You know how some people like saying there is no limit to creativity? Of course there is a limit! If there was no limit, there would be no space for words like out-of-tune, gaffe, faux pas, plot-hole, inconsistency,...

That being said, there is creativity when you sing off-key, or paint something butt-ugly, or dance clumsily, if the intent is to be purposefully deviant either to express an idea or challenge the limitations of creativity... and that my friend has rules as well.

For example, when you are being told a song is going to be off-key and you begin to feel like it is not off-key enough, it lacks some creativity because its intention is not met!

The limitation to creativity is relative to the artist's intention and the audience's expectation. It is both negotiable and nonnegotiable. And where it is negotiable, it makes for some excitement. Most disagreement on whether a new-something is creative or not happens in that negotiable space. Most agreement on whether a new-something is creative or not happens in nonnegotiable space, where the new-something is creative but stays within an already explored and accepted space.

There is a good chance Tapi won't read this post, so I will take it and quickly sneak in a post to narrate today's incident. :)

Finding an Indian concert in Strathmore Hall is a bit like catching gold dust. When you hear of one, you really have to jump at the chance and run to it. So we headed to the Tirtha concert and speculated all the way how crowded it would be. Hard to say! The usual crowd we see in Strathmore are middle-aged-to-old white Americans, who I don't really associate with Indian fusion jazz music (although nothing about this country surprises me anymore!)... but we expected to see a fair number of Indians.

Strathmore is just a few minutes away from home, so we reached fairly quickly and parked the car in a more-or-less empty parking lot. Just as we got out of it, we saw an old couple walking past us looking visibly disappointed. We overheard the lady whine in telugu to her husband that they should have come a bit sooner, because the tickets were sold out. Sold out? Really? We were both quite surprised. We've been to R. Prasanna's concerts before and they were never sold out, even when he managed to attract a large audience!

As I was building up curiosity on who these people were, I turned back and saw Tapi jumping over a hedge, running down the stairs and vanishing into the parking lot. So then I walked the same route (albeit less hurriedly) and found him talking to the old couple in the distance.

By the time I reached there, the couple and Tapi were like a mini-andhra family and I said "namaskaram" and they said "namaskaram" and asked us if we were sure we wanted to forego the tickets. To which, Tapi responded in his usual adorable style (hand-folded sincerity, indian head-nod and all) "No no. You have to see it. I guarantee you will love it. We've seen R. Prasanna play before... he's pretty cool. Those guys will put on quite a show... (long pause)... their ensemble is impressive... the piano dude especially is the shit." ... the old woman looked baffled but she managed a smile after a bit... and then the couple left looking quite happy at the end of it.

Then Tapi said "It's funny how they looked suspicious at first. The lady was skeptical about taking the tickets and the man insisted on paying for them"

So I told him, I would have wet my pants if I saw a 6 foot tall man vault over a hedge and stretch out his hand to offer free tickets while heaving and panting for breath. It's a rare kind of enthusiastic generosity that could be mistaken for suspicious behavior! :)

But, isn't Tapi just wonderful? He's the sweetest guy ever! :)

Well anyway... as we were driving back home quite peacefully, he suddenly took a sharp U and started driving in the opposite direction. He then picked out some comic books for me from Barnes and Noble... cos it dawned on him that the tickets he gave away were a birthday gift to me :)

Now we are home listening to some good music and I am off to sit next to him and read my new comics...

Listening to music has gotten exciting. For instance, I have a tiny wireless device called Squeezebox that streams all my itunes music from my laptop to the amp. This way I can listen to my large library of music on high quality speakers without being anywhere near my amp.

It also comes with a remote and a sleek display screen (just like the ipod) that allows me to select music without having to be anywhere near the laptop.

It streams a variety of radio stations from all over the world that I can access by genre or country and so on... A few minutes ago we were on some local Bluegrass station... we then moved to BBC World Service... Right now, we are on some Telugu radio station in Australia playing Suprabhatham.... and are moving onto Chennai Radio! :) (There is something paranormal about listening to PRI or NPR on Cambridge Audio)

As if this is not enough, I have another two-piece bluetooth device that can be connected to the amp on one side and the laptop on the other. It essentially uses the amp and speakers as the main audio source instead of the inbuilt laptop speakers. I use it when I want to listen to Last.fm or Pandora, or one of those Internet music sites I have an account with!

What is exciting is that this is not the best technology out there, but is as best we can afford, and is still so good! But, even if you are an audiophile with an excellent sound system, this is a great way to optimize your listening experience, especially with internet music and other digital online libraries offering a wide variety at high quality. (Saying this usually paves way to discussions on whether one is a true audiophile if he is listening to digital sound, but that’s a moot point)

How much do we need to know about something before we are willing to commit to it? Is our decision based on a mathematical number or gut feeling?

I have been thinking about the thought that goes into making big life decisions! I find that I rely on my gut for the most part and let the thinking happen subconsciously.

For instance, my gut says I might mess my pants if I were to dive down from a bridge with an elastic cord tied to my ankles. But it also said, diving down 50 feet in the middle of the ocean with a tank strapped to my back is a good idea. I have never bungee jumped, but I would scuba dive again and again (even though I had an accident during my last experience, when my oxygen mask gave way after I made it all the way down to the bed)

But going with one’s gut is not just about making life-threatening choices. They also have to do with the matters of the heart like quitting your cushy job to pursue that wild dream, making a commitment to your relationship, deciding if having a baby would jeopardize the good things you have going for you, believing or not believing in god and so on.

While I have gone with my gut on all of these decisions so far, I cannot still quantify how successful I have been with them thus far, and will be in the future. I doubt that I will ever think of them as being 100% successful only because I don’t know what that 100% is or if what feels successful now will turn out to be unsuccessful later! I can only say I have no regrets as yet. How then do I quantify the ramifications of life decisions made on intuition?

Not many days from now, we will carry this little game-theory thingamajig to help us make these decisions. But, how far can it take us with the matters of the heart? How successful is successful, or happy is happy! How do we quantify superlatives. How do we define infinity.

Will the thingamajig leave us feeling just as unsure of our future? Will it deprive us of the pleasure of making decisions on gut feeling? Or should I on gut feeling reject the thingamajig!

[A thought comes to mind. There are days when I listen to music on the radio because the station I tuned to has created a mood that I want to be in. I like the unpredictability of it all. There are new songs interspersed with ones that I am familiar with, each winding down to the deep, rich voice of the host and his antics. You feel like you are in a conversation with him, and are being entertained without having to say anything. Then there are days when I want to be in control and in familiar territory. When I am sure of what mood I want to be in, I pick an artist or a genre in Lastfm or listen to Genius in itunes. When I want to be all over the place, but with songs I am familiar with, I go with Shuffle. I also have hundreds of playlists I created, some with as few as four songs, and some with as many as 30, and I play them again and again, until I have heard enough.
This thingamajig gizmo I was talking about, might be the kind of thing I would use when I am in a mood to listen to the radio]

The usual highlight when we go to Old Town Alexandria is this guy walking his huge 200 pound Alaskan Malamute through all the art galleries inside the the Torpedo Factory. We saw him even yesterday, wearing his thick wolfish coat, and looking his usual majestic self. I was sad to see that he had fractured his foot. There was also another huge black dog sitting outside the Center, about three feet tall, and with a face of a grubby old man. He looked adorable.

But the high point of this trip was Jamey Turner's amazing music performance using wine glasses. I wish I had a good video camera to record it, but this is all I could manage on my small digital camera.



There are others who have uploaded better videos of his performances on various sites. Check him out. He's phenomenal.

She reminds me so much of my grandmother. I am sorry, she has left us for a better place... taking with her an entire era. It's over.

I recorded a whole lot of nonsensical tamil nursery rhymes, including some tamil-sounding english ones, and english rhymes translated to tamil. Here is a short version of the recording. :) The long version is over 15 minutes long. I am amazed at how many of these I actually know! (there's a telugu one even)




I found a website with very "properly" recorded tamil nursery rhymes (amusingly with sruthi potti, mridangam and all). I wish they shared the lyrics too. I am going to put my niece through them (and loads of telugu nursery rhymes that I am more familiar with. Youtube has animated videos of telugu nursery rhymes. These telugus take their rhymes shit seriously!)

Whatever happened to Earth Day being one of those weird counterculture festivals that neo-hippies celebrate to parade their lifestyle and environmental citizenship! I don’t like how everyone seems to be interested in the collapsing ecosystem these days! Can we please leave sustainable living to the real environmentalists? :) I can't afford to have millions of young and old people actively volunteering on green projects! It's takes a lot of time, commitment and physical labor and is not an easy thing to do! It's making me look bad!

Now that I got that out of the way, this weekend has been fun, as have been the last couple of weekends since the Cherry Blossom Festival! In the last two days alone, we went to two volunteering events, three music concerts, four bars and restaurants with many different people, each with their own idea of fun! The weather has been pleasant and unpleasant alternately, and threatened to be a spoilsport on Sunday during the Green Apple Festival.

It began on Friday night, with four of us going to the Tokyo String Quartet at Strathmore Hall. It was a three segment concert. The first two segments were Haydn and Beethoven's compositions, which were pleasant-sounding, but the last segment composed by Schubert is all I can think about right now! It was his richly textural String Quartet in C Major, D 956, played along with Lynn Harell, the guest cellist. The whole segment was suffused with emotion. There was that sense of poignant melancholy that lingered throughout the Adagio piece until the very end where it took a dramatic turn, which was then followed by a very stately and imposing Scherzo. It had a certain regal symphonic splendor to it! Strange that I should mention just this one segment when I enjoyed the whole concert, but I continue to experience this segment even now and quite liked how it made me go through a rollercoaster of emotions!

The next day, Tapi and I, and a group of 10 people walked on the River trail at Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens for two hours quite by accident. We were there to volunteer to clean up the river at the “Anacostia Watershed Earth Day Cleanup” event, but it turned out we were in the wrong location. Where we were walking, the scenery had a pleasantly distinctive or unusual atmosphere, rather serene and picturesque and didn't seem to require cleaning! (although I hear they have their cleaning event scheduled for next week).

There were some mallards, loads of very restless canadian geese flying hither and thither, a lot of little perching birds on the trees that i was thrilled to be able to recognize - like two tiny blue-gray gnatcatchers flying rather quickly, a warbling vireo perched precariously on a tiny branch, a carolina wren, a fat little song sparrow! It reminded me again of Heinrich’s observation that until you know the names of things, they don't even exist in your closed world, and then you begin to see them everywhere!

I learnt a lot about chickadees this weekend and am quite peeved that I haven't seen any even though they are supposedly all over the place! There were a lot of discussions on how the black-capped chickadee and the carolina chickadee look almost exactly alike. What is to say that they are not the same? The more I read about birds, the more I feel like the emperor in emperor's new clothes.

Back in Dupont, as well as at the Green Apple Music Festival yesterday, I found it utterly fascinating that several birds of many different kinds were sharing the same space. There were rock pigeons, sparrows, american robins, european starlings, purple martins, all hopping together on the steps at the Air and Space Museum!  There was also the that killjoy Raven (or American crow. I still cant tell the difference) that was sitting aloofly on a tree! Whereas, the crowd of thousands of people at the fest and these volunteering events was mostly white! I couldn't help but wonder why it was so!

At home, the mourning doves seem to come and go on their own. The northern cardinals seem less ubiquitous these days. Those tiny chats and warblers (I will never learn what they really are!) just wont sit still long enough for me to observe them!  

Anyway, the River Trail was lovely! It eventually turned out that we were not the only people in the wrong location. There were at least 60 or 70 people who arrived at this scenic place, including a bus full of volunteers who were hopping from one destination to another to volunteer on different projects on their designated route (bizarre?). The real location turned out to be a mile away, at the Bladensburg Waterfront Park. By the time we arrived there, people were already muddy from head to toe! It was admirable seeing over two hundred people, including kids less than 10 and older adults over 60 traveling in canoes, filling up bags of trash, and then climbing up-hill to drop them off at the trash center! The sheer enthusiasm and eagerness to do good and work pro bono was humbling. We quickly wore our gloves and boots and began to chime in!

Volunteering at these events is always eye-opening no matter how many times you have done them before. I am always taken aback at the number of well-intentioned people in this city! Unless you are in an event, working alongside all these inspiring people, it is hard to grasp the volume of benevolence! Your own goodwill seems trivial in comparison! Just the day before, as I read about the farmer suicides in India, I was angry, cynical, and contemptuous of human nature, of our motives, our goodness. Now the world doesn’t seem as bleak! I am more hopeful!

The river cleanup took longer than we anticipated, forcing us to postpone other volunteering events we had signed up for-  like removing garlic-mustard weeds, planting trees and so on to next few weekends. In the evening, some friends and us went to the Waterfront near Georgetown after lunch at Woodlands, lied down on the lawn by the river, staring up at the sky, and talking for hours over beer! It was a clear blue sky, with just a few clouds floating hear and there! We tried to find shapes of animals and things in them. Life doesn’t get better than that! We then went to M Street and had some more beer, and then walked back to the waterfront again and had dinner at this place, where we bumped into Swapna and Srikanth who were meandering romantically by the river to celebrate their first anniversary! First anniversary! How thrilling is that! 

Yesterday was mostly celebratory! We went to the Green Apple Music Festival, where thousands of people came to celebrate Earth Day in spite of the rain. After the event many continued to stay back to clean up the trash even! It was a very laidback event, even though there were thousands of people, all sitting on the lawn or walking to the tents and learning about green practices and the work that nonprofits have been doing in the environmental field! The free concert had Flaming Lips, Moe, Los Lobos and DJ Spooky playing at the mall. Moe was phenomenal, and Flaming Lips has to be the most entertaining performance I have seen! People went crazy as the lead singer got inside a plastic ball and rolled himself onto the crowd! There was confetti being thrown all over the place, and lots of gimmicks to keep us entertained! We mostly sat on the lawn with our legs stretched out and listened to the speeches of Lisa Jackson and the likes and watched the concert lazily, until I began to shiver in the cold. Tapi then silently walked to the neighboring Air and Space museum and bought me a blanket! :) We sat wrapped in the blanket by the museum for the rest of the evening while listening to “yoshimi battles pink robots”. There were rikshaw pullers tandeming past us and advertising earth day, which I found utterly amusing!

Tapi and I then drove Gori Café, a hole in the wall type Ethiopian restaurant where we had Sambussa and a very weird tasting Thelma Juice (which Tapi thought tasted healthy, like a protein shake and greatly enjoyed it!).  We then went to the  Bohemian Caverns with Arvind, the very first bar that Tapi and I went to in DC and heard the George Washington Jazz ensemble artists make their first debut performance. Nithya, Arvind's friend, was one fo the singers in the opening band! They were all quite spectacular. The guy on the drums and the saxophonists were exceptionally good, as were some of the main singers! The vocal recital by Elizabeth Hai a lot of fun too! 
The four of us had coffee in Tapi's favorite coffee place and that was that! 

I’m done! Off to hear Arvind brilliantly defend his PhD thesis!

I can generally either get the words right or the tune... in this case I messed up both. Tapi thought it would be cheating to re-sing it. :)
But, Yemon will agree. The version I sang him on the phone was way better! :)

There is a logitech wireless bluetooth device that I use to connect my laptop to Tapi's ubercool monster ampliflier, when I want to listen to my itunes and lastfm music on awesome speakers. When Tapi feels like I am taking over his space, I retreat to my headphones, which is just as enjoyable. When I am on my headphones I spend hours at a stretch listening to music and get lost in my own world, to have him complain about wanting me back in his space!

Sitting in a place and getting lost in music all day sounds very idyllic but the real dream is living in that world while you are walking, working, dancing and galavanting :)

So now Tapi bought me wireless headphones! How cool is that? I am mainly excited about listening to music in the bathroom - on the throne while reading a book, in the bathtub, in the patio when doing my little rocking-chair dance, in the kitchen when cooking without melting my headphone wires in my curry!

We have a tiny split device that lets us connect two headphones to one outlet. As I brag about my headphones in this post, Tapi and I have been sitting and listening to music - him on my old headphones, and me on the new ones. I am almost tempted to get up now and start dancing, to see how Tapi reacts to feeling wired down and restricted :D

What i like most about this two-headphones system instead of the regular speakers is that we can both sing loudly and not hear each other. Tapi and I like our music in different volumes and my wireless comes with it's own volume control as well!

But, the disadvantage is that I have to connect the wireless base directly to the laptop, making it less mobile. If I were to listen to music alone, I'd connect the wireless headphone's base to the music system and the blue tooth device to my computer and walk around with both my laptop and my music at the same time!

Now if you will excuse me, I plan to walk out the door with my new toy to see if it will bring music to my ears at the next door coffee shop! :)

Arvind says "what is the point of you posing if you can't really see the headphones?"

:D Coming soon: post on product placement

If I could ruin a perfectly good song
I most certainly would do
If I could do it with the excuse of love
the burden of appreciation's on you

We could kill the song together
if it will make you happier
we could ruin the rhythm and the tune

or I'll do
or I'll do

Delhi 6. This may be the first time that every song in Rahman's album is being compared to some other song that he had previously composed. This doesn't make it any less enjoyable, or indicate redundancy even. If anything, it is indicative of his brilliance. But, don't take my word for it, I am huge fan of remixes, and the idea of creating variations of the same song even (Chaiyya Chaiyya vs. Thayya Thayya, for instance). Rahman has done it for years and every time i recognize an element from some other song in a new one, repurposed so ingeniously, I have a thrilling AHA moment! Then again, if one relates one song to another, it is not always because htey are exact replicas. They may both bring out the same emotion, and may have the same characteristics of form and style, but this can only mean that they fall under the same genre, but are not necessarily alike. People who agree with me will also agree that not all Beatles songs sound the same, even though you may sit in a car and listen to a Beatles song for the first time and recognize it as theirs by the style! The Arziyan song in Delhi 6 is therefore not the same as the Khwaaja song in Jodhaa Akbar.

So here is one recent AHA moment. The songs are Delhi 6 from Delhi 6 and Aye Bachchu fro Ghajini. (In this case the similarity is quite obvious, so it wasn't AHA as much as AAA)

No email withdrawal today... but there's always the accident of one too many drinks triggering a love song. :)

Except for humming into the beer bottle at one point, I think I kept it sober (I think, I'll find out tomorrow). Enjoy!



ahem... tad too late this one. its almost 10 years now and our stupid i love yous haven't spoilt a thing.

Your blog has been hacked.
Follow these steps to fix it.
1. Please open “to Prabha.doc” on your desktop
2. Please open itunes
3. Please open the “to Prabha” playlist
4. Please refer to the doc and sing along.
5. Repeat if required.


Half Japanese –“Love At First Sight"
When I first saw her everything stopped.
Everything but my heart.
This is when fate first showed its hand.
It was love. Love at first sight.
I found true love. Love tonight.

Girls like her are one in a million.
So my chances are a million to one.
But I have an advantage.
Because I think she likes me.

It was love. Love at first sight.
I found true love. Love tonight.


Beck - "Think I'm In Love"
I really think I better get a hold of myself
Don't wanna let the night get ahead of myself
Whisperin' her love through a smoke ring smile
She doesn't know what happens when she's around

I think I'm in love
But it makes me kinda nervous to say so
I think I'm in love
But it makes me kinda nervous to say so

Doodododododooodoo

Probably lay my head on a wooden floor
Tell her I was tired from working the store
Counting all the cash from an old shoebox
Saving up to buy her something she wants

I think I'm in love
But it makes me kinda nervous to say so
I think I'm in love
But it makes me kinda nervous to say so

What if it's wrong?
What if it's wrong
To pray in vain?
What does it mean
To fake your death?
To wake up tainted?

Take a little picture in a photobooth
Keep it in a locket and I think of you
Both of our pictures, face to face
Take off your necklace and throw it away

I think I'm in love
But it makes me kinda nervous to say so
I think I'm in love
But it makes me kinda nervous to say so

Really think I better get a hold of myself
Don't wanna let the night get ahead of myself
Whisperin' her love through a smoke ring smile
She doesn't know what happens when she's around I think
I'm in love


Gael Garcia Bernal – “IF YOU RESCUE ME”
If you rescue me
I'll be your friend forever
Let me in your bed
I'll keep you warm in winter
All the kiddies are playing
and they're having such fun
I wish that could happen to me
But if you rescue me
I'll never have to be alone again

Oh the cars drive so fast
and the people are mean
and sometimes it's hard to find food
Let me into your room
I'll keep you warm and amused
All the things we can do in the rain

If you rescue me
I'll be your friend forever
Let me in your bed
I'll keep you warm in winter
Oh someday I know
someone will look into my eyes
and say "Hello, you're a very special kitten"
So if you rescue me
I'll never have to be alone again
I'll never have to be alone again

Jon Brion - “Little Person”
I'm just a little person,
One person in a sea
Of many little people
Who are not aware of me.

I do my little job
And live my little life,
Eat my little meals,
Miss my little lid and wife

And somewhere, maybe someday,
Maybe somewhere far away,
I'll find a second little person
who will look at me and say,

"I know you
You're the one I've waited for.
Let's have some fun."

Life is precious every minute,
and more precious with you in it,
so let's have some fun

We'll take a road trip way out west. You're the one I like the best.
I'm glad I've found you,
Like being around you
You're the one I like the best.

Somewhere, maybe someday,
Maybe somewhere far away,
I'll meet a second little person
And we'll go out and play.

Kimiko Ono – “Golden the Cotton and cardboard”
Cotton and cardboard, cellophane and paper, thread, needle to employ,
All felt and fabric, birds fly and cats play.
Golden the pony boy,
Made out of cloth and standing so still, just like a simple toy.
Gray as the sky on a day without sun,
Golden the pony boy.
Screwdrivers, rubber bands, glue guns and pliers, tools to create or destroy.
Patiently waiting, un-calculating,
Golden the pony boy.Flying wheels and coloured reels,
Spin into motion,
Bringing him lots of joy,
Trot, canter, gallop,
Over land and sea,
Golden the pony boypony boy”

Song: Jana Gana Mana
Album: Jana Gana Mana
Artist: DK Pattamal and Nithyasree

No one comes close to capturing the spirit of the nation like Rahman does. I could spend hours listening to several versions of the same jana gana mana again and again and still not tire of it. If anything, with even rendition I can feel the adrenaline gushing through my veins with greater intensity, and want to fight and take flight to India at once! :) I get very teary-eyed when I listen to the national anthem, as I would imagine millions of people do, but wonder if it is the distance that's making me long for home even more! DK Pattamal and Nityashree's version of the National Anthem is especially priceless. Hearing them stress every word in the anthem, as I'd imagine my grandparents or parents would, makes me feel such intense feelings of emotion and a strange sense of closeness, it is hard to express in words. Then again, to have a south Indian sing a bengali song with such pride says more than I can express in words! We are some country!

Song: Venus in Furs
Album: The Velvet Underground & Nico
Artist: The Velvet Underground

I am having a tough time picking one song from The Velvet Underground & Nico album. Even independently, they each deserve their own spaces. They are easily one of my most favorite avant garde artists and hold a special place in my heart. I feel most at home with this album, which is not a great thing to say, given that they talk about drugs, sadism and sexual deviancy. But, at the end of the day, it has just the right amount of alternative atmosphere, with a bit of a dark overtone, some great melody with interesting folk bits, while still being quintessentially rock and roll. I hate to use the word tender to describe it, but it may just be endearingly perverse. :) The songs all bring to the surface the sinister nature of humans, and take you on a menacing mind trip so to speak. There are some songs that feel quite abstract or hazy, and some with a steady rising and falling rhythm that feels like junk hitting your brain. Venus in Furs is their more sublime compositions in the album, and doesn’t really feature Nico, but some aspects of it remind me of her, like a bit of the folkish tune, and the experimental feel that I have found quite appealing in her non-gothic albums. It also has a very interesting use of the electric viola.

Song: Another Way to Die
Album: Quantum of Solace (Soundtrack)
Artist: Alicia Keys and Jack White

The world can diss the song all they want but to me this is the grittiest song ever! It’s got the right amount of sizzle and smoldering intensity and even offers a certain contemplation that we haven’t seen in the other James Bond title tracks. I’m a huge fan of all James Bond soundtracks, and each one has the invigorating jolt that can go up against the other in terms of energy and distinctiveness. But Another Way to Die serves as an homage to all the classic theme songs, even while moving away from the conventional heavy orchestrated style to a more contemporary sound – with Keys on the piano and White on the guitar and drums and blending a bit of suspense with grunge. It manages to sound badass and aggressive while maintaining the sultry quality that you expect from Keys and White. The lyrics are unusually elevating and reveal the distinctive characteristics of the new Bond that so totally appeals to me. :D I think this is the coolest song EVER! I can listen to it again and again. And my play count on itunes is indication of how often I listen to it (at least twice everyday!). On a side note: I like that the James Bond theme didn’t show up often in the movie, and that it alludes to it every once in a while in an impressionistic manner, while baring the darker and contemplative Bond a little more. It breaks all the conventions of Bond as we know him and that’s reflected throughout the movie and in the soundtrack as well.

Songs: Opus 17, Opus 23, Opus 36
Album: Marie Antoinette (Soundtrack)
Artist: Dustin O'Halloran

Marie Antoinette is a really fun album with two very distinctive moods. Unlike most period films, this one has a whole post-punk new wave thing going with rock, pop and electronica mixed into it --- to complement the vibrant character of Marie Antoinette, who is portrayed as a rebelious teenage queen who is misunderstood by her people due to her outlandish lifestyle. The music style is almost radical, given that they are not quite the type of songs you would expect in an 18th century film about the Monarch, but they seem to complement the momentum of the narrative, and are almost moody - ominous, energerzing and troubling. There are some very poignant classical minuets, soulful elements of baroque, some sweeping ballads, sorrowful operaisque songs and imperfect harpsichord renditions that complement the reflective side of the film. It is one of the more complete soundtracks I have heard. Dustin O'Halloran's piano pieces (Opus 17, Opus 23, Opus 36) are really affecting and touch your feelings in an almost sorrowful way and seem to convey a certain deep troubling melancholic emotion that cannot be put in words.

Song: Mediterranean Sundance
Album: Friday Night in Sanfrancisco
Artist: John McLaughlin, Paco de Lucia and Al Di Meola

This is going to be hard to articulate. This cd feels like going on an amusement park ride, with the highs almost making your heart explode by arousing excited anticipation and then swinging back and forth from minor to major chord variations at dizzying speed. It is overwhelming and exhilarating. With the three greatest guitarists coming together fusing flamenco with jazz and bosanova you can't expect any less. I can't recommend the album enough. Mediterranean Sundance (performed by Paco and Al) is one of the more sublime compositions in the album. It is so very textural, that you can almost get lost in the pitter pattering of the guitar, or melt away into the melody of the song. Both guitarists have a tendency to sneak up on each other almost unexpectedly. The speed and virtuosity is honestly hard to keep up with, but they play it with such ease and so delicately that it's a delight to listen to.

Song: Waltz # 1
Albums: XO, Either/Or
Artist: Elliot Smith

I am so haunted by Elliott Smith’s Waltz # 1. The sweeping melody of the song, the profound poetic sadness of the words, the soft echoing harmony of his wispy voice, the expressive quality of the ivories, are so strikingly gorgeous. The song oozes with emotions. It soars with feelings and I do too. :-) Every other song in the XO album is just as lush and reflective. His Either/Or album is still full of laments, but not as downbeat even though none of his songs are ever really depressing, they are certainly less aching but just as sincerely emotional. With Elliott Smith’s songs more than any one else’s, the emotion is almost personal, like they come from within. I can’t recommend any one song in XO over the other, not even Waltz # 1, but I gravitate to it when I begin to listen to his songs.

	Jethro Tull
	Queens of the Stone Age
	Def Leppard
	Coldplay
	Audioslave
	Shakti
	R Prasanna
	Brazilian Girls
	Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah
	Might Could (twice)
	Red Hot Chili Peppers
	The Who
	The Raconteurs
	The Thievery Corporation
	Eric Clapton and his Band & the Robert Cray Band
	Paco De Lucia - Flamenco Festival 2007
	The Shins
	Kenny Rittenhouse at Blues Alley
	Blue Man Group
	AR Rahman
	Pearl Jam

MOVIE: Iruvar (1997)
SONG: Vennila Vennila
ARTIST: Asha Bhosle, Prabha Mohan =)
MUSIC: AR. Rahman

My brother found this amazing music video of a french rock group called Mickey 3D. It's called Respire.

He said,

I was looking for a video for Ananya (his daughter) and came across this French video, which absolutely blew me away. I was completely mesmerized in the beginning, and the ending made me and Miru (his wife) reflect upon our future…