Here is the tale of a composition, and how it overtook its creator. The song opens with the composer doubting its very existence, "Einmal ist keinmal", meaning "What happens but once might as well never have happened at all". Influences on this piece are various, ranging from the books of Antoine de Saint Exupéry and Milan Kundera, to the music of Eric Whitacre and Béla Bartók.
But most of all, with the inputs and criticism of the entire choir, an idea became a song. By the end of the song, we hope you will feel the thrill with which the composer declares, "Einmal IST!"
[1st public performance IIT Delhi, won 1st in Western Group Song competition, part of Rendezvous '08, 20th September, 2008. Composed May-September, 2008]
Wind, Sand and Stars
Einmal ist keinmal
Once there was a letter
Then there was a word and
Then she wrote a sentence
And one day they heard a
SONG!
(she sang them,
hesitatingly,
hesitatingly)
(Swept away by wind)
"Swept away by the wind
Or should I let the stream take me?
Should I let the wind sweep me off my feet or
Should I let the stream drag me underneath, oh?"
She sang to herself and no one else
Einmal ist keinmal
Under the stars, over mountains of sand
Taken as light as a feather by wind
(Windblown sands and stars all twinkling)
Colours waltzing
Fingering the light
She tasted words
Oh sleepless nights she wasted
Trying to fathom (lands all unexplored)
Biplaned through her mind (driven on by wind)
Spiralled inward (endless poetry)
She was writing
Words come tumbling
And forgotten images
Remembered verses
Then in her ears she heard a multitude of voices
Come tell us all the tale of the dream that made a song
Winds may stall
Sands blow away
Stars disappear in the clouds
Listen for this song
Till the end of TIME!
Einmal
IST!
Showing posts with label dreaming. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dreaming. Show all posts
Morning: remembering last night's dream, 17.2.08
A dream with structure rich in detail, I could see all the smoke wisp away and hear the irony in the man's voice, ringing over his white hair and the distinguished din of his jacket. He put out his cigarette at the challenge. The children continued to fly.
Children I can never remember. Their faces are too soft, too new to make an imprint on my mind.
I felt his hard chest against mine, it was nothing, a hug. But I felt it in the dream and outside, a memory squeezing me, "remember, remember". I don't know who it was I have not had illustrious love affairs. There is only one person it could have been, and it was not him.
He was as tall, as broad and as passionate. But he would never have let himself touch me like that. Like what? It was only a hug. He's in love with me, he says. I think he is deluded. Years later and much bad blood cried, how can he be? How different was he from what I called love?
My fingers should speak, or my lips, or my skin which tingles and pulse that races even as I think back. Simon and Garfunkel were talking about two of me. To be in love, please don't kill your self; I cannot love despair, I have thrown guilt out of the window to the past.
There is the residue, a layer of double entendres and riddles below the memory of loving him, which surfaces sometimes and dies down.
But I still don't know who it was in the dream. There are the mornings to wake up to, with beautiful yellow sun on my face and an ache in the pit of my stomach, to want the familiar taste. Some twelve years, and it does not taste the same - that five minutes of childish ecstasy at the one recipe we have never been able to produce since.
I remember, boss, that is my strength.
Children I can never remember. Their faces are too soft, too new to make an imprint on my mind.
I felt his hard chest against mine, it was nothing, a hug. But I felt it in the dream and outside, a memory squeezing me, "remember, remember". I don't know who it was I have not had illustrious love affairs. There is only one person it could have been, and it was not him.
He was as tall, as broad and as passionate. But he would never have let himself touch me like that. Like what? It was only a hug. He's in love with me, he says. I think he is deluded. Years later and much bad blood cried, how can he be? How different was he from what I called love?
My fingers should speak, or my lips, or my skin which tingles and pulse that races even as I think back. Simon and Garfunkel were talking about two of me. To be in love, please don't kill your self; I cannot love despair, I have thrown guilt out of the window to the past.
There is the residue, a layer of double entendres and riddles below the memory of loving him, which surfaces sometimes and dies down.
But I still don't know who it was in the dream. There are the mornings to wake up to, with beautiful yellow sun on my face and an ache in the pit of my stomach, to want the familiar taste. Some twelve years, and it does not taste the same - that five minutes of childish ecstasy at the one recipe we have never been able to produce since.
I remember, boss, that is my strength.
[Untitled]
I was watching a kite as he desperately flapped his wings for a breath of warm air to lift him up; someone asked me why I was standing there. He escaped, and in that split second I knew, once again, nothing about him and his flights of futility, searching, anguish in his heart, for a whisper of the familiar truth.
"Metaphore, metaphore", they cried to him, and no avail.
***
Neruda wrote of love, war and the unreachable heights of Macchu Pichu.
Dali painted compositions exquisite: never had a rose been so filled with latent potency, poisonously floating above a matte lanscape of clocks, cesspools and slow decay in a desert land. The man in the bowler hat stood still at that mysterious threshold, the murky sea roaring silently behind him, never spraying his suit, time never slowing enough to let that apple fall from its suspended place. Monet held the light in his hands, letting it fall by degrees on the grass, the trees, the sky. David stood alone, the sadness in his eyes invisible to anyone who could not see past his sinews. The spark from the Creation of Adam came and rent his heart to the very core. Cambell's soupcan said silently to him, "Metaphore, metaphore".
***
Massimo stood before his mirror and wondered. What was it that made him fall in love with these things? They were so different. No, disparate, he corrected. Dark eyes looked out from the glass but not at him. Everything was like everything else. But they were called by different names. What was this Surrealism? Even the sunset on the shingled beach off the chalk cliffs was surreal to him. What was this Renaissance? Was not everything ever created a re-naissance of something else, something older?
These categories defeated him. He did not know what to do. When he wrote prose, it came out in iambs and turned into poetry. When he wrote poetry, it emerged in long, torturous lines which coalesced spontaneously into paragraphs and indented the first in every one.
Massimo scratched the front of his old jeans. He loved that sound, the feeling of that friction under his nails. The ginger cat came and went yet again, always returning in its constant emaciatedness to remind him - you eat, I get nothing. You make money, I get nothing. You are educated, you have access to Art, Culture, Music. I have nothing.
The cat was everything that was wrong with the world. Gripped by the old, inexorable guilt every time he saw the cat, he shut it out of sight but could not shut it out of his mind. He grimaced at the automatic pun that hit him. Maybe he was out of his mind. After all, he just realised that his sneaking suspicion had been confirmed, yet again. This cat was no ordinary cat. "Metaphore, metaphore", it called out to him in his language.
Schrödinger kicked in his grave. Any moment now, thought Massimo, I will realise that all the things in the world I had not attributed to Schrödinger's ephemeral cat also came from nowhere else, and will also conglomerate into one hideous heterogeneous ball of energy, only to Big Bang into the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which is really the First Law of Everything: "Entropy Increaseth".
Massimo looked down at the newspaper which had carried his first review. "Postmodern" was there even in the title. That word irked him no end. It had been a year since that review and he had not been able to shoot himself. The gun lay in the drawer silently, as before. To shoot himself, he reflected, was to make too strong a statement. His grave, he continued to reflect, should carry an epitaph - monument. A single epigram would not do for his epitaph. How would he explain all his multiplicity of contents?
In a flash, the gun was out, two sharp reports were heard, and Massimo's brains were found spattered all over the Edwardian furniture, Warhol reproductions and his own prosetry.
His epitaph has one line on it: "And all for want of a horseshoe nail".
The cat lies buried at his feet, conquered.
Conquered? Massimo's life is over. The cat has nine to go.
***
Neruda wrote of love, war and the unreachable heights of Macchu Pichu.
Dali painted compositions exquisite: never had a rose been so filled with latent potency, poisonously floating above a matte lanscape of clocks, cesspools and slow decay in a desert land. The man in the bowler hat stood still at that mysterious threshold, the murky sea roaring silently behind him, never spraying his suit, time never slowing enough to let that apple fall from its suspended place. Monet held the light in his hands, letting it fall by degrees on the grass, the trees, the sky. David stood alone, the sadness in his eyes invisible to anyone who could not see past his sinews. The spark from the Creation of Adam came and rent his heart to the very core. Cambell's soupcan said silently to him, "Metaphore, metaphore".
***
Massimo stood before his mirror and wondered. What was it that made him fall in love with these things? They were so different. No, disparate, he corrected. Dark eyes looked out from the glass but not at him. Everything was like everything else. But they were called by different names. What was this Surrealism? Even the sunset on the shingled beach off the chalk cliffs was surreal to him. What was this Renaissance? Was not everything ever created a re-naissance of something else, something older?
These categories defeated him. He did not know what to do. When he wrote prose, it came out in iambs and turned into poetry. When he wrote poetry, it emerged in long, torturous lines which coalesced spontaneously into paragraphs and indented the first in every one.
Massimo scratched the front of his old jeans. He loved that sound, the feeling of that friction under his nails. The ginger cat came and went yet again, always returning in its constant emaciatedness to remind him - you eat, I get nothing. You make money, I get nothing. You are educated, you have access to Art, Culture, Music. I have nothing.
The cat was everything that was wrong with the world. Gripped by the old, inexorable guilt every time he saw the cat, he shut it out of sight but could not shut it out of his mind. He grimaced at the automatic pun that hit him. Maybe he was out of his mind. After all, he just realised that his sneaking suspicion had been confirmed, yet again. This cat was no ordinary cat. "Metaphore, metaphore", it called out to him in his language.
Schrödinger kicked in his grave. Any moment now, thought Massimo, I will realise that all the things in the world I had not attributed to Schrödinger's ephemeral cat also came from nowhere else, and will also conglomerate into one hideous heterogeneous ball of energy, only to Big Bang into the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which is really the First Law of Everything: "Entropy Increaseth".
Massimo looked down at the newspaper which had carried his first review. "Postmodern" was there even in the title. That word irked him no end. It had been a year since that review and he had not been able to shoot himself. The gun lay in the drawer silently, as before. To shoot himself, he reflected, was to make too strong a statement. His grave, he continued to reflect, should carry an epitaph - monument. A single epigram would not do for his epitaph. How would he explain all his multiplicity of contents?
In a flash, the gun was out, two sharp reports were heard, and Massimo's brains were found spattered all over the Edwardian furniture, Warhol reproductions and his own prosetry.
His epitaph has one line on it: "And all for want of a horseshoe nail".
The cat lies buried at his feet, conquered.
Conquered? Massimo's life is over. The cat has nine to go.
Foucault's Pendulum
Why exactly I wrote this I have forgotten, it's been a few months since I finished reading Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. But it really hits you, the novel, despite the multitude of references, cross-references, obscurities. The plot is brilliant, as is the Plan. Terrifyingly so. It's a scary book, especially if you are like me, and like your regular little dose of fiction. If you must read it, go ahead. But I really don't know if it's worth the trouble with the Templars, the Rosicrusians and the workings of Garamond. The milieu is just as specific as the plot is universal.
Incidentally, I picked up this book because the title had been eyeing me (not, I don't mean it the other way round. Haven't you ever felt a book or painting or song follow you?). As it turned out, Foucault was not, as I had imagined, Michel Foucault, but Léon Foucault. So fortuitous incidents sometimes backfire. So much for instinctively buying a book. Instinct was so awry this time that I bought it at Midland [South Extension-I, New Delhi. Opposite the bhelpuri-juice wala], one of my preferred bookstores (they always have a discount on pretty much everything in the shop) for just over 200 bucks, only to find the same edition, no less pirated-looking, in Daryaganj [Sunday pavement book bazaar in Old Delhi.] for 60 a few weeks later.
He's like Belbo. Abulafia was his own child. His child took over his mind. Aglie and all the rest, the taxidermist Salon, everyone - they're all Abulafia's children, descendents of his own mind. If they hadn't killed him he would have killed himself. Hell, he is killing himself, by spawning all these little incubated creatures.
The Plan's going to kill him. Amparo's left. She couldn't come to terms with her own feelings. She didn't know whether she belonged or she didn't. No one handed her an agogo. What had happened was her own personal problem. That's why I left. I had to deal with things on my own. If he kills himself, I can't do anything from here anyway.
If even the Thing couldn't keep him, what's the use of this thing I thought we had made together.
I am everyone. Amparo, confused; the Diabolicals, convinced; Casaubon, incomplete; Diatollevi, dying, spewing shit even then, Lia. Lia, Lia. Shining like an inelegant wet-nurse.
Jesus.
I think I just might go buy The Name of the Rose as well. The thing is, if it's not so important to remember detail, this book is remember-ed and -able.
Mind F*** of a novel.
There's that thing written on my wall in my ex-room in the hostel:
Universality is a function of ignorance.
When you know only a few chords, every song sounds like the last.
Incidentally, I picked up this book because the title had been eyeing me (not, I don't mean it the other way round. Haven't you ever felt a book or painting or song follow you?). As it turned out, Foucault was not, as I had imagined, Michel Foucault, but Léon Foucault. So fortuitous incidents sometimes backfire. So much for instinctively buying a book. Instinct was so awry this time that I bought it at Midland [South Extension-I, New Delhi. Opposite the bhelpuri-juice wala], one of my preferred bookstores (they always have a discount on pretty much everything in the shop) for just over 200 bucks, only to find the same edition, no less pirated-looking, in Daryaganj [Sunday pavement book bazaar in Old Delhi.] for 60 a few weeks later.
He's like Belbo. Abulafia was his own child. His child took over his mind. Aglie and all the rest, the taxidermist Salon, everyone - they're all Abulafia's children, descendents of his own mind. If they hadn't killed him he would have killed himself. Hell, he is killing himself, by spawning all these little incubated creatures.
The Plan's going to kill him. Amparo's left. She couldn't come to terms with her own feelings. She didn't know whether she belonged or she didn't. No one handed her an agogo. What had happened was her own personal problem. That's why I left. I had to deal with things on my own. If he kills himself, I can't do anything from here anyway.
If even the Thing couldn't keep him, what's the use of this thing I thought we had made together.
I am everyone. Amparo, confused; the Diabolicals, convinced; Casaubon, incomplete; Diatollevi, dying, spewing shit even then, Lia. Lia, Lia. Shining like an inelegant wet-nurse.
Jesus.
I think I just might go buy The Name of the Rose as well. The thing is, if it's not so important to remember detail, this book is remember-ed and -able.
Mind F*** of a novel.
There's that thing written on my wall in my ex-room in the hostel:
Universality is a function of ignorance.
When you know only a few chords, every song sounds like the last.
Dream diary
15.11.07
There is something dimensionless between sleep and waking, which sometimes comes upon me like bursts of colour, sometimes like lucid images of the sort I had never imagined elsewhere, sometimes a shifting, changing landscape of images.
They tell a story. No, maybe that is not right; they speak. Words, but not any kind of story which sounds familiar. In a sensuous game, the colours defy description and taunt me, not vanishing like the early-morning thought which I want to capture, but ever floating before me, creating weird shapes with their rotation, creating multiple dimensions in lazy motion.
There was a tree, black, almost, a silhouette of the darkest green I could think of, until I saw the hill on which it stands, a deeper green than the secrets the earth keeps hidden under generations of time. Behind the tree on the faraway hill, the sky turned crimson, gold, and velvet, a melange woven by some sleeping creature unwittingly; little did she know what it was that was born of her dreams.
Then there was a pair of legs, belonging to a young woman who stood desultorily at the edge of the beach and was not captivated by the navy sky or the surreptitous bushes. She just stood, a pair of legs foregrounded larger-than-life against the outline of the beach.
Ars Brevis
In the
cold and colder winter nights I spent in
solitude,
Out of
my tired mind there came a vision of
life wasted.
It was
mine, I know, though never saw a face to
remember.
I'd searched
so long for songs to make it worth my while
to exist;
The songs
never came; they only left me waiting
in the dark.
Far too
late, I understood that they would never
come to me;
I had
to go to them since i was the lesser
one, not they.
But then
I tried to write and found I could! and they
stood and stared.
I crowed.
I had defeated the music and now
I was King.
Still I
see the wasted life as mine; I'd loved the
the music so.
But I
killed them with over-ambition, I tell
you, I did.
cold and colder winter nights I spent in
solitude,
Out of
my tired mind there came a vision of
life wasted.
It was
mine, I know, though never saw a face to
remember.
I'd searched
so long for songs to make it worth my while
to exist;
The songs
never came; they only left me waiting
in the dark.
Far too
late, I understood that they would never
come to me;
I had
to go to them since i was the lesser
one, not they.
But then
I tried to write and found I could! and they
stood and stared.
I crowed.
I had defeated the music and now
I was King.
Still I
see the wasted life as mine; I'd loved the
the music so.
But I
killed them with over-ambition, I tell
you, I did.
Perhaps,
If I had simply waited like others
do, I might
have the
music with me now on these cold winter
nights alone.
My friend
i killed, to feel the thrill of being the King
for a day.
I can
no longer sing; my voice refuses to
leave my
throat, even
my voice is terrified; this world I made
is no place
If I had simply waited like others
do, I might
have the
music with me now on these cold winter
nights alone.
My friend
i killed, to feel the thrill of being the King
for a day.
I can
no longer sing; my voice refuses to
leave my
throat, even
my voice is terrified; this world I made
is no place
for the
frail. There is no music here, mon ami.
Please go away,
lest you
should be a victim of the lust to be
the King too.
frail. There is no music here, mon ami.
Please go away,
lest you
should be a victim of the lust to be
the King too.
Dear Tridib, you've ruined me for life
The Old City begins to speak every
night, when the whole world sleeps. Restless minds like
mine prowl the streets, insomniac, searching
for the lesser known, the secrets of this
ghost town wrapped between sheets of fresh concrete.
mine prowl the streets, insomniac, searching
for the lesser known, the secrets of this
ghost town wrapped between sheets of fresh concrete.
Twenty, Barakhamba Road is a ruin.
It stands stranded between high rise buildings
that can see further, and the underground
trains that hear deeper that the likes of us.
Dear Tridib, You never told me that my
room would smell like fog on a cold morning.
Whatever you did tell me, I find I am
beginning to forget, only to soon.
I found my ruin, Tridib, like you found
yours; but never thought of you till a friend
reminded me of that forgotten tale.
They say I am young, naïve, cannot be
left to roam the streets alone. So I am
forced to look for new ways to get around.
I have have not learned to dream like you, not yet.
I spend my waking hours imagining.
When I sleep, I am already out of
ideas. And then the Old City creeps up
on me, silently whispering secrets.
I shall be driven out of my mind soon,
If I’m not careful. My wakeful nights of
Conversation fill my brain with more than
I can take. When I wake up, then, the world
Is not real anymore – a celluloid
Irony playing out before my eyes.
I am filled with the insecurities
that come from living one too many lives
at a time. The discrete worlds try to come
together; that only makes all blurry.
I cannot reach out, touch your hand with mine,
I love, like you, Tridib, across the seas;
But never without a twinge of regret-
Even a thought’s distance turned out to be
A longer road than I had imagined.
It stands stranded between high rise buildings
that can see further, and the underground
trains that hear deeper that the likes of us.
Dear Tridib, You never told me that my
room would smell like fog on a cold morning.
Whatever you did tell me, I find I am
beginning to forget, only to soon.
I found my ruin, Tridib, like you found
yours; but never thought of you till a friend
reminded me of that forgotten tale.
They say I am young, naïve, cannot be
left to roam the streets alone. So I am
forced to look for new ways to get around.
I have have not learned to dream like you, not yet.
I spend my waking hours imagining.
When I sleep, I am already out of
ideas. And then the Old City creeps up
on me, silently whispering secrets.
I shall be driven out of my mind soon,
If I’m not careful. My wakeful nights of
Conversation fill my brain with more than
I can take. When I wake up, then, the world
Is not real anymore – a celluloid
Irony playing out before my eyes.
I am filled with the insecurities
that come from living one too many lives
at a time. The discrete worlds try to come
together; that only makes all blurry.
I cannot reach out, touch your hand with mine,
I love, like you, Tridib, across the seas;
But never without a twinge of regret-
Even a thought’s distance turned out to be
A longer road than I had imagined.
There are no voices in the night. No sprites emerge from nooks except critters that fly about and bite you in your sleep. My sleep is dreamless. Dreams, I think, do not dare enter the bottomless pit of my troubled slumber.
Around me and suddenly, there are smells which fill the air and turn the room sour. Foul reeks and odours bring putrefaction into my house on the backs of nightmare creatures that sing, crowing, at me; the voices in the night are come, are come.
Around me and suddenly, there are smells which fill the air and turn the room sour. Foul reeks and odours bring putrefaction into my house on the backs of nightmare creatures that sing, crowing, at me; the voices in the night are come, are come.
Himspeak
I can remember saying all this as if somebody else was speaking through me:
I could stand and light a cigarette on Chowpatti after dark, shut my eyes and try to listen to the sea over the traffic. And from inside my shut eyes I could see myself on four continents, feel the ocean lick my toes with its salty tongue, and lose myself to the endless water.
When would I ever find where I belong?
I couldn’t place myself on any continent, let alone in one house.
I could stand and light a cigarette on Chowpatti after dark, shut my eyes and try to listen to the sea over the traffic. And from inside my shut eyes I could see myself on four continents, feel the ocean lick my toes with its salty tongue, and lose myself to the endless water.
When would I ever find where I belong?
I couldn’t place myself on any continent, let alone in one house.
Londres!
Some old dreams of mine seem childish to me now; but some are still under the always-wanted-never-did category.
Busking in Tottenham Court Road Tube Station.
Busking in Tottenham Court Road Tube Station.
Anachronistic Chameleon
I dissolved into the wind and reddened into the sunset – the city was me and I Delhi.
Until it became hard to tell the date or the year.
I heard his voice and turned around
almost like a reflex,
knowing he was far away,
but unable to resist the urge to see the face the voice belonged to.
Woolly fingers reached out to me
and I said, “Why me?”
I am timeless in the same way one is homeless.
My very dreams are disjointed
like (the song that sings of
a feather) that sings of
a song
Until it became hard to tell the date or the year.
I heard his voice and turned around
almost like a reflex,
knowing he was far away,
but unable to resist the urge to see the face the voice belonged to.
Woolly fingers reached out to me
and I said, “Why me?”
I am timeless in the same way one is homeless.
My very dreams are disjointed
like (the song that sings of
a feather) that sings of
a song
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