Fire in three mediums

  Left: Texas Flame, 2002.

      As the winter drags on, its time to light up some fire. Fire can be lit in many mediums. The attached painting depicts fire in the medium of water colors. As for creating fire with music, I have two great examples. You know music is great when you hear it and you cannot forget it or don’t want to forget it. A lot of times you can find parallels of great music in the West and East.

      Have you heard the song titled ‘ Light my fire ‘ by Doors? On a scale of 1 to 10 for greatness, it scores a perfect 10 by me! Its combination of background music and the superb lyrics are so beautiful that they seep into every nook and cranny of your brain, make you forget who you are and then transcend your mind into a whole new world. Once you have heard it, it etches such a deep groove in your memory that you can hum it to the minutest detail in your mind. And in doing so you can recreate the fire of the music all over again.

      For the longest time I thought that it had no parallel in the music of the East. But in 2006 I heard a Hindi song at a outdoor bon-fire party, in January! Its lyrics and background music spoke of fire and recreated the same feelings in me as the Doors’ song. Its from the movie ‘Omkara’ and is called ‘ Bidi jalayeelay ‘. Even months after the party was over, I was hooked to this song. I had forgotten the lyrics but I remembered the words bidi, aag (fire) and the mesmerizing background music. It totally haunted my mind. I just couldn’t get it out of my system. So I went and bought the CD and now I often hear it on permanent repeat Now that is the power of great music.

      Recently I read a great book titled ‘ Your Best Life Now ‘ by Joel Osteen. He spoke about yet another kind of fire. Here is a quote from his book, which sums up my thoughts:

” Do everything with your heart, with passion and some fire…Rekindle that fire. Rekindle the embers. Stir up the gift that is within you. Fan your flame more than usual to make sure the fire doesn’t go out “.

      Hope all these thoughts of fire in different mediums keep you warm in the chilly winter.

Ratna