on their promised service blame thieves who steal their cables.

Like: battered eyes from staring at the screen; like an aching back from hunching over for too long watching an image-upload not happening on the new beta blogger; like chain smoking and tea/coffee drinking; like wondering whatever was wrong with pen and paper anyway? Wow! Five alliterative Ws! Unintentional, I assure you.

So that's what my blog is. You can read it or not, comment or not, like or hate or be indifferent to it, not know of its existence, but its my blog and that's all I want it to be.

Then I read tortured essays on why they write blogs. Perhaps even mine falls in that category. Then I read how you should tweak it, how you can improve it, make it pay for you, AdSense it, ping it, tag it, win an award called the SOB (and be proud of it!), hack the matrix, and I quote: "Thus, when a misplaced angle bracket suddenly causes a rift in the space-time continuum, the damage can be reversed instantly, with no lasting harm to either the blog in question or the continued survival of the human race.", (and believe me this guy is dead serious), I know then this blog will no longer be mine.

And so then I will be blagging.

I will blog about the most useless and uninteresting things that are affecting my life. I will blog about amazing tech innovations that will pretend to revolutionise my very existence. I will brag about all this in moderated terms, in bated breath (as best conveyed in text), and I will feel the need for you to acknowledge me by emailing me, commenting, subscribing to my RSS/Atom feeds, and rating me, and, and, and, and, blah, blah, blah...

I will not be who I started out as. I will become another ghost in the machine. Who was it who said, "It takes a dream to build upon but an arsehole to wreck it"?