Ecstasy Of gold

Have you ever listened to this masterpiece? It was quite famous some time back. But, not too sure whether it is so now. You can find this in the original sound track of 'The good, the bad and the ugly', the third and the final film in the 'Dollar Trilogy', which Clint Eastwood played the main role in. Music was composed by Ennio Morricone.

No need to talk any more. Immerse yourself in it and feel the emptiness of the Western landscape during the era of the American Civil War. Can you smell the gun powder in the dry, dusty wind and hear the rattling of the hooves of an approaching rider?

99 Red Balloons

I had listen to this song many times before and each time I felt some kind of a strange feeling. There are many pieces of classical music that bring me goosebumps. But this was quite the unlikely kind, 80s pop music suitable for teenagers (at least from my point of view).

A couple of weeks back, while I was walking to the university, I heard this playing on a radio station. I felt the same thing again but could not follow the lyrics properly to grab the meaning as my mind was more focused on the traffic on the road. Nevertheless, I determined to check the lyrics out as soon as I could connect to the internet at uni.

Once I read through the lyrics the light flashed inside my head. What amazes me about this song is that the lyrics is so simple and the meaning is so straight forward. But within that simplicity it addresses a serious plight that has been unfolding through out the history. And we can find thousand and one similar incidents from the present as well, involving global and domestic politics.

This song was originally sung in German by Nena. Then the English version too was sung by the same artist. Check out the following lyrics and see if you get what I mean, or whether you find a different message encoded in it;

Text: Carlo Karges (English by Kevin McAlea)
Music: J. U. Fahrenkrog-Petersen

You and I in a little toy shop
Buy a bag of balloons with the money we've got
Set them free at the break of dawn
Til one by one, they were gone
Back at base bugs in the software
Flash the message, something's out there
Floating in the summer sky
99 red balloons go by

99 red balloons
Floating in the summer sky
Panic bells it's red alert
There's something here from somewhere else
The war machine springs to life
Opens up one eager eye
Focusing it on the sky as 99 red balloons go by

99 Decision street
99 ministers meet
To worry, worry, super flurry
Call the troops out in a hurry
This is what we've waited for
This is it boys, this is war
The president is on the line
As 99 red balloons go by

99 knights of the air
Ride super high tech jet fighters
Everyone's a super hero
Everyone's a Captain Kirk
With orders to identify
To clarify, and classify
Scramble in the summer sky
99 red balloons go by

99 dreams I have had
In every one a red balloon
It's all over and I'm standing pretty
In this dust that was a city
If I could find a souvenir
Just to prove the world was here
And here is a red balloon
I think of you, and let it go

Nightingale

Is it really the poet that composes poems, or is it the subject? As per my experience on that particular night, it was music that composed this poem. It merely used my mind and brain to process language and my hand to write down the words on a piece of paper. Thus, the poem belongs to this music, not to me.

Nightingale

Helplessly, I have drowned,
in self intoxication
I cannot see a way,
to break free,
nor have the intent
Lost among defilements, am I?
A heart that feels so heavy,
sighing, seemingly unending,
In my reminiscence,
I hear it playing,
perpetually, consuming me
It is no more the reality,
that I live in

Last week in this blog I posted a picture that belongs to some one else, although I started the blog with the intention of sharing my photography work. Today I am going to break the traditions again and post a piece of music in my 'hereafter so called' photoblog.

All the boundaries we know are created by our consciousness. In reality, every thing is just a result of conversion of other things. Matter and energy, in the universe as we know it, creates everything, and matter is convertible to energy and vice-versa. So, in that sense what is the difference between a photograph and a piece of music. They both are art. The way we perceive them, and the way they generate a sensation in our minds is the same. After all, it's our mind that creates everything we see, hear, smell, feel and dream.

With that somewhat controversial justification I am taking this opportunity to share a piece of mesmeric music. This track made me feel exactly the same as in the above poem, on that dark, peaceful night.

Aldebaran

I got this thought to start a separate blog to write about everything other than my photography, simply to keep my original blog (Sac's photography) clean and focused only on photography. I have already posted a couple of articles about music on that blog and feel sort of guilty-conscious about it. I should try to import those two articles also to this new blog at a later time.

If you are wondering what Aldebaran is, well, its a star. An orange giant star located about 65 light years away in Taurus constellation, according to Wikipedia. Aldebaran is an Arabic name, meaning 'the follower'. The reason for this choice of name goes back to my childhood. When I was in the primary school I had a Soviet book on astronomy. The book was intended for children, written in the form of a story. The first time I came across this name on that book I developed a fascination towards it. And as you can see, it is still continuing up to the present. So come and be an Aldebaran, a follower...