IGOR, GET A LIFE!!!

I had this story sitting in my computer for a while. It’s way too long and too complicated, so I wasn’t sure if I should put it here. Also, last week I got a mail from someone I used to know a long time ago. Dude used to be a cello player, but now he’s a company owner and a writer. Also, he told me that he drives a very expensive Mercedes car. Black.

He said that when he started to write, he went for volumes of philosophical works first. It didn’t work as his readers couldn’t appreciate the complexity of his ideas. Then he tried to write shorter and simpler stories. He said, ‘coming down to their level, you know’.  It was still too complex for his readers. He got disillusioned with the intellectual level of general population. He saw how unsophisticated and primitive his readers are, so he tried something else. He started to write poetry, but soon realised that he cannot rhyme even if his life depended on it. Then he had a great idea. He found out about ‘Haiku’ – the traditional form of Japanese poetry. It only has three lines and it doesn’t have to rhyme. 

Now he’s happy. He says he is a very successful writer. He offered to give me a few hints on how to become one. He sent me an example of his work. Roughly translated from Russian it sounds like this.

‘I opened a door, one of many’

‘I looked behind the door’

‘All I could see was myself’

He said this is as much wisdom as his average reader can take in one go. He said I should learn to write less in order to say more. Like he does. And then I might be able to buy a very expensive Mercedes car. Black.

I was destroyed. I was annihilated. I wanted to delete my account and to stop embarrassing myself. I went into a highly dramatic, Bollywood-like state. Then I got another mail, saying ‘Keep it short, dude..’, which nearly finished me off. 

And today I got three comments from Lisa, Susie and Trish, saying, ‘Don’t…’. 

Dear ladies!!! Thank you for your support. This post is dedicated to you and yes, it’s long and it’s overly philosophical. There’s a lot of grammatical mistakes. There’s no Japanese poetry, and Igor dude……get a life!!! I drive a Ford car and I love it.😎.

 

Dun Laoghaire – Sligo. Ireland. July 2018

I’ve been stuck behind this car for at least thirty minutes. It’s an aerodynamically perfect, modern, efficient, dolphin friendly device with non-offensive colour scheme and bland design. It looks exactly like every other modern car on the planet. There’s nothing special about the car, except for the driver who decided not to let anyone pass, whatever the cost. I know the type. He won’t let you overtake, and if you try, he’ll slow down to twenty miles per hour. Just to make the point. You can only hope he’ll take the next exit, and you forget he ever existed.

In this case though, I won’t forget, ever, and it has nothing to do with the driver and his private war with ‘them racers’.

I won’t forget the name of the car.

Two hours ago when I started to drive, my only concern was to get to Sligo without getting lost. I was well prepared. I set up two separate GPS devices to shout directions at me in two different languages. I gave myself an extra hour, knowing I’ll get lost anyway. All was going well, I took a wrong turn as planned, got back somehow and then this car came out of nowhere and blocked everyone for miles. The name of the car put a separation mark on my otherwise uneventful journey. I am going to be late now but I don’t care. This encounter has started a new train of thought which is going to ride through at least three or four pages.

This story is all about names, labels, stereotypes and associations. You might find it chaotic at first but bear with me and you’ll see a definite connection between seemingly unrelated thoughts.

I fancy myself a composer. No really, I do. There are grounds for this too. I am lazy. I don’t like sight-reading, so instead of learning someone else’s music I write my own. Obviously, if you do something for a long time, you get relatively better at what you do and you might even get somewhere professionally. In my case, some of my music would end up in an occasional video, movie, theatre play, or on someone’s album. Not always under my name, not always with my permission and not always where I wanted it to appear in a first place, but at least it would be named, or ‘tagged’ correctly in most cases. If not, there will be a problem. About fifteen odd years ago, one of my tunes was sold to the big advertising agency by our then management company from Scotland. They put a wrong name in the contract. I lost 20 000 dollars.

So, let’s talk about names, tags and labels.

They have to be descriptive, and they have to be short and clear. They have to be right.

Take army, for example. I meet someone who is my size, my age and has one tenth on my IQ. I look at his insignia. He looks at mine. His ‘tag’ says ‘lieutenant’, mine says ‘corporal’. All clear, we know what we are and what we do – I salute him and he looks at me like I’m the lowest form of life on the planet. If I don’t like it, I should do something which will result in me being ‘tagged’ a ‘major’. Then I’d be able to stick my tongue out and make all sorts of faces at this idiot and let him suffer. And he’ll have to take it. Such is life.

I’m driving from Dun Laoghaire to Sligo to take a part in a Sligo Jazz Festival. Tomorrow morning I will become a ‘tutor’. It will be written on a plastic card which I’ll have to wear 24/7. Otherwise, nobody will know who I am and how I should be treated. Right now I don’t have the card, so I am not a tutor yet. I am just a driver who is stuck behind someone who thinks it’s ok to drive 40 km per hour in 100 km/h zone. I am going to be late for the meet-up but I don’t mind. I’m too busy. I’m thinking. The car in front of me is called ‘Sonata’.

I try to imagine a business meeting at a car company’s board of directors. Someone says, ‘Great news, everyone! We came up with the name for our new car! It’s going to be….. SONATA!!!’. 

Really…?

I don’t know if this car is any good. I can see it has some wheels, doors and some sort of driver inside. It might handle like Ferrari, it might have top speed of McLaren, it might have an onboard bar, white leather seats, a state of the art GPS system, a satellite phone with direct links to Kremlin and White House, an A/C unit with canned air from Swiss mountains and a personal masseur residing in the glove department. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. It’s called ‘Sonata’. Sonata is good when it was composed by Vivaldi, but not when it has four wheels. 

I wouldn’t go near this car.

My car is called ‘Focus’. It’s a perfect name for the car. It’s an honest name. It’s an honest car. I love it. It cost me ten times less than my previous car but I enjoy driving it ten times more. There is harmony and balance between the name and essence of the car. The name fits. It makes a total sense. If it was called ‘Sonata’, I wouldn’t feel comfortable even looking at it.

Now, let’s try something. Close your eyes, imagine a car, any car, and say, ‘Thunderbird’. What do you see? Me, I see wide low profile tyres, silly 60’s design, an American flag on the bonnet, no-nonsense/straight four, 300hp, 5 litres engine with enormous torque, which means you’ll have to stop every three miles to fill it up. But imagine those miles! Three miles of pure adrenalin, three miles filled with roar and blue lights in your rear view mirror. And every time you stop to fill her up (say every two minutes), you will encounter men pretending they don’t care and women offering you their bodies. I’m not sure anyone would want to offer you anything if you drive something called ‘Sonata’. I wouldn’t. 

Also, what would you expect to get from a ride in the car called, say, ‘Stallion’? An adrenalin rush, a speeding ticket and quite possibly some kind of romantic encounter. What would you expect to get from a ride in the car called ‘Sonata’? 5000 miles per gallon. And temporary relief for your haemorrhoids….white leather and all.

Why would anyone call this car ‘Sonata’, is beyond me.

There always should be some logic or reason behind the process of giving something a name. One of my friends has a cat. The name of this unfortunate animal is… ‘Cat’. Period. My friend is a musician, which means he is mad, but in his case I can’t deny the logic. You look at the cat. What do you see? The cat. 

Take one of the iconic motorcycles, ‘BMW1200GS’.

‘BMW’ tells you it’s German, which means it will start and it will not break. ‘1200’ is engine capacity, and ‘GS’ tells you something about it being generally sporty. It is and does exactly what it claims to be. Pure Teutonic arrogance, this. It’s like they say, ‘In Germany, we do not care much about cheap advertising. We do not have to call our motorcycle anything fancy. Ze pedigree speaks for itself’. To me, it makes total sense. Also, I can understand their dislike for flashy names. They’ve named something ‘Barbarossa’ once, and it didn’t work out very well…

I understand rationale behind ‘Destroyer’ or ‘Punisher’ type names. It sounds great and it will sell even if it handles like a sofa, breaks every seven minutes and melts three icebergs in an hour. As great Frank Zappa said once, ‘It’s a little bit cheesy but it’s nicely displayed’. It works well for those who have no idea whatsoever and therefore voted for Trump. 

‘I drive a ‘Predator’, baby’… ‘Oh yeah!’. 

‘You wanna go for a ride in my ‘Sonata’? ‘Get lost, you commie bastard’.

In some cases a pre-existing concept defines the name. Take ‘Volkswagen’ for example. The name is obvious – a ‘folks wagon’ – a ‘people’s car’. Not much choice here. 

You’ll never guess the name of the main official newspaper in USSR. It was called ‘Pravda’, which means ‘The Truth’. I actually remember making an order in a village cafe once, ‘I’ll have some salted fish, one beer and one ‘Truth’, please’. Not much choice here either and a reason for the name is perfectly clear.

And what would be the reason for naming a car ‘Sonata’? Anyone?

Well, there’s something I would like to share with you. For me, to come up with the correct name and description for something you created is undoubtedly one of the most difficult tasks (it’s mostly music in my case). It’s absolutely impossible (for me) to come up with the name which fully and correctly describes the result. We all see things differently. What you see as big, someone else sees as small. What you see as tragic, someone sees as pathetic. What is positive for someone, could be very negative for someone else. Also, cultural, linguistic and geographical specifics are not always very clear to everyone, so you have to be extremely careful while ‘tagging’ something, otherwise you’ll end up with Jeep ‘Pajero’ nonsense. Phonetically, it sounds great! It’s very Latin. It sounds exotic and romantic. Sombreros, Margaritas, Amigos and so on. Do you know what ‘Pajero’ means in Spanish? No? Google it then. 😏

Being a musician means travelling a lot, and travelling means witnessing those little specifics in action. What is the name of the last train stop in Sweden? I wouldn’t dare to say this word in public.

There’s a political party in Belgium, and if you try to read its name in English,  it’ll come out like ‘Strong Men with Semen’. Which kind of makes a sense in this case. Isn’t that a wet dream of all politicians anyway?

How would you say ‘cheese’ in Hungarian? If a visitor from Ireland decides to order a cheeseburger in Budapest, he is in for a treat. Try it.

Certain historical events do change you perspective on using names quite radically. Imagine proud parents, a newborn baby in their arms, whispering to each other, ‘What a beautiful boy! Let’s call him Adolf’.

I don’t think so.

Or there is (or rather was) time when you simply put few unrelated words together, which would result in something which doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.
‘Pink Floyd’, anyone? We know that ‘Pink Floyd’ is one of the best rock bands on the planet, but imagine seeing this name for the first time. What does it say, and what does it mean? It could’ve been a Norwegian dish made from herring, honey and sheep testicles for all I know. Another great British rock band ‘Yes’? Or ‘Deep Purple’? ‘Tangerine Dream’? And I can only wonder what kind of chemical interference has resulted in naming one of the greatest ELP albums ‘Brain Salat Surgery’. A cat called ‘Cat’ doesn’t seem to be too extreme, after all.

For the next week I will have a proper ‘tag’ and a proper description. I will be called ‘Oleg Ponomarev. Violin Tutor.’ Very clear and precise. I already have six massive lessons lined up. They are called ‘Jazz Violin Masterclasses’.

What am I going to teach during those classes…?

I have absolutely no idea