Part I

The most eventful roadtrip in my life happened last weekend.  My colleague David Waddell aka the redneck from hell , his wife Linda and I set out on Saturday morning on a road trip to Atlanta; primary destination - The Masquerade Music park for the Gigantour concert on Sunday evening.  I was a bit unhappy that my best friend Dilip couldn't join us as he had to go to India on a family emergency.  His Mom is not doing so well and he had to advance his trip originally scheduled in May to April.  I had an extra concert ticket and planned to sell it at the venue.  David Waddell is a very strange character.  I understood the Waddells and perceived them to be good people during our first venture together on a road trip last year in July for a Slayer concert.  This time I bonded.  Relationships mature in time.  

Our first pitstop was Birmingham AL for lunch.  We ate in Chilis.  David is originally from that city and his cousin Dave worked in his hometown.  That afternoon, Dave and his wife Vic were campaigning a Blood Donation camp with a few friends.  Dave is white and Vic is black.  This was unreal especially for a couple way down South in the US and especially in Alabama.  Free spirits trigger an instant admiration in me.  They needed one more person to meet their target of amount of blood collected for the weekend.  I couldn't donate because LifeBlood refused to take mine last year, stating a reason that I had to be in the country for a continuous stint of 3 years.  (India is among the list of countries which is malaria infected.  So, if I flew back home the chance of getting the disease, though very low is still eminent.  Blood donation camps are very antsy about this).  Besides, the plan was to party all night in the Buckhead area in Atlanta.  I didn't want to be a cheap drunk that night.  Linda signed up to donate blood anyway.  It was taking a long ass time.  It was the slowest blood donation camp ever.  There were 4 people before Linda signed up for blood donation but it was taking like 30 minutes for each of them to donate blood due to a bunch of documentation forms and thin staff.  While I was waiting outside, David, Dave and Rob (a night club owner) who was also a volunteer at the camp were talking.  I was the newbie in the group and trying to socialize.  Rob then looked me in the eye and said, "How come you so silent?  And aren't you giving blood?"  I explained to him my situation with LifeBlood last year.  He said, "Well, dont mention to them that you went home".  I said, "Hey man, giving blood is an act of good faith.  If I want to do it, I would rather do it the right way."  Rob's attention completely diverted from the group and started talking to me about the Dalai Lama.  The conversation then went on from India, Hinduism, Thoreau, Gandhi, my visit to Walden Pond last month, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Existentialism, Sarte, Hagel, Jim Morrison, The Doors, Nietzsche and Dostoevsky.  Through our rapt conversation in philosophy at a blood donation camp, held outside Walmart in Birmingham AL, I discovered that Rob is an ex-convict.  He had lived a badass life and was sentenced for 2 years due to drug trafficking.  During his stint in the penitentiary, he started reading books which were untouched for ages in that jail and that became an intellectual awakening for our man.  He educated himself with books of Newton, Einstien, Dostoevsky, Sarte, Kiekergaard, Nietzsche, Thoreau and all the greats of western philosophy and science.  He also added an anecdote  that a guard was harassing him in jail about reading all the 'crap'.  Rob said, "well, did you know Isaac Newton said the discovery of genius is in its childhood?"  The redneck guard was so alarmed by the statement that he suspected Rob to be on crack and insisted the head guard to arrange a drug test for Rob.  Eventually Rob came out clean and earned the reputation in jail to be 'weird'.  How cliche.  He finished his sentence and became a nightclub owner in time.  He has an IQ of 171 and the lowest he ever tested was 162.  He has an A -ve personality which means high levels of post traumatic stress and hint towards the mental state of a serial killer.  But his lifestyle, behavioral methods and way of life are a complete contrast.  So, the psychological institute in Birmingham is using him as anonymous case study for his case/scenario.  And all of these were narrated by the man himself.  He was honest, open and sincere in whatever he spoke and had a gaze so sharp and straight that I could see he was no bullshitter.  We talked about Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment.  I could sense his delight in the conversation as he said he just couldn't find people who understood what he read and the discovery of his intellectual portal.  The Kamarazov Brothers was the next topic.  I haven't read this book of Dostoevsky.  This was apparently Rob's favorite and he explained his most favorite chapter in the book.  He insisted that I read the book as soon as I can and if I didn't like it he would buy me lunch.  But then, Rob pointed me to his beautiful blonde pregnant wife sitting on a chair, a few feet away from us on the pavement and said he had to drop her off and take care of other things.  We exchanged phone numbers and Rob said he will text me some more names of writers he seemed to be heavily influenced by.  I had a hint of uneasiness that I was sharing my cell number with a brand new friend whose past is questionable.  But then I decided that in case something weird happens I can always block the call.  However, the conversation was so deep and intuitive that I brushed aside my doubts and fears. 

The camp was closing soon and Dave requested me to take a picture of all the volunteers.  All of them lined up including Rob, his wife and Dave and Vic's adopted black kids.  After I took a few pictures, most of them left while David and I waited for Linda to get finished inside the air conditioned bus where the blood donations were happening.  We waited for about 15 minutes and I get a call from Rob.  As I picked up, he wanted to know how long I would be around.  I said about 10 minutes.  He told me not to go anywhere.  Then, soon enough I saw him get out of a red CRV with his wife waiting inside.  He walked towards me and handed me over a brand new book of The Kamarazov Brothers by Dostoevsky.  I was shocked and pleased by his gesture.  I said, "Hey man, even though I am really moved by this gesture of yours, I can't accept this.  I am a Hindu and strongly believe in Karma.  If I accept this in any way, it means I am obligated to you as I hardly know you and this book is bought from your money".  He said, "Well, consider this as a price for the conversation we had." I said, "oh you cant put a price on that!  Our conversation was priceless!!"  Rob responded, "well atleast a token of that price".  I said, "No.  I meant we cannot outweigh a conversation with money".  But, he stepped back, raised his arms and said, "Read it and give me a call when you finish" and he was gone.  

Linda finished her blood donation.  We said our goodbyes to Dave and Vic and we headed to the car.  As we started to drive away from Birmingham towards Atlanta, I narrated the whole experience of Rob with the Waddells.  They said they knew Rob as a nice guy.  But didn't know the specifics of his 2 year sentence and intellectual awakening.  
We still hadn't seen the concert and the trip had already started eventfully.  One of the most intellectual conversations I have ever had was with a white ex-convict with a highly questionable IQ and negative personality outside a Walmart in Birmingham AL during a blood donation camp which rewarded me with a book of Dostoevsky.  Unreal. 

To Hell and back…..

"They say running is an absurd pastime, a means of exhausting yourselves.  But if  you can find meaning in the kind of running that you do, then chances are you will also find meaning in that other absurd pastime – life" – Bill Bowerman. track coach for University of Eugene, Oregon, who also trained America's distance prodigy Steve Prefontaine and co-founder of Nike. 

Every one of us is made to run.  We have these legs for a reason, some of them being long.  What matters is how we use the mechanics of our body to actually move faster than we walk. Sports are a way of life.  A child sees itself as the center of the world.  It is plainly innocent of the tyranny, confinement and fear.  It loves to play.  There are no restrictions, no bars and no rules.  The child tastes that freedom again and again over the playground.  And so it urges the parents that it wants to play longer, in spite of dusk turning to night.  The freedom is too hard to lose.  As we get older, we forget what it means to be truly free.  The child in us dies and so does our innocence.  I found a small portion of that innocence in music.  It has lived with me for a long time and is still eminent today.  But, play is physical.  It is hard and tiring.  As children, we never thought of these two words during play.  Hard?  Tiring?  Who cares, I am just playing either way. 

Dr. George Sheehan says sprint running is all body; middle distances are a combination of the body and mind.  But, the marathon is all mind.  A marathon is 385 yards, 26.2 miles or 42.2 km.  The distance is standard and exact.  There are no exceptions.  The distance seems almost ridiculous to win and compete.  Most of the time, it is hard enough to even finish.  A brutal distance where anything can happen and even the slightest event could lead to a victory or disaster.  Olympic champion marathoner, Frank Shorter says it is the ideal length to test the human physiology to see how much sugar we can store in our tanks for the time we run.

People often think of marathoners as crazy people running for insane distances trying to prove a point.  They are right on 2 counts.  We are crazy and we always have a point to prove.  If we are ready to get up at 5 a.m. every day and run distances longer than some people drive to work, yes we could look a bit crazy to others.  We do not care, just like the child who plays no matter what comes in its way or who laughs and talks.  Runners are by far the most pig headed people you will ever come across.  There is an unquenchable thirst to exhaust ourselves.  But, people are wrong to say it is an insane distance.  The human potential is an incredible condition.  Every marathon is like a lesson learnt and a newer experience to fathom.

“If you would have me weep,” wrote Horace, “first you must grieve yourself.”  Only someone who has wept in joy and truth and beauty, who has had the vision, can make us weep also.  Only those who have gone through the cleansing and purification in a long apprenticeship of discipline and effort can speak to our innermost hearts.  The total process is perhaps best described by poet John Hall Wheelock.  “The long lonely effort and the self-discipline,” he wrote, “are the poet’s prayer that he may be the instrument of that voice and thereby to speak words and wisdom beyond his own scope and clairvoyance.”  The world belongs to those who make this effort.  Those who laugh and cry, who sleep with the angels and, like William Blake, are almost always in Paradise. 

Why I began running is no longer important.  It is enough that it generated a desire to run.  Then the running itself took over.  Running became a self renewing compulsion.  The more I ran, the more I wanted to run.  One reason was the energy.  It is pure delight.  I came to know my body and enjoy it.  Things that previously exhausted me were no longer an effort.  Where once I fell asleep in front of the TV set, I was up roaming the house looking for things to do.  I was living on a different level of performance.  Then I discovered, or rediscovered, play.  Running, I found, was fun.  It became an hour of play and enjoyment from my daily routine. 

The psychologist William James said, life was meant to be a struggle.  It was built on doing and suffering and creating.  Its solid meaning was the same eternal thing – the marriage of some unaccustomed idea with some fidelity, courage and endurance.  Man must be stretched, in one way, then another.  The marathon is one way.  Running twenty-six miles is a feat that truly stretches a human being.  At the twenty mile mark, many marathoners say, that is the half way mark for the entire race.  The last 6.2 miles or ten kilometers make up the rest of the race.  Any reasonably fit runner can run twenty miles. 

If you ask me to run a 20 miler tomorrow, I probably could join you, being fit and not injured.  But, if you ask me to run a marathon tomorrow, I’d pass.  At mile 20, the runner finds himself pushed to the absolute limit and starts digging his hidden reserves, to use all the fidelity and courage and endurance he has. 

The discipline needed to attain this kind of endurance is almost similar to asceticism.  It would allow us to live to our maximum.  And find in ourselves unexpected heights of fortitude and heroism and the capability to endure suffering and hardship.  To discover, if you will, the person we are.  Reaching peaks we previously thought unattainable.  

While I was passing the 20 mile mark, I remembered all the words of Dr. Sheehan and pushed myself to the limit, in spite of the severe cramps in my left calf muscle.  I remembered the conviction of my Dad to support the family in spite of the screw ups in his life.  I remembered the determination of Steve Harris to continue Iron Maiden.  I recollected the performances of Dio, Maiden and Sabbath for their true conviction to music and performance regardless of their age.  I remembered the runner Phiddipides who ran 25 miles on the plains of Marathon, only to carry the message of victory from one Greek king to another, even though he was dying.  I remembered Alexander the Great who fought in unequalled valor to realize the dream of creating a nation of free men in Asia Minor.  I remembered the 300 Spartans who defended their city for days from the Persian army which was more than 300 times bigger. 

As I inched closer and closer to mile 26, the pain in my legs, cramps in my calf muscles seemed intense.  I cannot express the cauldron of pain I went through during the last mile.  But, all I had in my mind was this sheer determination.  I transformed into the animal I was.  Relentless and unstoppable, I inched closer and closer to the finish line.  The adrenaline was sky high.  My pulse was north of 190.  Finish line.  Peace on Earth.  Tranquility.  

To run a good marathon is to run a painful one.  The more the suffering, the higher is the level of accomplishment.  As my first marathon, it was highly painful and I am truly content.  And with this, there is a supreme level of confidence and optimism.  It is almost like a comfortable thought, that if I can endure 26 miles of pain, agony and suffering, I could do almost anything.  The first female marathoner of Boston, Katherine Switzer says the marathon is a triumph over absolute adversity.  And if you can do that, you could pretty much triumph over anything. 

So, is that all?  Is that the end of everything when I cross the finish line?  Will I lay back on my comfortable couch and laze, drinking beer and stuffing pizza?  After conquering the distance for the very first time, I feel there is more to be done.  The perfect state is achieved when there is perfection of both the body and mind.  I am like a child.  I believe that I am placed on this earth to enjoy myself.  The earth is made only to run races and enjoy and play music.  To be free.  And to live to the fullest, I try to achieve that perfect state.  The utopian condition of the perfect body and mind.  I shall have to achieve that state.  To run has become play to me.  I lose myself of all the dogmas, rules, restrictions and sins.  I become just me and my body.  I hope to run without prejudice, without fear, without anguish and without hate.  I hope to run free. 

I want to run, I want to hide…..I want to tear down the walls that hold me inside….I want to reach out and touch the flame….where the streets have no name…..I want to feel sunlight on my face…I see the dust clouds disappear without a trace…I want to take shelter from the poison rain….where the streets have no name…..[Where the streets have no name – U2]

It has been months since I came back to the LJ world and wrote about anything.  I have had many things to ponder and write about and several times I have been more tired than lazy to jot them down in my journal.  Since December, I have thrown myself into a strict plan of marathon training.  I figured my plans for music can wait, until I finish the first marathon of my life and become a 'runner' if not a wannabe temporary fitness freak.  I have been in gruelling long runs of 14, 16, and 18 miles till now.  I got 2 more to finish until I hit the peak of my training, viz. 20 and 22 miles.  Then, there will be a 3 week taper till the big day of the marthon.  I have gone through 3 spells of shin splints, rest days due to injury, cross training workouts specific to the shins, viz. lifting weights from my legs at the gym, days of hard discipline in food and so forth.  I still have 8 more weeks to go, as long as I am injury free to hit the marathon in Cincinnati.  I am hoping for the best.  And that explains my absence from the LJ world.  

I was supposed to go for 2 concerts.  One was in Atlantic city, NJ - Slayer and I couldn't make it as the event was fucking cancelled due to 'venue production problems'.  They gave a complete refund of the ticket, even though the venue was a sold out gig.  The next depressing thing was the concert in Baltimore MD for Cradle of Filth.  Dilip met with a bad skiing accident and couldn't make it.  Smitha was too busy with life in general.  Things never fell in place and this was fucking frustrating.  But, my only release or vent was the long runs I did on those weekends.  

Meanwhile I have been reading this book called Running and Being by Dr. George Sheehan.  It is fuel to find purpose in my running.  Whenever I take hold of anything I begin to like, I intend to make it last for a long time.  But longevity needs dedication and discipline.  These two come only if there is a purpose and a reason beyond self improvement.  I intend to make running part of my life and henceforth become a 'runner'.  And I think George Sheehan is giving me the reasons.  I have become more and more contemplative in my running.  I strongly suggest this book as a must read, for all those who want to know what it means to truly run, who want to start running, who want to continue to run or find purpose in their running.  

Nothing much to say in work.  The same old shit, a different day.  I try to keep my creative thoughts going through inspiring music, books, movies and running.  

I also have been trying to buy a Jeep Wrangler, preferably a TJ.  And the search has been hard.  Its been more than 2 months since I got my license permit to drive in the state of Tennessee and no luck in finding the right Jeep for me, at the right price and so forth.  But, I am trying to be patient, since I have waited for 2 years! 

My folks are doing good.  No more mortgage payments for the house is a big fucking relief.  I also bought my Dad a nice scooter - Honda Activa.  He is now riding the streets of Bangalore on a new smooth vehicle.  

Besides these...life goes on.  

Cheers..

BLIND GUARDIAN – LIVE AT THE TROCADERO (and Roxy Theater)

It was a frosty night in Philadelphia on that Saturday, the second day of December 2006.  December is not a month to stand outside in the cold night for more than an hour in any city in Pennsylvania.  The Trocadero is a small club which hosts numerous concerts, mostly of the heavy metal genre or anything heavier.  6 years ago, I was day dreaming of watching the Bards of heavy metal, live in a concert and here I was, with an incredible mix of emotions waiting with a crowd of 20 people, 2 hours before the show so that I could get a spot right up front to watch those amazing musicians.  It felt so much like home.  Teenagers from ages 14 to 17 with only a handful of people older than 25 were all around, some wearing hoodies of several power metal bands.  There was this one guy walking around with a boom box playing Megadeth.  All of us were jamming in the cold pumping adrenalin for the show.  There is no one in a rock concert who is too old or young.  The only measure is the spirit to kick ass.  The line grew and became more than a hundred long. 

We were in.  The indoor arena had a capacity of about 200 people, both on floor and a semicircular balcony around the stage.  I got a spot about 4 rows away from stage.  The openers were this bunch of people from Norway called Leaves Eyes.  My God, I have never seen such a horrible performance by a band that travels overseas to promote itself. The singer, Liv Christine was the only talent in the band, besides the stunning red dress she was wearing.  Otherwise the band was a bunch of pansy goof balls that should have been wearing turbans and loin clothes playing 2 stringed instruments at Khumb Mela.  The lead guitarist, if I should call him so, was plucking strings and trying to gel his lead with the song through the most impossible pissant connection.  What a farce!  Before the second song could start and immerse me in some more displeasure, Liv’s husband, a huge man with the longest hair I have ever seen (until the shins) stormed in.  This guy should have been in advertising before making a band with his wife, because all he could do was cheer the crowd and get them to clap and shout.  His growls were weak and drained, making him sound like cat fart.  But the best guy was the bassist, apparently from Transylvania as heralded by the mighty cat.  The most useless one but worth a thousand laughs.  All he was doing with the guitar was tapping the four strings with a thick piece of metal around his thumb.  O God of almighty foolishness, if you could ever grant me humor, it was through him.  The glorious idiot of the band, giving such a blank look, whilst furiously showing off the ‘thumb tapping’ technique made his expression overly comical.  And I anoint this Transylvanian dude as the leader of the turban and loin cloth band.  The songs were so bland and lacking in any kind of vigor that I was almost annoyed to watch them and their raging pseudo publicity.  With the eager intent to watch my heroes come on stage, I withstood the doldrums for an hour and finally, the wretched band left with a friendly crowd cheering them. 

Ah, now comes the part I would love to tell you all.  The crowd was shouting chants “Guardian! Guardian!” over the top of its voice.  Then it erupted to the football cheer “Ole, ole ole ole ole….”  I was aroused to suspicion that the crowd could be European.  But, it was an American one, full of hard core Blind Guardian fans.  The projector started with animated scenes of Mordor on the screen.  ‘War of Wrath’ started.  I screamed as hard as I could, with the 200 others giving me company.  ‘Into the Storm’ burst, finally giving me the chance to watch my heroes perform live.  All through the show, animated scenes were shown on the screen behind the band, trying to depict the song as much visually as possible. 

Besides the fact that I am an intense Blind Guardian fan, giving room to my countless praises and ecstatic emotions about the Bards of heavy metal, which overwhelmed me so much that I saw them once again in the same week in the Coca Cola Roxy Theater in Atlanta, I am not going to tell you how the band played every song.  I am going to tell you what it means to be in a Blind Guardian concert.  

Blind Guardian has been a heavy metal band whose songs are about mythologies of the ancient and fantasies of the child and adult.  So, what is so metal about themes like Lord of the Rings, Peter Pan, King Arthur, Merlin and countless demons and wizards?  With a little bit of reading, you will observe that the themes focus on a time so pure and untouched by the melancholy of the current or futuristic that you have to tell tales by singing them.  To be evil and purely evil, to give life for a cause even if it might be trivial but holds the banner of goodness and to love or hate passionately are somehow a myth to us at this age, whilst there are some believers left here and there.  Metal after all is the purest expression of angst and aggression in music.  But, Blind Guardian brings this unbelievable mix of metal and myth in its compositions that it is almost impossible to fathom any flaw in the spirit of metal in their music.  Choruses – that is their strongest expression and the most distinct characteristic from any other band, be it metal or non-metal.  To sing of myth in chorus means to drift in time and space to that age and purity.  Every word gives you a glimpse of the world and makes you remember the tale.  As you listen to every song over and over, you will ponder why such a beautiful tale became a myth and crave that the fantasy become a reality.  And in that pondering you try to find meaning in the mythology.  Now, imagine all of this being forced into your mind in one second by one riff or a twenty second lead.  It is the pinnacle of emotions you can possibly experience.  If you can fathom 200 people like this in front of a band yearning for more, the experience is indescribable.  Every one of us knew every word of every line of every song, be it the verse or the chorus.  Moshpits, crowd surfers, pushing, pulling, sweat, heat and insufficient space to stand seemed trivial to us.  We were one with the band.  The audience became the performer and vice versa.  When there is such an intense belief and following for the meaning of the myth, you don’t need a band to tell you or show you the way.  You join the band in its chorus for the quest.  In fact, when Hansi was about to announce the Bard’s song, he made a comment that he should be fired from the band, as they don’t need him to sing, for the crowd does it all.  And it did happen.  Twice.  In Philadelphia and Atlanta, the crowd sang every line, verse and chorus.  Hansi pointed the mic to the crowd and took a 4 minute vocal break, while Andre and Marcus faithfully played their strings for us.  

In my 9 years of being a metal head, I have never seen or heard of a band whose audience is so faithful that they know every song and sing it, besides the stuttering and cheering.  I think Blind Guardian has the second most sincere fan following in the world (of course, the first being Iron Maiden), be it the United States, Europe, Japan or the handful of Indians like yours truly.  And the reason for that is not because they are the best metallers.  On the contrary the music is quite simple.  But, the content and melodies involved in delivering the myths and their wonders strike us in such awe that it simply makes the choice of not listening to Blind Guardian sound almost insane.  As long as Blind Guardian stays true to their genre and distinct sound, I think their fans will be more than ecstatic when they release a new album or start touring.  After all, it is not the individuals in the band we like, it is the group effort of the band and the crowd, which makes the Blind Guardian experience complete. 

For those of you interested in what they played in Philadelphia and Atlanta, here it goes:

The Trocadero Philadelphia PA

War of the Wrath
02. Into the Storm
03. Born in a Mourning Hall
04. Nightfall
05. Script for my Requiem
06. Fly
07. Bright Eyes
08. Valhalla
09. Time Stands Still (At the Iron Hill)
10. Welcome to Dying
11. Skalds and Shadows
12. Another Stranger Me
13. And Then There Was Silence

---Encore---
14. Imaginations from the Other Side
15. The Bard's Song
16. Mirror Mirror

Coca Cola Roxy Theater Atlanta GA

War of the Wrath
02. Into the Storm
03. Born in a Mourning Hall
04. Nightfall
05. Script for my Requiem
06. Fly
07. Bright Eyes
08. Valhalla
09. Time Stands Still (At the Iron Hill)
10. Majesty
11. A Past and Future Secret
12. This will Never End
13. And Then There Was Silence

---Encore---
14. Imaginations from the Other Side
15. The Bard's Song
16. Mirror Mirror