PARADISE VALLEY: ON THE WAY HOME

MUSIC BY JOHN MAYER 

NOTE: The album releases on the 20th of August, 2013. Click here to listen to a free iTunes stream, which is where I caught the whole album as well - thrice. 

In a realm far, far away, I had once argued for artistic merit against personal significance. The case in point was a Lars Von Trier film called ‘Melancholia’. Now, there is no question that ‘Melancholia’ has as much artistic merit as any other Lars Von Trier film might have had. It was pitch-perfect in what it promised to be. It was insufferable in the fact that it was a boring, depressing experience in the name of artistry. But then ‘Melancholia’ must have been incredibly significant to its cast and crew. Kirsten Dunst, its lead, and Von Trier had both gotten out of chronic depression at the onset of the film. While in its making and reception both of them would have found redemption, one cannot say the same of the viewer who finds no part to play in the creative process. 

Likewise, it is becoming an increasingly strange experience to listen to a John Mayer record. In all his experiments with sounds and techniques, the autobiographical tone still remains. And we watch as it becomes more pronounced with each new record. But if there is one thing that could be said about John it is that he has always managed to strike a balance between the man he is and the music he makes. With ‘Paradise Valley’, however, I see the man outdo his music, which says a lot about the direction in which he is headed; where his music is personal and asks for some affiliation in the listener for it to be palatable. 

Why I say this is also driven by a need to establish that I come from that kind of affiliation where John Mayer is concerned. It is a territory where all criticism becomes problematic. It is a problem of proximity, of familiarity, of being able to second-guess what could have gone behind having written that song or that line in that song that might sound out of place, but you have a vague idea on why it might have been put there. Much of John Mayer’s music seems to develop from such privileged information that almost seems to ask the listener to be informed of his social and personal life. 

To elucidate a little, John Mayer is a singer-songwriter who has had his evolutionary phases in musicianship. There was the boy with the guitar who made the household album ‘Room for Squares’. There was the thirsting young man who talked ‘Heavier Things’ soon after. He then ‘Try!’ed his hand at the blues, peaking with ‘Continuum’ where he seemed to hit the sweet spot no matter what he played. It would not be an overstatement to say that he had the same kind of luck with women outside of his music. Fame brought some notoriety along with it. Between petty controversies he had pretty much brewed for himself, John released the underwhelming ‘Battle Studies’. 

It is important to note that while he does ‘spread it thin’ once in a while where his public image is concerned, there has been no compromise on his music. If it was fascination that took him to the blues in the first place, an ailing heart had him find it again as he strung together what one could call his most important album, three years after the ‘Battle Studies’ debacle (which still went platinum). ‘Born and Raised’, released in 2012, had a changed man. The outspoken troublemaker had been silenced, both figuratively and literally, with only his music to speak with. To add to a bad name earned was a recurring throat condition that would ensure he would stay out of action for two whole years. 

‘Born and Raised’ was no ‘Continuum’, but it is perhaps that very detail that is comforting. The John of now, thirty five years and a few screw-ups past, is a much more nuanced performer than the John of then, a twenty nine year old guitar sensation. In solitude, he discovered simplicity. He took his music, stripped it bare; he focused on the basics. Say what you need to say. Say nothing more. Say nothing less. 

‘Paradise Valley’ comes a year after ‘Born and Raised’ and is as close to it, musically. No two John Mayer records have resembled each other as much ‘Paradise Valley’ and ‘Born and Raised’ seem to. Does this signify a saturation on his evolutionary chart? It is safe to say one cannot tell, for we are in the business of making observations; not making claims. A more important question would be to ask what this means to the average listener: when a musician realizes he’s got no point to prove and turns the amp down a notch. Compositions have become simpler, yet more nuanced. His words aren’t too hard to fathom. The boy once spoke in code now has the straightest things to say. What other paradigm can a line like “you love who you love, who you love” come from? The duet with Katy Perry serves to speak for both parties on the sensationalized relationship the two of them share. She was the woman “he didn’t see coming.” He’s the ‘boy’ with “a heart that’s hard to hold.” 

On the one hand, this makes for sweet confession. ‘Who you love’, in fact, closes with Katy Perry ad-libbing “oh, you’re the one I love”, after which she bursts into a giggle, which, interestingly, has been retained on the record. On the other hand, for John Mayer the semi-pop musician, this means a larger audience. It’s like you could almost hear him say “if you thought ‘Half of my Heart was a stretch, wait till you get a load of this!” Thus, we find ourselves in the strange territory between the man and his music. 

There are many such songs in ‘Paradise Valley’ which appear to be of great personal significance, but have little to differentiate, say, from an existing song of his own, let alone contribute to musical innovation. John Mayer seems to have left it to the Frank Oceans of the world to mess around. He, on his part, has carved a niche for himself and is quite comfortable there. Music is no more a statement but a way of being, where the world, he finds, is a safe place to be. There is hope. He has found it. There is no reason to feel insecure. 

‘Paradise Valley’ is the plot summary of a wanderer having found his way back home. If ‘Born and Raised’ began his journey of self-discovery, ‘Paradise Valley’ closes it. It is, however, an open-ended sort of closure that it achieves, which we have reason to believe is very much the intention. Even at his vengeful best, the most John Mayer can do is sound sorry. His ‘Paper Doll’ addresses someone who is “like twenty two girls in one,” none of whom knows what she’s running from, even as he writes for himself “Sometimes I don’t know which way to go/And I’ve tried to run before, but I’m not running anymore.” What he detests is a part of himself that he claims he’s made his peace with. And that is as much as he wishes for the listener as well; as much as he wishes for this elusive ‘Paper Doll’ of his. 

Three songs compete for my pick of the album on an album where all songs seem to have found their rightful place. ‘Wildfire’ is most exciting of them all, probably the first time since ‘No Such Thing’ that John has gone for a clap-your-hands sort of anthem. Except he isn’t calling high-school students to mutiny, but for his woman to come shake a leg; a fair bait to offer yours. We then have his cover of the J.J. Cale song ‘Call me the Breeze’ – of which he manages as tight a cover as ‘Crossroads’ on ‘Battle Studies’. The third song is the prophetic ‘You’re No one till Someone lets you down’, a song that is ‘absolutely beautiful’ – a term David Gray used to describe ‘To Ramona’; a fitting term in this context as well, what with the kind of counsel John has to offer. 

There is a line in ‘I Will be Found (Lost at Sea)’ where John compares himself to a ‘feather in a hurricane’. I was instantly reminded of Jack Dawson in ‘Titanic’ as he 'predicts' Dylan when he says “I’m just a tumbleweed, blowin’ in the wind.” The differences are clear. The winds are supposedly harder, the feather – lighter. But there is no denying that they are saying the same thing: like there is no denying that ‘Paradise Valley’ is an epitome of the ease with which John Mayer expresses himself – musically, lyrically; vocally.

SHIP OF THESEUS: NEEDS AN ANCHOR-TRANSPLANT

 

DIRECTED BY ANAND GANDHI 

STARRING: SOHUM SHAH, NEERAJ KABI, AIDA ELKASHEF, AMBA SANYAL, FARAZ KHAN, VINAY SHUKLA, SAMEER KHURANA, SUNIP SEN, VIPUL BINJOLA, MANOJ SHAH, RAMNIK PAREKH and YASHWANT WASNIK 

I do not know what Anand Gandhi won many a heart with. But I can tell you about what captured mine in his ‘Ship of Theseus’, a two and a half hour thesis that has a last act that, in my opinion, wins it for the writer-director. For this, I will have to write in detail about what the last act had to offer, or, for that matter, the entire film perhaps, which means you will have to excuse me for revealing more than I ought to. But then I have a shrewd idea that you might have watched the film already and, for that reason, it might be safe after all for me to ‘spoil’ it for you. 

Navin (Sohum Shah) watches the stock-market when he is not watching over his grandmother. The story begins with him pondering over stocks with a surgical mask on his face and a needle at the back of his hand as his doctor tells him his cretanin levels are back to normal. He has just had his kidney replaced. Navin speaks everyman Hindi, has a goofball friend and a grandmother who believes that we exist to do some good to society. Struck by all the activism that seems to be happening around him – which has been there in his lineage – Navin neither knows how to digest it all, nor how he could add to the legacy. 

With Navin, we are introduced to a cultural, as well as a moral dilemma. There is a conversation that he has with his grandmother on the language he speaks and the music he listens to/appreciates before she fractures her leg. There is the other fiercer one he has as she is bed-ridden, where he tries to defend his need to be compassionate. While he defines his compassion in a detail as small as his inclination to take care of her, his grandmother goes as far as to ask him what he has sought to give back to society. To her, his – or anyone’s – existence is defined by how much he makes himself valuable to society. This commitment looks beyond the paradigm of right and wrong, she says. 

This is where the beauty in the very definition of Navin comes in. In the scene where he is introduced, he changes from an overall into a light pink shirt with a vest under it, takes off his surgical mask to show some neatly-trimmed facial hair, a pair of very subtle and formal-looking glasses whose case he carries around in his shirt pocket. Without doubt, you notice that it is bifocals that he wears – which, for those who have seen their dads age in front of them, is household stuff. So is the spectacle case. It is a light shade of gold, perhaps with a hint of brown in it, with a clip to hold it to a shirt pocket. Ahead of the Bajaj Chetak or the Hyundai Santro later on, it is best representative of the aging Indian middle-class. 

What he is also accused of is the apathy that is characteristic of the same. Navin is not the man on the wrong side of the struggle. He is the one who wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place. His struggle even with himself has the awkwardness of a person who, to put it simply, wishes he wasn’t there having to handle it. His walk is mechanical, his shoulders droop. Even if not emphasized, one could be sure he drags his feet. Had Matthew Broderick played his role, he would have had midlife crisis written all over his face, but Anand Gandhi does well in not insinuating it as much. Navin wakes up in the middle of the night at the hospital to the wails of a woman. Her husband, a construction worker by the name of Shankar (Yashwant Wasnik), has had his appendicitis operation done by a quack, who had also taken a kidney alongside the rudimentary organ. If a man can live without his appendix, he could do so without a kidney as well, right? Navin sends his friend to find out a little more. Several flights of stairs later, he returns with details on Shankar’s blood group and the fact that he has had his kidney removed on the 16th of that month. Navin had had his transplant done on the 17th. 

There begins the quest for redemption. Navin is the kind of guy who would not want to find himself in the wrong. He fears the kidney he had received might be the one that was stolen from Shankar. His investigation takes him to as far as Stockholm after he realizes, beyond reasonable doubt, that he hasn’t been an unconscious part of the profiteering business. He seeks to track dear Shankar’s kidney, which takes him to the doorstep of a Swedish man in Stockholm, who admits to having not known well enough the sources of the kidney he had received, in what is perceivably the funniest sequence I’ve seen in any recent Indian film. It also increased the faith I had in Mr. Gandhi’s abilities as a writer-director, whom I had accused for two-thirds of the film as someone who takes himself a little too seriously. 

I shall not tell you what happens of Navin’s efforts to reclaim poor Shankar’s kidney. If he could fly all the way to Stockholm to see what he could do about it, I’m sure you could make it to a movie theatre to find out what happened to his quest, and yes, it does seem like I’m indirectly recommending you to watch the film, only adding to the overwhelming amount of PR mileage it already has. Let me tell you that it is not entirely untrue either. The segment featuring Navin and his little hitchhike across the globe is the best thing about the film that, at one point, accuses itself (and the respectable Maitreya) of intellectual masturbation. While the other two masts of this ‘Ship of Theseus’ have their sails flying a tad too high, that of Navin is the right height to gather good wind. Navin could be your brother, Navin could be your Father; he could even be you. He is the man who knows his predicament but isn’t equipped enough to handle it. And therein lies a further predicament – one that shall never be overcome. 

Past the kidney racket, Navin makes his way to a screening of a few videos of his donor whom, he learns, was a cave-explorer who had met with an untimely death. His case is so exceptional that not only had he donated eight different organs to eight different people (because seven, I suspect, is a number that has already been taken by the Will Smith movie), he had also ensured three of them would have remarkable enough stories that could set sail on the ‘Ship of Theseus’. There is Aliya (Aida Elkashef), the blind photographer who, literally, ‘plays by the ear’ having lost her sight to a cornea infection. There is the Gandhian resurrect in Maitreya (Neeraj Kabi) who, unlike his obvious inspiration, gives up on his ideals. He is an atheist monk who believes in causality and the existence of the soul. A firm anti-animal-testing stance leaves him without options to medicate himself against his liver cirrhosis. The doctor says he needs a transplant. He chooses to let death happen instead. In all his emphasis on preserving the ‘self’ in much the same way that Gandhi had refused allopathic cure, Maitreya incites the argumentative Charvaka (Vinay Shukla) who, out of sheer love for the Guru and an interest to prolong his life, describes to him the meaninglessness of one’s ‘identity’ in the first place. There are more bacteria in the body than there are human cells. Who knows where the body ends and the environment begins? 

By not talking too much about the first two segments, I am not putting them down. I am merely choosing to not explain even further a couple of segments that have already been over-explained with too much dialogue that is written out like cues to an interview. In its defence, ‘Ship of Theseus’ is self-professed dualist. It is only reasonable to have its lines play out in a dialectic. But that does not excuse the fact that ‘Ship of Theseus’ tries to tell its whole life story, plank by plank, each question leading to the next, with a collection of postcards that desperately needed displaying; or so the editor seems to have felt. Mr. Gandhi writes his signature on these shots that do as much as popcorn does to your movie experience, but I think it takes a few minutes into the third segment for one to realize his ability to provide depth, detail and earnestness to an average human being in an average surrounding as he attempts the remarkable. In depicting his futile exercise, and in the big existential joke he could make out of it, Mr. Gandhi redeems himself, at least in my mind’s eye. 

The ending of ‘Ship of Theseus’ warrants a discussion in itself. I have given it away in an earlier part of my review. Let me give you a little more. The eight recipients watch a video of their donor exploring a cave. There is no voiceover, there is minimal sound. To us in the audience, it shows nothing of significance. But we see these people moved to tears; every single one of them – even Navin, our very own Captain Awkward. At that, I found myself transported to a very similar sequence in a film that I need not even name. Toto watches the film-reel in his private theatre at the end of ‘Cinema Paradiso’. By itself, it is a collection of kissing scenes that have been edited out from some films; perhaps about as meaningless as the cave video. To him, however, it is magic. 

‘Ship of Theseus’ does not recreate that magic. And that does not mean it is not a meritorious film. It is perhaps the first time that India has gotten to see a film give this much of an emphasis to shot taking and film production. It also serves to revolutionize film distribution in India - a business model many would be likely to follow. These are merits that deserve mention. What Anand Gandhi, however, doesn’t or perhaps couldn’t do is keep the high-headedness out of a film that could have been much more effective had he not tried so hard. I’m reminded of a Jack Kerouac quote a friend once shared. “One day, I will find the right words. And they will be simple.” Soham Shah will smile in agreement. The rest is what the young Charvaka accused Maitreya of doing – it is intellectual masturbation, and is doomed to be so.