another music quote i like

‘ Take a good look at people who try to dedramatize, to desymbolise and designify. They seem to think they can achieve complete demystification and reach things per se, in all their unadorned nakedness, revealing the aims and values that lie hidden beneath the mask. It’s pure platitude, too black and white. With no symbols, no fictions, how could you carry out the cruel dialogue between the I and the me, between living and life? How otherwise could this tale be told, with all its ellipses and silences? Without images and symbols how could you condense the vapours of the living, how could you trace man’s long journey into the dark recesses of his own memory? How could you conjure up the past, that zombie, how could you reanimate it in the name of what is possible, unless you call upon the power of images? If it is true that life as it is lived was always more shoddy and more lousy than could be expressed by a glorious and tragic symbol, at the same time it always makes something much vaster. Music, for example. What does music you make become? Everything. Small worlds and the world at large. The universe. All moments, every one of them. Love, play, knowledge, calmness. An inexhaustible presence- time overflowing with presences- takes hold of you, sweeps you away and changes you by becoming your own presence and your own present, the present moment which- at last- you offer yourself as you enter the realm of everything possible. Everything: joy and suffering, serenity and pain, more and ever more. Inexhaustible depths: a translucent abyss unlike that of the sea (which swallows you up) and the sky (which fascinates you and drowns you in its luminous void). The purest, the simplest, the noblest, the lowliest, divine and demonic- this is what music makes you become. The distance between life and living is bridged. You are clothed in splendor, the splendor of totality. An illusion? Not entirely. Alienation? Maybe, but an alienation which disalienates you before it negates you once more. So do not hesitate to glorify yourself.’

Henri Lefebvre, The message of the crucified sun- Introduction to Modernity

gardeners

all these years he mowed the lawn, trimmed everything, all alone, now hes got some company.

night flight

vapours/dreams

lic colony lies on the edge of the creek almost. the stp, the vapours from the gorai landfill, the smell of rotting leaves in monsoon make their way into your every day and the scaffolded growing rcc stubs, slowly sprout through the weeds at the edges of new roads into the mangroves.

the vapours from the edge- mixed with smells of strange poisonous leaves, shit and chemicals i think have done things to our minds.

the boys who collected tadpoles and fish from the creek backflows in gutters, knew that when they beat their wives years later remembering how they tied and tortured lizards, dug up cemteries, and dreamt of being gangsters combing their oiled hair in rearview mirrors.
the quiet man who spoke only to his chairs and took his roses for walks on a string must have been driven by that stench lingering in the morning air.
the three thin sisters who never spoke to anyone, rode their bajaj scooter till they disappeared one by one into the air must felt it like all the spinster girls in costume lonely in their dark afternoon houses waiting for their new boyfriends to come ,hopelessly sure nothing works out really.

all this i thought on my late night journey across the dark edges of charkop, with the mangroves silhouetted black against unknown greyness, and patches of buildings shadowed in the street lights.

believing in some way that this edge business makes you little hopelessly fatalistic. things were always too apparently mixed, and simultaneous here.

PJ Harvey Dress

Put on that dress
I'm going out dancing
Starting off red
Clean and sparkling he'll see me
Music playing make it dreamy for dancing
Must be a way that i can dress to please him
It's hard to walk in the dress, it's not easy
I'm spilling over like a heavy loaded fruit tree

If you put it on
If you put it on
If you put it on
If you put it on

It's sad to see
Lonely all this lonely
Close up my eyes
Dreamy dreamy music make it be alright
Music play make it good for romacing
Must be a way I can dress to please him
Swing and sway everything'll alright
But it's feeling so damn tight tonight

If you put it on
If you put it on
If you put it on
If you put it on

"You purdy thang,"
My man says, "But I bought you beautiful dresses."

"You purdy thang,"
My man says, "But I bought you beautiful dresses."

Filthy tight, the dress is filthy
I'm falling flat and my arms are empty
Clear the way better get it out of this room
A falling woman in dancing costume

If you put it on
If you put it on
If you put it on
If you put it on
If you put it on
If you put it on
If you put it on
If you put it on

Mrs. Bartolozzi

I remember it was that Wednesday
Oh when it rained and it rained
They traipsed mud all over the house
It took hours and hours to scrub it out
All over the hall carpet
I took my mop and bucket
And I cleaned and I cleaned
The kitchen floor
Until it sparkled
Then I took my laundry basket
And put the linen all in it
And everything I could fit in it
And all our dirty clothes that hadn't gone into the wash
And all your shirts and jeans and things
And put them in the new washing machine
Washing machine
Washing machine

I watched them go 'round and 'round
My blouse wrapping itself around your trousers
Oh the waves are going out
My skirt floating up around my waist
As I wade out into the surf
Oh and the waves are coming in
Oh and the waves are going out
Oh and you're standing right behind me
Little fish swim between my legs
Oh and the waves are coming in
Oh and the waves are going out
Oh and the waves are coming in
Out of the corner of my eye
I think I see you standing outside
But it's just your shirt
Hanging on the washing line
Waving its arm as the wind blows by
And it looks so alive
Nice and white
Just like its climbed right out
Of my washing machine
Washing machine
Washing machine

Slooshy sloshy slooshy sloshy
Get that dirty shirty clean
Slooshy sloshy slooshy sloshy
Make those cuffs and collars gleam
Everything clean and shiny

Washing machine
Washing machine
Washing machine

Kate Bush's birthday and This is where i want to be

 

birthday today!

and my day at home.

imagining silly magical coincidences. 

im celebrating listening to wuthering heights.

and everything!

no place

Lying on the lawn in college after school, on the curved hump of the giant creature buried underneath

Feet pointed towards the s-w corner framed by the corner of the building and the baby gulmohars

Crows in a line perched on the parapet in the corner of my left eye

And the kadamb balls swinging low in the dark curtain in my right

Looking up at the soft grey cotton clouds coming up the triangle like a sheet to cover me

Shweta and I rolled down the back of the lawn

Giddied and girly.

sinking into hibernation

My mother is piecing together the mad map with horses, and the whole world tasseled ribboned land and water overwritten by mad curlicues while I type this. and its looking as insanely compltcated and tiresome as everything looks to me these days.The rain now even more mixing up all flesh cars trees nails hair limbs dirt voices and everything into one big tight ball like the mad filled circles on my mums jigsaw.
I am really waiting to slowly sink into hibernation with some more easy book-world that rohan will leave for me soon hopefully.
Ive been in and out of two amazing books.

Messiah was a diagram with breathtaking spaces in between the dots that made up the people. i liked the coldness.
Kavalier and Clay I liked as a tale of tenderness and friendship between two boys more than anything anything else.. , bringing together the two boys and their webs and meshes of family loves comic dreams in a space of tenderness in arms thrown over a shoulder, kisses, in the hooked space between their fingers and the palm over ruffling hair and head filled with mad dreams.

Ranjits diabolik and birthday happened on rain washed late magic night with vinnie glowing in the back seat in bandana, shorts tshirt and shirt, and ranjit looking beautiful in his fathers shirt. we rode on the gorai road and eighties music bringing back my college days and red eyed rides on dark wet road. 

. ive been unable to post. and these posts repeat themselves. like that circular song- nothing ever happens
But the journeys in the train and st buses to vajreshwari again were good. The city emptying itself as you speed past cross the creeks,there was that forlorn man standing with the head of his penis held between thumb and index finger out to all the passing trains whom i cannot forget, and industries and quarries and villages, all the skinny couples on their way to the hot springs heads bent over mobile phone pics and aishwarya rai with fingers and elbows tangles.

Everything has changed . Im looking forward to this next year in college. lots of new people. and less to do for me. im determined i will have time to open a few new doors air out some old rooms. and hibernate into some otherworlds.

and lastly, girls, there are people, out there that make a sport out of grabbing womens breasts as they cross the road. its happened so often its almost funny.

break and back

It was so nice to go to vajreshwari after the maddays that is end of semester college. Night comes over you like a nice slow wave in quiet places. Not like the strange plunging into darkness and mad lights when you get out of school. The forest was dryer than it had ever been with the leaves crackling and the branches bare holding up bunches of black fruit and dry pods letting out clouds of white cotton to the breeze. Night ride through blackness, the dipping and rising line of the hills in the distance that remained as if we weren’t moving. And trees scared white in the headlights.

summer loves

sea view
glitter saliva lasso wraps around my ribs to pull me to meet frothing
the edge of the sea.


sun
i love summer as it loves my skin. the sun and me.
we warm to each other in mutual sympathy.
sweat where we meet.

boy
heat also across autos. boy across me the triangular brass tag lying on his thigh and almost inside his pocket. eyelashes over black lovely eyes and hair over his forehead.