051417 Sangeet 2017, Ottawa, ON

I don’t know what I did the night before May 14th, 2017, but it was something.  Something that made me very much regret that I had purchased tickets to some mid-afternoon classical Indian music concert out at Algonquin College.  I swear on the many arms of Vishnu, I would have done anything to have gone back in time and not bought these tickets but that was obviously impossible, and I’m much too cheap to eat tickets that I paid for just because I felt like I was worse than dead.

Plus I had never been to the venue before, I didn’t know where I was going to park, I didn’t really feel like going, I didn’t know if anyone else I knew was going, I felt like I was dead (or worse), it was way too early in the afternoon to do anything…

Of course I went, and God bless those wonderful musicians, they cured my ails with just a few ultra-complex tabla polyrhythms and a couple of brushes of their buzzy sitars.  The theatre was small, new and comfortable.  I could envision it hosting large college lectures in addition to theatrical productions and shows like this one, which (it turned out) was presented by the Ottawa Indian Music Festival or Society or something…like I say, I was tired.  

I sat in a comfy chair in the front row of my section, with a merciful amount of legroom for which to stretch out.  The host gave a standard World Music-style slow and extra-long introduction, after which the players came out and tuned up in front of a hushed, respective audience.  As soon as that glorious, unmistakeable tabla/tamboura/sitar sound began I was instantly numbed with musical salve.  It’s ironic how heavenly the music sounds, but then I can’t really imagine what reincarnationly music should sound like.  

This, I suppose.  

Though every moment of the music was 100% amazing, it doesn’t bother me one bit that I was drifting in and out of sleep the whole time, riding that almost-asleep wave of bliss back and forth with an incredible live backup band.  It felt so, so very good, like I kept dying and living, dying and living in a constant cycle of rebirth…

I guess the music was reincarnationly!

The few times I opened my eyes I noticed that I did indeed have several friends seated throughout the room, and by the time the concert was over I had been healed enough to actually have pleasant conversations with some of those nice people.

Good thing I don’t have a time machine.  Yet.

(I suppose I never will, because if I got one in the future I certainly would have let younger me know about it by now, and since I haven’t yet run into an older me who insists that he [we] have a time machine I can only conclude that I never havedidwill.)