One more life was lost yesterday. Of course, much more lives stopped their flows on that day, thousands of them, maybe even more, but now I'm talking about that special life.
As it often happens, a car hit a Dog, and the one who was driving did not consider himself being a part of the Universe. He left, leaving the animal lying on the road. I popped up in this story on Saturday, so when I finally got to the location on the taxi driven by another Driver, ten-times replacing that first driver, missing from the Universe, we found three normal dogs in good shape and health. They were running away from me, although for some reason preferring to stay nearby. Apparently, the injured animal was part of their little pack, because we found her on the opposite side of the road. It was found out that the animal had been suffering for two days already. This is what we were told by the neighbors leaning out the window when they heard the dog crying while making an attempt to escape from me and to hide under a car. The neighbors were shouting at us and told us not to touch her, so I had to say that we're going to take her to the vet. They understood and nodded sympathetically, and shut their windows. They had been there for two days "guarding" the animal rather to provide the urgently required help!
The sight was quite painful: two legs seemed to be broken, one back and one front. Any attempt to get up and to run away accompanied by hitting the bleeding jaws on the asphalt - Dog could not hold herself up.
Calling the Vet, saying the Dog does not allow to approach her. He says that it is necessary to catch the Dog and bring her to his place. Calling the Coordinator. There is someone one who could do it. "Who is he?" "The one who does this professionally...."
Do I have to deal with the one I have been despising all my life, and not only knowing of what he and others like him do, but even mentioning of their profession made me boil in a rage?
And then, a sequence of events resulted in that I had to leave the scene and go back home, preparing myself for the upcoming morning operation of capturing and transportation of the animal to the Vet.
When crossing one of the streets, a Woman in the crowd walked toward me; she looked me in the eye and, despite my dark look and untidy appearance, she smiled. It made me stop in the middle of the road, and after a couple of seconds I turned around to catch up with her and thank for that smile. She smiled again and said, "Believe me, everything will be fine."
As it turned out after a few minutes, at this very moment, the Man who makes his living by officially killing animals (but who has been assisting the animal protectors for two and a half months already), and with whom I was to meet the next morning, having learned from the Coordinator of the incident was already riding on his own will to that place to check everything himself. I had to explain him the place where the dog was, and so another number was added to my address book under the heart-chilling "name". At the first "look", the Man seemed to be far from being clever, and miles away from the high ideals, which I was not surprised at. But the Coordinator and I were both surprised by the fact that he was there on his own: after finishing his working day, in his own car he decided to go there. When he found the dog, he took a “professional look” on the situation, and concluded that it was very serious: front paw along with the shoulder bone was separated from the skeleton, and was dangling just on the skin. "Such cases do not live," he said, and added that we probably should be ready to accept that the Vet should be required to do euthanasia. And he was very sorry for her, the sound of her screaming hurt him, he gave her some bread and water, and also, as I understood, he pulled her out from under the car and put it on the sidewalk.
We agreed on how to act in the morning. After that I coordinated our actions with that same Driver, outlined the plans with the Coordinator, and, exhausted, went to bed. I slept for two or three hours, and after that I was in a fog of names, visions, phone calls and new names.
However, the Dog was not there when I got to the place next morning. Having analyzed the situation, I suggested that she passed away in her sleep, and scavengers removed the body during their morning shift. The place was clean, the pack was not there, and the animal could not leave the place and move far away. At the appointed time, I called the Driver first, and then the Man.... He suspected that this story will end like this, but he hoped that a miracle would happen….
But I know that the miracle happened! It happened when he decided to go, when he risked of being stopped by police and fined for talking on the phone while driving, when he was searching for her, and when he hurt for her crying when he found her, when he gave her some bread and water, and when he accepted from me the news with regret. And this series of miracles began with a smile of that Woman and her reassurance that “everything will be fine.” It was as if the Universe itself told me about it through her.
But the next day, it became clear that someone had moved the dog on the handcart for a few hundred meters closer. Some woman heard her screaming; she has a dog, and she was willing to cover some expenses. Strange, but I did not notice the Dog, and that she hadn’t whined when I was passing by the place twice. Probably, the Universe did not want to burden me with more responsibility, as well as it did not want me to meet with the Man face to face.
The next day I heard about the Dog was no longer alive.
The life of one dog was lost. This happens every day, all over the planet. But if we consider this event from the other side, we can see that a lot of good has happened in this regard. And if today we were not able to do something, maybe tomorrow we will. I believe that nothing in this story is accidental. Yes, everything happened because of some idiot who brought this dog down, but maybe this case will help to prevent many others.
Each day leaves its traces on me – on my shoulders, on my skin, in my brain.... Every day, life becomes more and more difficult. Sometimes it becomes simply intolerable. And I have said many times that I'm ready (even want) my life to over, but.... each time after it seemed so unbearable something good happens. At such moments you want to hug someone, because I start feeling to some kind of a universal Love. Mother Earth shows herself, she does not yet want to take me to her, she nourishes and invigorates me. And I'm starting to feel my unity with her, who has been suffering millions times more than I’ve been, for many thousands of years in succession.
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Blues is....
The last two or three weeks I have been really overloaded. Besides the work a couple of minor tasks have been added, quite nervous and also requiring constant control over them. One of the major projects was the participation in the Hovik Gulishyan's "Back to the roots" project. In early April, Hendo called on me and told about the plans of the Armenian Blues Association to bring this project to life. Mesrop (who was also invited to participate in the project) and I agreed, and on April 13, two days before Hovik's arrival to Armenia, we gathered together for our first rehearsal.
Soon it became clear that our "rock-way-of-thinking" is dissonant with the rules adopted in the blues, which we did not know. The first joint rehearsal in Ulikhanyan Club on Monday has revealed the strengths and weaknesses of our line-up. On Tuesday, we tried to go through the whole program, trying not to linger long on mistakes, if possible, but spotting them out. Each of us have had weak places that by the end of the second joint rehearsal (which included Suren Arustamyan) were quite clearly delineated. Only one rehearsal left then....
After the last rehearsal on Wednesday, we felt a deep contact with each other, which granted us with some confidence and peace of mind, that was necessary in order to start this little tour with the concert at Mezzo Classic House-Club, one of the most considerable venues in our city. It was really a serious challenge for everyone: for us, the "rockers" in the blues, for Hovik, an experienced blues-man among the hot heads, for Vahan Danielian, who took full responsibility for everything.
To our mutual deep joy, the concert was a success. Many words of gratitude have been said and lot of good reviews were heard on that night, but we knew that the next day was to be even "hotter". Friday's concert took place at the club 26 Irish Pub, one of the most popular venue among our blues-men. Despite the pouring rain at the end of the day, the room was crammed with a very appreciative audience, and our performance was quite calm and vivid.
We liked the joke when we said we will have two more opportunities to rehearse before the last gig in Ulikhanyan Club-th - in Mezzo and in Irish Pub. Jokes aside, this Saturday night some unquenchable fervour really burned in us with which we were infecting full packed hall with of good mood and cheerfulness for more than two hours. Impact was enormous. After playing two planned sets, we began the third one, almost entirely improvised. Artak Nersissian, Suren Arustamyan, Khachatur Armenyan joined us and added even more spice to the main dish.
Towards the end, another amazing encounter took place. In between of our jam-session numbers a swarthy and not so tall man approached the stage; I recall I met him a couple of times in the city. He asked if he could join the jam. Vahan told him something, and he sat on the edge of the stage and began to uncover... his saxophone! Before the next number we asked in what key it would be convenient for him to play. When we started our "Rock 'n' Roll Madness in G", the man who had been modestly waiting for his turn, took the stage and added "the cherry on the cream for our cake". He played and retired, after dismantling the saxophone and putting it back. Later in the evening, I was able to approach him in the street when he came out of the club, to thank him for his participation and to wish him the best.
When we gathered together at Beer Academy to say Hovik goodbye on the Sunday night, Artak told me about this musician. It was Zaid Nasser, son of the famous Jamil Nasser (these links are certainly worth a go). Modesty and sublimity!
Having said goodbye to Hovik and wished him a safe trip back home, we parted our ways. I promised to write this post, and make a photo album (may hands have not yet reached it). Back to work, back to other activities.... and back to the Road Movie, some five days after Ulikhanyan....
After playing the first set in Stop! Club we headed to the dressing room to get ready for the second set full of covers, we were approached by our regular audience and asked what happened during the last two months? "You now have twice the power and twice the fun!"....
We have felt it ourselves. I would say that we now play more accurate, stable; all that we did that night ended up quite well, from a painless installation of the equipment, setting up the sound and transient soundcheck. It was so easy and so pleasant to play that night.
To conclude, I would say that for me blues is "a discipline, teaching listening, demanding to leave all the fuss and pomp behind, forcing to work on yourself through the simple and clear, so that to open the complex and inaccessible later."
Soon it became clear that our "rock-way-of-thinking" is dissonant with the rules adopted in the blues, which we did not know. The first joint rehearsal in Ulikhanyan Club on Monday has revealed the strengths and weaknesses of our line-up. On Tuesday, we tried to go through the whole program, trying not to linger long on mistakes, if possible, but spotting them out. Each of us have had weak places that by the end of the second joint rehearsal (which included Suren Arustamyan) were quite clearly delineated. Only one rehearsal left then....
After the last rehearsal on Wednesday, we felt a deep contact with each other, which granted us with some confidence and peace of mind, that was necessary in order to start this little tour with the concert at Mezzo Classic House-Club, one of the most considerable venues in our city. It was really a serious challenge for everyone: for us, the "rockers" in the blues, for Hovik, an experienced blues-man among the hot heads, for Vahan Danielian, who took full responsibility for everything.
To our mutual deep joy, the concert was a success. Many words of gratitude have been said and lot of good reviews were heard on that night, but we knew that the next day was to be even "hotter". Friday's concert took place at the club 26 Irish Pub, one of the most popular venue among our blues-men. Despite the pouring rain at the end of the day, the room was crammed with a very appreciative audience, and our performance was quite calm and vivid.
We liked the joke when we said we will have two more opportunities to rehearse before the last gig in Ulikhanyan Club-th - in Mezzo and in Irish Pub. Jokes aside, this Saturday night some unquenchable fervour really burned in us with which we were infecting full packed hall with of good mood and cheerfulness for more than two hours. Impact was enormous. After playing two planned sets, we began the third one, almost entirely improvised. Artak Nersissian, Suren Arustamyan, Khachatur Armenyan joined us and added even more spice to the main dish.
Towards the end, another amazing encounter took place. In between of our jam-session numbers a swarthy and not so tall man approached the stage; I recall I met him a couple of times in the city. He asked if he could join the jam. Vahan told him something, and he sat on the edge of the stage and began to uncover... his saxophone! Before the next number we asked in what key it would be convenient for him to play. When we started our "Rock 'n' Roll Madness in G", the man who had been modestly waiting for his turn, took the stage and added "the cherry on the cream for our cake". He played and retired, after dismantling the saxophone and putting it back. Later in the evening, I was able to approach him in the street when he came out of the club, to thank him for his participation and to wish him the best.
When we gathered together at Beer Academy to say Hovik goodbye on the Sunday night, Artak told me about this musician. It was Zaid Nasser, son of the famous Jamil Nasser (these links are certainly worth a go). Modesty and sublimity!
Having said goodbye to Hovik and wished him a safe trip back home, we parted our ways. I promised to write this post, and make a photo album (may hands have not yet reached it). Back to work, back to other activities.... and back to the Road Movie, some five days after Ulikhanyan....
After playing the first set in Stop! Club we headed to the dressing room to get ready for the second set full of covers, we were approached by our regular audience and asked what happened during the last two months? "You now have twice the power and twice the fun!"....
We have felt it ourselves. I would say that we now play more accurate, stable; all that we did that night ended up quite well, from a painless installation of the equipment, setting up the sound and transient soundcheck. It was so easy and so pleasant to play that night.
To conclude, I would say that for me blues is "a discipline, teaching listening, demanding to leave all the fuss and pomp behind, forcing to work on yourself through the simple and clear, so that to open the complex and inaccessible later."
Monday, March 4, 2013
Road Movie: Symbolism and Compromises
On my Journal pages I haven’t yet placed any post fully dedicated to the band I play with – Road Movie. I am doing it today because I feel it is time to provide some report on the work done.
Wikipedia gives the following introductory sentence to the "road movie" article: “A road movie is a film genre in which the main characters leave home to travel from place to place, typically altering the perspective from their everyday lives”. Our life is the path that we go, ride, or fly by, or by the side of which we sit, licking our wounds and gathering strengths to move forward. You can get off the road, you can get on it; after all, one might not know about it at all, but the road exists anyway. The road is a symbol of life, which had started somewhere and will end somewhere, but this life would be incomplete without a traveler making his way along that road.
In the summer of 2012 I reached a crossroad, had some thoughts on which way to go, chose the direction and took a turn. I jumped into a car passing by. Soon after that I understood that I had just joined a rock band from Yerevan called “Road Movie”: Henry was driving, sitting to the right was Mesrop, and also in the cabin there was David, who was absorbed by reading a book.
While learning the old songs musicians become familiar with each other at a level that is higher than just a teamwork. First of all, they should become a collective. This process is not that easy. Difficulties, frustrations, distractions – everything tries to keep the progressive component, but with due diligence there comes a certain feeling at some point that I find it difficult to describe now: whether the instruments start sound better, or the musicians begin to reveal their hidden abilities, or altogether. As a result, the band play proves to be fun, and hours spent in rehearsal do not seem lost already. Old songs begin to sound in a new way, and new ones emerge on top of that.
How is a new song being born? Perhaps it happens differently in different cases: it could be a melody heard in a dream or accidentally played on an instrument, or some rhythmical sequence of words, or something like that, other than a song requested to be written on such-a-subject in such-a-genre with such-an-emotional mood or ideological overtones. This is about a point where the two worlds touch each other: in one of them we do exist and in the the other – our music. By working hard and long we approach the boundary of these two worlds and at some moment begin to grope IT there, beyond our understanding. Each of us gropes for his own thread and begins to pull, and then we weave a new canvas. It is a compromise between the readiness for perpetual work and the quality of the result. And so, “Don't Wait” was born.
At the end of November, we were booked to play in a short series of concerts. As the result, we came to something our road kept for us at this stage – to yet another compromise. We had to discuss with our sax player the possibility of joint continuation of our musical activities. His busy schedule did not allow (allowed not) to spend time in a rock band. The conversation was friendly and quite adequate, and after that it was clear that the Road Movie band is now a trio. There is a symbolism on which I am not going to spread now. Going further.
It was at this time when we came up with the idea of starting The Clubbing tour. It was decided to play in as many clubs that could provide some definite conditions and, of course, give us some financial return, as possible. The more gigs we play – the more experience we get, and different clubs introduce us to a wider and different audience. But in order to play for "different audience" we had to come to another compromise – addition of many cover songs to our repertoire, which was previously avoided by Road Movie in every way. Because of this motley contemporary repertoire we faced the task of working up such track lists that would allow us to identify both the strengths and weaknesses of all the components of an event: teamwork, energy, mood of the audience, room acoustics, equipment, performance. We even experimented with interchanging the responsibility for compiling up the track listing within the band members. In some of the clubs we played twice, but used different approaches. Some set lists had been prepared in a couple of days, others – the minutes before we hit the stage.
The audience at our shows always plays its important role. In addition to the applause, cheers and smiles, our audience provides us with the necessary feedback. It is often due to the people in the audience, both one-time and permanent comers, that we hit upon something that gives us all the reasons to believe that our efforts have not gone in vain.
Speaking of symbolism, I can figure out some examples of its manifestation at the level of word play. However, I am doing it just for fun, because a true symbolism might have not yet fully appeared, or we have not yet noticed it.
Hardly could I call those last three months of winter, during which we were clubbing, crazy – all that happened was quite reasonable and understandable. And even though I was able to fit this story about them onto a couple of pages, all remains for us equally an inexplicable and a mysterious experience of the passage of our Road.
Wikipedia gives the following introductory sentence to the "road movie" article: “A road movie is a film genre in which the main characters leave home to travel from place to place, typically altering the perspective from their everyday lives”. Our life is the path that we go, ride, or fly by, or by the side of which we sit, licking our wounds and gathering strengths to move forward. You can get off the road, you can get on it; after all, one might not know about it at all, but the road exists anyway. The road is a symbol of life, which had started somewhere and will end somewhere, but this life would be incomplete without a traveler making his way along that road.
In the summer of 2012 I reached a crossroad, had some thoughts on which way to go, chose the direction and took a turn. I jumped into a car passing by. Soon after that I understood that I had just joined a rock band from Yerevan called “Road Movie”: Henry was driving, sitting to the right was Mesrop, and also in the cabin there was David, who was absorbed by reading a book.
While learning the old songs musicians become familiar with each other at a level that is higher than just a teamwork. First of all, they should become a collective. This process is not that easy. Difficulties, frustrations, distractions – everything tries to keep the progressive component, but with due diligence there comes a certain feeling at some point that I find it difficult to describe now: whether the instruments start sound better, or the musicians begin to reveal their hidden abilities, or altogether. As a result, the band play proves to be fun, and hours spent in rehearsal do not seem lost already. Old songs begin to sound in a new way, and new ones emerge on top of that.
How is a new song being born? Perhaps it happens differently in different cases: it could be a melody heard in a dream or accidentally played on an instrument, or some rhythmical sequence of words, or something like that, other than a song requested to be written on such-a-subject in such-a-genre with such-an-emotional mood or ideological overtones. This is about a point where the two worlds touch each other: in one of them we do exist and in the the other – our music. By working hard and long we approach the boundary of these two worlds and at some moment begin to grope IT there, beyond our understanding. Each of us gropes for his own thread and begins to pull, and then we weave a new canvas. It is a compromise between the readiness for perpetual work and the quality of the result. And so, “Don't Wait” was born.
At the end of November, we were booked to play in a short series of concerts. As the result, we came to something our road kept for us at this stage – to yet another compromise. We had to discuss with our sax player the possibility of joint continuation of our musical activities. His busy schedule did not allow (allowed not) to spend time in a rock band. The conversation was friendly and quite adequate, and after that it was clear that the Road Movie band is now a trio. There is a symbolism on which I am not going to spread now. Going further.
It was at this time when we came up with the idea of starting The Clubbing tour. It was decided to play in as many clubs that could provide some definite conditions and, of course, give us some financial return, as possible. The more gigs we play – the more experience we get, and different clubs introduce us to a wider and different audience. But in order to play for "different audience" we had to come to another compromise – addition of many cover songs to our repertoire, which was previously avoided by Road Movie in every way. Because of this motley contemporary repertoire we faced the task of working up such track lists that would allow us to identify both the strengths and weaknesses of all the components of an event: teamwork, energy, mood of the audience, room acoustics, equipment, performance. We even experimented with interchanging the responsibility for compiling up the track listing within the band members. In some of the clubs we played twice, but used different approaches. Some set lists had been prepared in a couple of days, others – the minutes before we hit the stage.
The audience at our shows always plays its important role. In addition to the applause, cheers and smiles, our audience provides us with the necessary feedback. It is often due to the people in the audience, both one-time and permanent comers, that we hit upon something that gives us all the reasons to believe that our efforts have not gone in vain.
Speaking of symbolism, I can figure out some examples of its manifestation at the level of word play. However, I am doing it just for fun, because a true symbolism might have not yet fully appeared, or we have not yet noticed it.
- Having decided to buy a Fender bass guitar I was trying for a long time to find the right option of buying it abroad and shipping it to Armenia. All of them seemed impractical. The idea had almost extinguished when in the middle of autumn the official representative of Fender in Armenia started working in our city, leaving me with just a task of choosing the right model. Fender Precision Bass was purchased on 12/12/12.
- Speaking of The Clubbing Tour we said "we are clubbing" – a play on words in Russian, indicating the swirling smoke or cloud. Usually we do not see how this process starts, and also cannot know how it should end. The same can be said regarding the Road.
- We referred to adding the cover songs to our set lists saying "we shake the old days." Here is the crossing of the timing aspect of the term, pointing to an old approach of maintaining the existence of the local groups (when performing covers drowned a band and its identity got lost), and the semantic aspect (adding cover songs to the repertoire of Road Movie).
- Speaking about the short interval between concerts in Stop Club-e and Calumet, I wrote in some of my Facebook posts "From the frying pan into the... Calumet", but it was only the next day when I realized that Trndez national holyday was celebrated the day before, during which people jump through a burning fire, and the opening song in Calumet on that night was a Deep Purple song called "Into the Fire". (in Russian, Calumet sounds similar to "полымя", which concludes the Russian analogue of the mentioned saying - "Из огня да в полымя").
- On one of our concert photos, we are caught with our Fender guitar necks crossed. Speaking of the future adventures instead of saying "fingers crossed" we say "Fenders crossed".
- On the poster from the concert dedicated to the 70th Anniversary of George Harrison, the listed performing band's name is “The Kings' CrossRoad Movie”, which consisted of the members of The Kings' Cross and Road Movie bands. The intersection of these groups can also be seen in the fusion of words “Cross” and “Road”, forming the word "crossroad".
- Track list of that tribute concert ended up with the song "All Things Must Pass", which was consonant with the end of the concert and the end of our tour. Also, on this night my heavy bass guitar pick broke.
Hardly could I call those last three months of winter, during which we were clubbing, crazy – all that happened was quite reasonable and understandable. And even though I was able to fit this story about them onto a couple of pages, all remains for us equally an inexplicable and a mysterious experience of the passage of our Road.
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
The Lyrics of Judge Smith - Curly's Airships
Done!
The translation of Judge Smith's first songstory "Curly's Airships" into Russian, supplied with introduction and 90+ commentaries and references has been launched today! As always, visit the "Translation" section on The Russian pH/VdGG Page and in subsection 'Judge Smith' find the respective link, or use this direct link to the page.
So now "The Russian Translations of the Judge Smith's Songstories" task is accomplished and you can "take your seats in "Curly's Airship", rise high above the ground up to the highest mountain peaks following "The Climber", and accompanied by the beautiful music played by "Orfeas"". And don't forget to take with you your copy of "What is a 'Songstory'" essay introduced by "The Lyrics of Judge Smith".
The translation of Judge Smith's first songstory "Curly's Airships" into Russian, supplied with introduction and 90+ commentaries and references has been launched today! As always, visit the "Translation" section on The Russian pH/VdGG Page and in subsection 'Judge Smith' find the respective link, or use this direct link to the page.
So now "The Russian Translations of the Judge Smith's Songstories" task is accomplished and you can "take your seats in "Curly's Airship", rise high above the ground up to the highest mountain peaks following "The Climber", and accompanied by the beautiful music played by "Orfeas"". And don't forget to take with you your copy of "What is a 'Songstory'" essay introduced by "The Lyrics of Judge Smith".
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Into the West, smiles on our faces, we'll go....
"...the great Nic Mozart passed away in hospital last night. Deeply, deeply
missed."
pH@SS, 17.01.2013
No more VdGG pure bass players left. All went West...
pH@SS, 17.01.2013
No more VdGG pure bass players left. All went West...
Saturday, January 5, 2013
On Translations - part 7
The draft version of "Curly's Airships" translation in Russian is ready!
What still needs to be done is just to reread it, to correct several suspicious lines, to synchronize with Judge's comments, to reread it once again, to check the rhymes in those separate song/radio spot fragments, to work out formatting, to add all the collected comments and references, to mark some special notes regarding the texts, to think out some opening address - and here we are!
What still needs to be done is just to reread it, to correct several suspicious lines, to synchronize with Judge's comments, to reread it once again, to check the rhymes in those separate song/radio spot fragments, to work out formatting, to add all the collected comments and references, to mark some special notes regarding the texts, to think out some opening address - and here we are!
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