Musicians

As it turns out, the jazz concert I had stumbled into in my last blog post was part of a music festival and it is an ongoing daily one hour concert during lunchtimes. It gloriously would go on till Sept 14. So every weekday lunchtime, one could find me sitting in the bleachers and smiling like I had won a million dollars. This is life. I missed listening to live music so much. I wish it never ends.

Last Friday's music theme was "Tango" and all the four artists played varying aspects of tango. One gave a small lecture too about it's history. I have learned that Tango originated in Argentina, in a small port city called La Buka (I hope I spelled that right). In such a place, there were a lot of different nationalities - Russians, Colombians, Africans and even Japanese. Most of them are immigrants, so it is then that Tango is also known as immigrant music..interesting.

One thing that struck me while I was listening and watching the musicians play was how visibly one can see from their faces the emotion that their music draws from them. To me, it was very moving. It was as if they were all alone playing their instruments in an empty room and noone was watching. I couldn't remember when was the last time I wore my "heart" out like that. As far as I could recall, my journey to maturity have included being able to master my emotions and for me, that also entailed not having it too visible for people to see. Cultural expectations on Asian women may have had a part of it too as well as all those trainings in honing ones job skills where one is required to stay calm in emotionally charged scenarios or not reveal anything in most circumstances. Then again, it might also be that I have always been surrounded by left-brained people where numbers and over use of the mind and logic is the norm. So it's not surprising why on my spare time, I would be drawing, painting, writing or be drawn to lunchtime concerts like these because a large part of me lives through my emotions. And so it marvels me to watch people who spend most of every day, living at that end of the spectrum. As I watched the way the artists held their instruments, the way they close their eyes as the notes filled the air, how peaceful their faces looked, how passionate their energy, the shape of their fingers as they pressed those keys or pulled those strings, I wondered how it would be like to live the life of a musician where one's work requires one to feel, to reach into the depths of the heart and soul and find that unique music that is there and then to play it with eyes closed..it must be nice.