Symphony…

The end of the year is always a good time to do a recce on the year that passed and the crap I’ve done, the people I’ve pissed and wonder whether I could have done it any better, who did I miss!?!!?

 Fleetingly the challenges and obstacles of the year, the sometimes dignity of handling them with grace, streaks through the mind with Lady Godiva ish grandeur.

The word that’s doing the foxtrot in my head for now is ‘Symphony’. As defined in the dictionary, a symphony is “an elaborate musical composition for full orchestra, typically in four movements, at least one of which is traditionally in sonata form.”

This is a purely musical annotation of the word. A sonata is “a composition for an instrumental soloist, often with a piano accompaniment, typically in several movements with one or more in sonata form”.

Hmnnn… the elephant doing cartwheels in my cerebellum is wondering whether there has been any symphonic element during the year for yours truly.

So, four movements of a symphony are quite akin to the four seasons methinks: spring, summer, monsoon and winter. 

Also to the highs and lows of the year which each of these seasons denote.

Now remember that one of these movements, have to be a sonata... or playing solo. Which one of these have I been spanking the monkey at? 

I gaze unblinking until my eyes dilate better than you-know-what at a D&C procedure until the phosphenes twirl in my orbs in concentric circles.

The psychedelic moment passes and lucidity allows me to reconnoiter that there really hasn’t been one specific season that I’ve been cranking the shank, every individual period has had its fair share of sonatas.

And that is probably what keeps me sane. To be able to disconnect from the melee around me or the fracas in my mind and focus, if briefly on the evanescence and impermanence of it all. My father in law loved the phrase, ‘that too shall pass away’ and I’ve girded my loins (which explains my retroverted uterus) with it.

In the summers of the year when you flirt with the highest point in the bell curve or at winters when the dip reaches the nadir, all one needs is to take one step or maybe two, back and take a few deep breaths and introspect on how much energy one really needs to spend on the triviality that is not worth a tinkers damn in a few years, months or even days.

Now that we have established that the sonatas have been multitudinous, has the symphony been pleasing to the ear or jarred the senses. Did the orchestra have consonance and equilibrium. Did we play in tandem.

Again, those little buggers did the jig in my eyes as I stare at the screen blankly and now I see blue dots do the striptease. 

Fact is that the concinnity has been sporadic and random.

That is what this thingummy jig is after all isn’t it… of irregular cadences, the bass and the tenor going off key at times, the string quartet at loggerheads with the percussionists and the conductor throwing the baton in, only to sigh in resignation and bravely pick it up with hope that each person plays their part to the best of their abilities.

That we will celebrate the composition of different elements, even when the concerto doesn’t play to the audience, to be true to the self and not simply simper... phony.