Manifesto

Cliches abound about the nature of classical music - a journey; a journey with no end; a journey where travelling itself becomes the destination; yada yada yada. Trite as they seem, a kernel of truth does lie hidden in them. Music forms so vast, so diverse a subject that imposing a framework on it is truly beyond human endeavour.

As every lover of music knows, this has a beautiful, endearing aspect to it. Pursue music seriously enough, and it is bound to throw up random surprises at you. Insights into the structure of music; into the nature of specific Ragas; melodic phrases suddenly making sense to you; in short, penetrating, unexpected insights into the truth that lies at the heart of our music.

Music is a deeply experiential art form, and perhaps the purpose of this blog is best served if it reflects this experiential aspect. It is for this reason that I envisage the blog as a freewheeling record of these chance morsels of beauty that have come my way. It does not aspire to a regularity of structure, an overall direction, plan or ideology. Indeed, that will be self-defeating.

A caveat here: Lest my insistence on terms like 'freewheeling', 'unstructured' and the like convey an impression of casualness, let me clarify that I am too respectful of music to even think of foisting on readers random ideas poorly conceived, researched, written and generally fleshed out. So as long as I remain honest to music, I shall put in all due hard work and not let the blog fall prey to slipshod writing.