i resisted watching the recent movie rockstar for a long time. i find ranbir kapoor very attractive and talented, and i am a bigger fan of the director imtiaz ali. and everyone was raving about it. i had seen some promos and heard a few songs, but i was not hooked yet. plus i didn't want to watch a doomed love story, a tragedy, a heartbreak, coz that had been revealed already in people's reviews. but then i read a more detailed synopsis and one thing caught my curiosity. the innocence of the intentions of the protagonist who goes about getting his heart broken so that he can bring some depth to his singing. how naive and yet how typically middle class driven - will do anything to achieve one's ambition and will make sure to achieve it. and hindsight will tell whether it really was an achievement or was it actually a dangerous gamble that gobbled up his ambition. he didn't realise when the tables turned and how he was relegated to another strategic play in the bigger gamble from being the gambler. and i trust imtiaz ali's ability to narrate this story and its nuances. hence i decided to watch the movie.
how the canteen owner scolds him when he pretends to feel the heartbreak. how he never realises his love for her and yet for the viewer its all there written in big bold. how she and music are all that tug at his heart, the world be damned. the contracts, the media scions, the agents, the concerts, he does what his heart tells him to do. how he says, "i think we should kiss now." how his anger and his love and his longing and his success are all different facets of the same truth. his love is stronger than he is. his love is only that is and will continue to keeping him alive and sane and keep success follow his footsteps.
then something caught my attention. two songs - rolling in the deep by adele and somebody that i used to know by gotye. both are after break-up songs, and the peculiar thing is the combination of music and lyrics in these songs - the music couldn't be softer and the lyrics couldn't be angrier. in fact the initial guitar piece of the second song reminds me of the nursery rhyme "baba black sheep". the innocence of childhood days of learning nursery rhymes being the most important assignment of one's life comes rushing back. and once the lyrics start, you are suddenly catapulted first into college years and then to present. the lasting feeling is that life couldnt have been a bumpier ride and the bitter after taste of anger, having soaked away the innocence of childhood and growing up forever.
here is a sample of the lyrics:
And I don't even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger and I feel so rough
and another one:
But I don't wanna live that way
Reading into every word you say
and some more:
See how I'll leave; with every piece of you,
Don't underestimate the things that I will do
and this one is the last sample:
Think of me in the depths of despair
Make your home down there as mine sure won't be shared
i can't describe in words the release of emotion i feel every time i hear these songs. its therapeutic almost. these are songs for which i can actually distinguish and remember the tunes. and its not like those shrieking metal songs, there is no violence in the music, just such intense sorrow that it is an emotional roller coaster. in fact, they even inspire me to want to sing them. after the initial release, the intensity reaches a high and then you are left exhausted. the confusion, the anger, the sadness, the nostalgia, the hurt and the redemption of self esteem. all captured in those delicate tunes and harsh words, crystallising the feelings into musical notes and forcing you to face your wounds and open the path to letting them heal rather than hiding them away in an ignored closet. letting the break actually happen and rising again from the ashes of that destruction.
maybe thats what the moral of the story of rockstar was all about. going through a heartbreak to bring alive those emotions. maybe it is not naive. maybe thats why music is to the soul what medicine is to the body. love is stronger than i am - it will be the crutch to support my weakness and breathe new life into me. rather than relegating into the negative spiral of i dont believe in love, i want to be rational about it. the mind is rational and is to be trusted over the heart. true, but doesnt mean that the mind cannot love and only the heart can nourish it. remember the mind is the source of your instinct - it will always have a reference point, some basis, some justification, whether you can realise it or not, then or ever. and the third thing that happened. at one dinner we did a round of fortune cookies, and i will leave you with what one of them said:
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
