We're all praying to laugh again.
We may wear our masks with calcified confidence, but the deepest parts of ourselves ache for innocence - for irreconcilable joy.
For all the reasons we find meaning, comfort and solace in art, I wonder if we are also drawn to a fundamental sense of betrayal - our innermost secrets and longings made public for all to see.
How could we ever get over the addicting humiliation of seeing some part ourselves, that private, dark, internal shadow - made real through the painstaking labor of the artist or actor or composer?
How can we conveniently compartmentalize our own secret stories and dreams, taking on a tangible form through time and space - sometimes projected onto the body of someone we wish we could be.
We see others moved by that "private-expression-made-real", and we are ourselves moved. We're not alone in our fear, our shame, our hope, our laughter. The clown on stage is the clown within.
The writer David Whyte talks about how humiliation is the pathway to growth, to humor: when we learn that we're just frail, human, and utterly fallible creatures - all we can do is laugh at ourselves.
The artist is a channel for that story. That story - first private, then communal - flows through them, becomes them, lives in and through them. Ultimately, the artist - a human bridge - gives that story as an offering to the world. The creative act is always a generous act.
In the body of the artist/performer/storyteller, we see our deepest longings revealed - reminding us of our humanity, our frailty. In the case of "Lachen Verlernt", the violin is the narrator of a prayer, begging the clown Pierrot to teach her to laugh again. In describing this work, Esa-Pekka Salonen said "I felt that this is a very moving metaphor of a performer: a serious clown trying to help the audience to connect with emotions they have lost, or believe they have lost."
This past year, I've been ruminating on the idea that the creative process is both a mirror and a lens: in the process of practice, I hold up a mirror to myself - the instrument leaves no room to hide, and the violin doesn't lie. And the work also becomes a lens through which to see and understand the world.
For the last year, such a mirror/lens - such a personal, spiritual and artistic labor - was Lachen Verlernt. Besides the metaphor of 'unlearning laughter' through the unveiling and unraveling of 2020, Lachen became my own personal structure, the expression through which I both saw myself, and the world around me. Even the form the work takes - that of a Chaconne (a repeating matrix of harmony) - felt like the days of quarantine: each the same, each different, each utterly gone.
We're all begging for clowns - those 'horse doctors of the soul' - to teach us how to laugh again, to teach us how to *be*, again. As the structure of our world dissolves and burns, what will we value? What will we carry forward, and what will we leave behind?
What must we unlearn, so that when we dare to laugh again, our joy isn't saccharine and hollow - and at the torturous expense of those who have unlearned their laughter?
How might we reclaim what we have lost - or what we think we have lost?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbcBtBLjGD8 ...
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Vijay Gupta - Violinist
2 weeks ago
11 years ago today, I gave my first TED talk. I was 22, and terrified.
Without knowing it at the time, I was opening a door for myself - and for a community of people who became my teachers, my friends, and my family. Sometimes, without knowing it, we open doors for our future selves - and all we have to do is say a prayer and walk through.
I wrote about it on my Medium blog:
guptaviolin.medium.com/walking-through-the-door-5d459b7f9e32 ...
Walking through the door
guptaviolin.medium.com
Sometimes, we open doors for ourselves. At the time, we can’t imagine what it would be like to step through — in fact, the very idea of…Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on Linked InShare by Email
Comment on Facebook Sometimes, we open ...
Vijay Gupta - Violinist
1 month ago
We're all praying to laugh again.
We may wear our masks with calcified confidence, but the deepest parts of ourselves ache for innocence - for irreconcilable joy.
For all the reasons we find meaning, comfort and solace in art, I wonder if we are also drawn to a fundamental sense of betrayal - our innermost secrets and longings made public for all to see.
How could we ever get over the addicting humiliation of seeing some part ourselves, that private, dark, internal shadow - made real through the painstaking labor of the artist or actor or composer?
How can we conveniently compartmentalize our own secret stories and dreams, taking on a tangible form through time and space - sometimes projected onto the body of someone we wish we could be.
We see others moved by that "private-expression-made-real", and we are ourselves moved. We're not alone in our fear, our shame, our hope, our laughter. The clown on stage is the clown within.
The writer David Whyte talks about how humiliation is the pathway to growth, to humor: when we learn that we're just frail, human, and utterly fallible creatures - all we can do is laugh at ourselves.
The artist is a channel for that story. That story - first private, then communal - flows through them, becomes them, lives in and through them. Ultimately, the artist - a human bridge - gives that story as an offering to the world. The creative act is always a generous act.
In the body of the artist/performer/storyteller, we see our deepest longings revealed - reminding us of our humanity, our frailty. In the case of "Lachen Verlernt", the violin is the narrator of a prayer, begging the clown Pierrot to teach her to laugh again. In describing this work, Esa-Pekka Salonen said "I felt that this is a very moving metaphor of a performer: a serious clown trying to help the audience to connect with emotions they have lost, or believe they have lost."
This past year, I've been ruminating on the idea that the creative process is both a mirror and a lens: in the process of practice, I hold up a mirror to myself - the instrument leaves no room to hide, and the violin doesn't lie. And the work also becomes a lens through which to see and understand the world.
For the last year, such a mirror/lens - such a personal, spiritual and artistic labor - was Lachen Verlernt. Besides the metaphor of 'unlearning laughter' through the unveiling and unraveling of 2020, Lachen became my own personal structure, the expression through which I both saw myself, and the world around me. Even the form the work takes - that of a Chaconne (a repeating matrix of harmony) - felt like the days of quarantine: each the same, each different, each utterly gone.
We're all begging for clowns - those 'horse doctors of the soul' - to teach us how to laugh again, to teach us how to *be*, again. As the structure of our world dissolves and burns, what will we value? What will we carry forward, and what will we leave behind?
What must we unlearn, so that when we dare to laugh again, our joy isn't saccharine and hollow - and at the torturous expense of those who have unlearned their laughter?
How might we reclaim what we have lost - or what we think we have lost?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbcBtBLjGD8 ...
Lachen Verlernt: Esa-Pekka Salonen - Vijay Gupta, violin
www.youtube.com
Lachen Verlernt (Laughter Unlearned)Esa-Pekka Salonen (2002)***Recorded at All Saints Church, Pasadena - December 21, 2020Directed by Louis NgShare on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on Linked InShare by Email
Comment on Facebook Lachen Verlernt ...
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guptaviolin
Feb 25
Video 1: After. Video 2: Before (for about a week) #showyourwork
---
Slowly chipping away at this hair-raising passage from the #Bartok solo violin sonata - something I simply thought I would never be able to play. The slow practice exposes errors I didn't know I was making: little gaps in preparing for an uncomfortable or unusual finger position (plenty of 9ths, unisons, 2nds - as opposed to thirds or sixths which fit more easily in the hand).
There is plenty more work to be done.
#creativesadhana #payattention ...
guptaviolin
Feb 24
"Many of us believe that we are victims to what happens to us, and therefore unworthy of anything better. What we've been taught and trained to believe about ourselves as children, often this is negative and we need to unlearn that. The way we unlearn them is by having a vision and moving forward. Staying focused and being true to that vision of what we desire for ourselves."
Iyanla Vanzant
---
A short clip from Esa-Pekka Salonen's "Lachen verlernt" (laughter unlearned).
What is it we must unlearn in order to live the fullest vision of ourselves into the world?
#creativesadhana #payattention ...
guptaviolin
Feb 23
#ShowYourWork: Video 1 is a performance. Video 2 is practice.
---
Practicing is often about finding a balance of paying close attention to the tiniest details while not losing the big picture. This little passage from @reenaesmailcomposer "When the Violin" is a little labyrinth of Western and Hindustani techniques combined into an eye-blink: trills, turns, scales, slides, a fingered-octave ornament.
One of the elements of Hindustani practice is that the most virtuosic elements are often hidden - ornamentation, like the ornaments in Baroque music - is meant to add a quiet curlicue of awe, but not to completely distract the listener's attention from the larger picture. This presents a particular challenge for the musician - who likely gives an undue amount of attention to something that literally passes by in just a few milliseconds.
We practice by expanding the milliseconds and micrometers. We practice by becoming masters of the very, very, very small. The microcosm - the macrocosm.
#creativesadhana #payattention ...
guptaviolin
Feb 20
That time we went outside and the dog put up a hell of a fight when confronted with the giant loud scary salty bathtub.
#sonofabeach ...
guptaviolin
Feb 18
The day is for living, and Bach is for peace.
***
I shared this movement of #Bach with some new friends yesterday, and I thought I'd share it with all of my friends here, too!
(Thanks for the shirt and the inspiration, @johnnyg2703. Friends, check out Johnny Gandelsman's amazing, danceable recordings of Bach. It will do your soul good.)
#creativesadhana ...
guptaviolin
Feb 16
“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.” ― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
***
The breath makes love real. Reena was inspired to write Saans by the story of the composer Cesar Franck, who dedicated his soaring violin sonata for his friend Eugene Ysaye. The composer and the violinist sight-read the sonata on the night of Ysaye's wedding.
As Reena was completing her Clarinet Concerto, she saw that the 2nd movement of it would be the perfect wedding present for her dear friend and colleague - the amazing pianist Suzana Bartal - and her husband, the composer Eric Tanguy. While Suzana's wedding took place in Paris, Saans was being premiered in Los Angeles.
Two years later, Suzana, Peter and I performed Saans at The Wallis Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills - and the next day, one year ago today, Reena and I married each other.
Happy anniversary, @Reenaesmailcomposer!
***
Filmed at University of La Verne, February 17, 2020 ...
guptaviolin
Feb 12
Sometimes, without knowing it, we open a door for our future selves. At the time, we can’t really imagine what it will be like on the other side — in fact, it may be utterly terrifying. At the time, all we can do is utter a quick prayer and keep moving.
Today, 11 years ago, I gave my first TED talk. I was 22. I had never given a talk in public before. I was terrified.
Watching this talk now, finally able to forgive that over-rehearsed, pontificating tone, my foppish stage prowl — I’m struck by how much I left out, how much was left unsaid. I realize now that I was opening a door for myself. I was envisioning a world to come: a life of asking incessant, inconvenient questions about the role of art in society; a life of creating belonging through music, a healing bridge between fractured worlds.
Right before I went on stage to deliver this TED talk, carefully walking down the steps of the dark auditorium in polished shoes, I mentally threw out my outlines. I entered a moment of total surrender: in fact, I uttered a prayer to Saraswati under my breath, the goddess of wisdom and learning and music, the goddess my ancestors called “Vag-Devi” — the goddess of speech who sits upon the tongue of poets — the goddess who has opened every door of my life.
Somehow, in that moment, I knew I was carefully walking through a door that would change my life.
(I went 15 seconds over my allotted time. But it was worth it.)
[Full blog entry in bio] ...
guptaviolin
Jan 20
This Morning I Pray for My Enemies
And whom do I call my enemy?
An enemy must be worthy of engagement.
I turn in the direction of the sun and keep walking.
It’s the heart that asks the question, not my furious mind.
The heart is the smaller cousin of the sun.
It sees and knows everything.
It hears the gnashing even as it hears the blessing.
The door to the mind should only open from the heart.
An enemy who gets in, risks the danger of becoming a friend.
- Joy Harjo
---
@reenaesmailcomposer aching melody in the raga #Desh (the word for country/homeland) is the gnashing and the blessing we need.
Esmail, Piano Trio: Movement II, with @suzanabartal and @petermyerscello
#inauguration
#creativesadhana ...
guptaviolin
Jan 12
Lachen Verlernt: Esa-Pekka Salonen
***
Lachen Verlernt - laughing unlearned - is a quote from Pierrot Lunaire, the poems of Albert Giraud famously set by Arnold Schoenberg. In the "Prayer" movement, the narrator begs the harlequin, Pierrot, to give her back her laughter.
For me, "Lachen" became a spiritual and artistic labor, a soundtrack through the continuous unraveling and unveiling of 2020.
In "Lachen", the role of the solo violin is that of Pierrot's narrator - begging, cajoling, threatening, praying, pleading - finally, in utter desperation - screaming for the return of that laughter and all it might represent.
Stay tuned the full video - landing this Friday. ...
guptaviolin
Dec 25
When the violin ⠀
Can forgive every wound caused by others⠀
The heart starts singing⠀
***⠀
When the Violin: @reenaesmailcomposer⠀
#creativesadhana⠀ ...
guptaviolin
Dec 24
We get to choose. ⠀
⠀
All of us have the immense opportunity to choose how we will interact with this world, as we rebuild, and recreate a more just, a more connected, a more artistic world. ⠀
⠀
We do not create this world to return to ‘normal’. No - we evolve because we are compelled to. We are compelled to envision, to dream, to partner, and to practice. We are compelled to make room for the tragic crises and mourn and to create the world we long for - a world where we all belong, and can create belonging. ⠀
Photo: @bawdenka ⠀
#creativesadhana⠀ ...
guptaviolin
Dec 23
There’s a blaze of light in every word. It doesn’t matter which you heard - the holy or the broken hallelujah. - Leonard Cohen⠀
***⠀
Hallelujah, arr @reenaesmailcomposer ⠀
#creativesadhana⠀ ...
guptaviolin
Dec 22
my mother⠀
is pure radiance.
⠀
she is the sun⠀
i can touch⠀
and kiss⠀
⠀
and hold⠀
without⠀
getting burnt.⠀
-Sanober Khan⠀
***⠀
Photo: @bawdenka ⠀
#creativesadhana⠀ ...
guptaviolin
Dec 21
Tonight, look up and see a miracle. Look to the southwest, and witness the celestial dance that hasn’t happened in 800 years. ⠀
⠀
We are part of that same dance. ⠀
⠀
It is inevitable that we would be here, right now, tonight, to see this. Of all the years to behold a miracle - this one. ⠀
***⠀
Darshan: III @reenaesmailcomposer⠀
#creativesadhana ...
guptaviolin
Dec 18
#fbf to my first time onstage at the breathtaking @hetconcertgebouw in #Amsterdam, on tour with @laphil in March, 2016. ⠀
Highlight of that visit - visiting the #vangogh museum. I miss traveling. ⠀
#hetconcertgebouw⠀ ...