3songsofmylife

Music, for many, is quite an essential behemoth in their lives. Nobody questions it, the essentiality or the size, like nobody would question the repulsiveness of cannibalism. However, not questioning the nature of your affinity works for the carefree; for worrywarts like I am, music is a constantly evolving person within us, and we pore over the momentous influences that forever coloured our tastes. When I was first introduced to 3songsofmylife, I almost had the entire story ready to be preached, pat down to the incidents. The three songs I have picked may no longer even feature in my playlist, but there is no denying the power they hold over all the consequent music I have listened to, and appreciated. So, be warned. The following article isn't as much about music as it is about its role in MY life.

Lateralus – Tool

This was during my high school, when I was utterly (strangely) dependent on friends for any new music. I was very naïve, and it never crossed my mind to search for fresh music. I would borrow my classmate Saketh's iPod, and listen to all the familiar tracks of Staind, Green Day, Metallica, Iron Maiden, and others. Saketh was a budding guitarist then, and had his head running through Slayer riffs. He had no reason to, and yet, did show me Tool, said they were a crazy band, as metal went. He would never have predicted the hook it would sink in me. I remember feeling powerless as my attention got wrapped up in the song, as it demanded more of my being to be there, listening. That might have been my first experience with addiction, because the consecutive semester stood testimony to my obsession with just one track of Tool's, “Lateralus”. Like a ritual, I would take the iPod after lunch, sit with my head down at the same isolated spot in class, and listen to the entire track, with all of its hypnotic progressions and seductive vocals (I remember feeling scandalised when people dismissed Maynard) through to the end. In the following years, I wore their discography out, and subsequently, fell out of love with them. At least, the passion had died. But this phase changed me irrevocably, as I no longer listened to music as a background to life, but as messages, pieces of art, monuments to visit and appreciate for their grandness. I would call this my “coming-of-age”.

Adam and the Fish Eyed Poets – Black Eyed Monster

With fresh eyes and ears, I had begun searching for new music actively, and wound up right at home (Chennai, India). The artist was touted “a prodigy”, and had finished his schooling in my neighbouring school. I believe it might have been that deliciousness association with some detail of the artist's that initially drew me to picking Kishore Krishnan, aka Adam and The Fish Eyed Poets, out. Yes, he is Adam and all the Fish Eyed Poets because it was no band – just him. I would later come to learn that his influences included Dylan, XTC, Robyn Hitchcock and Attraction and the Kinks, bands I would learn about only a few months before I type this. But to my still-raw ear, the music he whipped up shocked me to my core, revealing how low my expectations had been when it came to contemporary music. He stood for all the things I was fascinated by then – individualism, objectivism, perfectionism. There was no favourite I had among his songs, I would listen to each album as if a single track each time. But the lyrically layered Black Eyed Monster would be the song to fester inside me, as I repeatedly boiled it for more depth and meaning, and it never disappointed. His albums “Snakeism” and “Dead Loops” created in me the most solid foundation of faith in the indie music scene. From then, music became a solid, silent way of my life.

Radiohead - Kid A

I still consider this one of my grossest misses yet. Radiohead, to me, was “Creep” for a very long time, even though I had heard a few other tracks of theirs too. I still hadn't completely kicked the habit of relying on the opinions of friends, and most opinions were dismissive of them as “heavily experimental”. Hence, Radiohead was buried somewhere half-visible, probably tagged something like “american post rock band”. Then, I read “Kafka on The Shore”, by Haruki Murakami. To the uninitiated, Murakami is a Japanese writer who shot to fame in the 80's, and continues to this day write mysteriously powerful novels that transcend translations and ethnicities. “Kafka on The Shore” was another of his surrealist novels that ached of existential angst, and as a sincere reader, I was in the throes of this angst, hook, line and sinker. As the protagonist, Kafka Tamura, wandered through the bizarre events of his life, he made repeated references to the music he listened to (Haruki Murakami had been a musician, and been heavily influenced by Western music), and the track that echoed his ennui was “Kid A”. Murakami briefly describes it; 2 lines, maybe. Intrigued, I listened to the track online. I remember, to this day, how weak I went in the knees, as if yet again, the room fell away suddenly to reveal how vast and enigmatic the field of music could be. I remember thinking, “Experimental? This? Heavens, no.” Kafka Tamura and his dark adventures fell away in the wake of the song, and several pieces of my life fell together in place, as if this had been the missing stopper to the basin of chaos in my head:

...and Music became, to me, “the Art”.
…and Music became a civilization apart from Mankind, a beautiful race of messages meant to lull the human beasts in the right direction for progress.

...and I knew I would never again experience another ground-breaking epiphany, as my idea of Music had fully matured to be an intimidatingly elegant being, better and more free than any aspect of my life.

...and after the rush of falling pieces, and the clearing of the smoke from my head, there reigned true, sad and absolute silence. The romance and adolescence was over even before I knew their charms for what they had been.

This, I labelled humourlessly,"The death of innocence and naivete".