music investigation

It started after I spent a hour and a half over beer and food talking to my friends, healing from an anxious morning, in a place I had come to dread. We sat outside in the summer sun, ate burgers and there was music playing, and something about the man's voice snatched me away. And since then, the fragments of a song had started drifting through my head.

I would close my eyes and clench my fists and try to follow the music to the words. After all, I could google the words, but not the music. A site promised to try though - Midomi - you can record yourself humming and the site searches its database. Only, when I hummed out loud, what came out sounded nothing like the song playing in my head.

I couldn't remember the name of the band. I only knew it was a male singer, and they had kind of a lo-fi sound? The song in my head had crashing drums and a climbing guitar riff, and then soft spots, and that's tune I could remember. The words I had were "tonight we'll be crazy as coots" and "I kissed her". Not very googlable. I also knew enough that it wasn't a 'main' song, it was an album filler-type. So I had the album? or I listened to it on Youtube? Youtube history didn't yield much, except a lot of Bollywood music.

I opened my music folder on the computer and scrolled down the list of artists. It was some indie band with a name that didn't have instant recall value or anything, so I wasn't confident. Scrolling down, though, was interesting. So many names of bands that I had zero idea about, more song snatches floating by, some compelling memories enough to create a VLC playlist of my isolated, confusing and unhappy days in LSR/JNU, when I spent so much time on the internet reading that I didn't have real sex.

A familiar anxiety clutched me by the throat. Uglyuncoolalonefriendlessoutoftheloop. I thought about writing this entry, Lorrie Moore style. Then dismissed that. Moore does that thing with minute observations that adds so much texture and vividity. If I tried that it would look precious and stupid.

Then today in a friend's home I lay down on the couch, my uterus spasming on its monthly schedule. A sunbeam was falling across my toes, and once again I wondered at how this was my life - in a foreign city, living life as not-a-tourist, doing political things still, with people who I loved and seemed to like me back too. I closed my eyes and let that song float again, and this time it made me think of downloading TV shows with torrents (something I'm too scared to do here), and sweeping celebration music (Sigur Ros - Festival) and... ice hockey. The HBO Road to Winter classics have always had great music and I've found so many great artists to follow from there... And yup, there it was, on the HBO site. The Walkmen - On the Water, from the album You and I.
And the song in my head was 'Donde esta la playa'. The album is great. You should listen to the whole thing.

It took me two days. I tried a Sherlock style mind palace but I guess my brain is a depressing dusty library has a return time of two days or something.

i will not buy a ukulele

i will not buy a tablet.

i will buckle down and take care.

but what if

I want to be a mother 

A wish, clearly articulated in the silence in my head. It resolved from nothing and rang out like a bell, standing in the presence of a golden femme goddess ("she likes adornments") clutching a baby to herself.

Though none of us are golden statues sitting pretty in temples. Mothering is hard to do, hard to be - it's only for caste bound-, straight-, het-married virtuous financially able women. To be mothers without questions at their fundamental claim to being mothers.

But - I've seen it done differently, now. I know there are options other than a principled contrarian rejection of motherhood, of children. There are queer ways to build families too.

help me stay strong through it all, I say.  And she answers.

the quality of noiselessness

'quiet moments' seem intentional, relaxing, a space to calm down. a 'no noise moment' is an instance of respite in this house that is too close, too loud, and too full of voices that don't care about the others.

sometimes I wonder if I will understand these posts two years after I write them. I'm at home for the first time since I left to live in Toronto, my grandmother is visiting, and there is marriage talk all the time but none of it is directed towards me yet. Advantages of being a student and looking like I am still 15, I guess.

Food is a chore, alone and quiet time is a luxury, the bathroom is anxiety, and gorintaaku gets applied on your fingers and toes with care. There is no mindspace to think but everything is swirling anyway.

damien rice and lisa hannigan

"Unplayed Pianos" comes up in the shuffle and suddenly I have goosebumps.

What are they up to? I know they've broken up - I know I am instinctively on Lisa's side, I have both her solo albums and she's broken and charming and beautiful

there's one man so bright, he blocks the light/ and he'll always be so) (songs that meant so much at
some point

but has she put out any new songs? I google them both.

There's an interview by Damien Rice from October 2014. Last year, when I was spending days in bed telling myself I had headaches, I was exhausted, I didn't need to go to class today. At that same time he was saying he's released a new album, he says the split from Lisa was so hard on him that he wasn't able to make music again till she clearly told him no "beautifully... should do their own thing."

I know I'm not going to listen to the new album. My Favourite Frayed something. Stupid.
It's funny how I've moved on to Songhoy Blues and D'Angelo and the Vanguard and A Tribe Called Red, Hemanta and Kishore Kumar, Hari and Sukhmani and Amit Trivedi, but Damien Rice and Lisa Hannigan sit at the base of my skull where I can't see them at all but feel them so hard when they come into awareness.

There's a series of black and white images of the two of them.

Damien is frozen in place, facing the camera straight on, eyes open, eyes closed, face frozen mostly. Lisa is more mobile, she looks in different directions, black hair in braids.
I can feel that splintering inside, that brave face that Lisa wears all through "Sea Sew" didn't we all break down/ didn't we all fake/ isn't it all right now/ didn't we all break out  Mostly because I can imagine a beautiful brooder like Damien reach in through the rip in my sleeve and squeeze my heart until there was nothing left.

In these pictures, they're a couple but not Couple, they're artistic partners first. They're Cool like that.

i love your depression/ and i love your double chin/ i love most everything you bring to this offering//
oh i know that i left you/ in places of despair/ oh i know that i love you/ so please throw down your hair/ at night i trip without you/ and hope i don't wake up/ cuz waking up without you/ is like drinking from an empty cup 

Good for you, Lisa, I pump my fists in my head. Good for you for moving on, for simply and clearly saying no. Fuck him. Google says you're dating Gary Lightbody? You sound nice with him on "Some Surprise", but it's not a you-song. It's frothy, light, bubblegummy. It's made for some clear tenor, not a throaty whisper of a jazz voice you have. It's not goosebump material.

Fuck you Damien, fuck you fuck you how could you do it, how could you lash out at that lego castle and spray pieces around the room with nothing but spite on your breath. You'll never be as good, never never never, and you're cursed now to always be in orbit around her

landing

From the plane window I see the Delhi moon
I mean, the moon over Delhi
It's the same one everywhere
But my heart leaps into my throat.
And when the pilot announces his regrets -
Due to traffic we will be in a holding pattern
for 25 minutes or more. 
I take five deep breaths.
My parents are waiting for me down there
My presents for them sitting in the belly of the plane.
I am impatient but scared too.
The moon hasn't changed but Delhi definitely woul dhave.
My friends, my family, even me - it's been
eight months. We've all changed.

for/from/to n.

We forge - in the velvety night chill,
garbage trucks rumbling, our rickety house
shuddering with the wind -
a fragility, breath snorting as we cry.
The body remembers,
you say. We clutch, hold on.
The body remembers even if I don't.

toronto in the spring sunshine is infectious

I'm sitting in high park library, facing Roncesvalles avenue, a happy haven of hipster-yuppie activity on the best of days. Across the street in front of CIBS, a boy begins to set up instruments. He puts out a yellow and black top hat first, and set up a drum set - big drum, snare and cymbals. I see a guitar too. Black shirt, black sunglasses, blond hair flying in the wind, white, white skin. He sets up his drums and he begins to play, people walk past with a look, people walk by with their heads turned away, people stop and drop a coin in the hat. A mustachioed, ginger braided man comes by to chat, and the blond boy stops playing - does the man want him to stop? Is his music too disruptive on this sunshine drenched warm day? No, after two minutes and two more drops in his hat he starts up again. It almost sounds like drum practice, just simple rhythms played again and again, with seeming effortlessness. It's a glamorous effect, this blond white boy sitting at the corner of Roncesvalles and Wright, playing the drums with his sunglasses on, without a single damn care. A sweatshirted woman walks past dancing, and he grins at her. All I can think of is, damn I'm stuck in the library, damn how do people do this with their time, and taking a picture of this and showing my friends in Delhi - omg you guys this is summer in the first world!!!

ETA: So I stepped out of the library, and crossed the road towards him. The dancing sweatshirt woman crossed me on the street, body still swaying, and her smile put a smile on my face that didn't leave for the rest of the walk back home. I walked past the drummer boy doing his exercises, squinting in the sun because of course I forgot my sunnies. And then behind me a crotchety old white man walked up to drummer boy, drummer boy held his cymbals together and tapped on them while he spoke, and crotchey man told him to stop making the noise unless he had a licence! And a cloud passed over the sun at that very moment. lollll the power of crotchety old white men

hah synergy

This morning I woke up with 'a change is gonna come' playing in my head.
Then, working at the library, I found myself downloading Spotify completely on a whim. Selected to play songs by Modest Mouse first, and then randomly clicked on the Indie genre station, then the Soul. So full of old favourites, I swayed along, and the tenth song that comes on is Sam Cooke, A Change is Gonna Come. Heh. It was a soul music kind of day I guess.

time and my left knee

My left knee has been hurting for a few weeks now.
I hate this country. Nothing is cheap here. I can't go to the doctor to get it fixed. My union is on strike and I don't know where the money will come from. I just don't know.

My home feels unfamiliar to me all over again. This Sunday drags its feet, a sunny beautiful day outside but my knee and my back hurts and my pockets are empty.

eatprayloving

After <insert traumatic/banal but meaningful event here>, I decided that it was time for me to get to know me. Somewhere I had lost sight of me, the only constant in my life, and it was time for me to find out who I really was.

I wanted to fling myself into this endeavour. I wanted to jump into an adventure, test how I would react. I wanted to throw off all pretence, all the bullshit, be really truly naked to the world, see how I oxidised and how I didn't.

I wanted to find new ways to feel, to feel again. I wanted to search for a meaning that I could feel. I wanted to be among strangers who spoke a language I didn't understand, who looked all different from me. I wanted to learn from them. I wanted to be surrounded by unfamiliarity and relearn the contours of my imagination.

I wanted to look in the mirror and see a new face, my face.

So I shaved my head and wrote a blog post about it.

brown girl gaze

we grow towards hollywood movies and tv shows and boybands.
and then we come to the west. omg the men all look like that! so hot! so far i've messaged my friends that i've seen an edward norton, a definite mark ruffalo, a denzel washington, a nick carter without the long hair, a keanu reeves OMG.
of course soon i learnt what their returning lingering gazes mean on my brown girl body. but omg i look back at them OMG!

what would we do without 'modernity'

what would we critique?

[an academic poem]

my red leather glove in the bowels of M1

They were the richest looking thing I had - and that has so much meaning these days.
Given to me by people who folded me in family and lavished love on me - rare and precious and still a wonder.
They were beautiful. My one concession to leather.
Come back to me please :(

beautiful things the boyfriend says, part 2

"Damn, that's cool"

"Painted jars :)"

"And then you just caught and put some faeries inside, right?"

can you even imagine

A woman, living in this city for under 20,000 dollars a year?

The professor asks, at the end of a wearying lecture on women and work. The hundred-strong class feels hushed, tired, but in the TA corner there is a hulchul, a few of us turning to look at each other and saying, can you imagine? Fake outrage with a bitter edge. Can you even? I think I can imagine!

I'm sorry you're poor! One of them laughs afterwards. I'm just sorry you're poor!

Most of the women in the class live at home and commute 3 hours to come to the university, work 30 hours a week, pay their exorbitant tuition, pay their bills at home, are caregivers; and somehow still have the energy to do their readings, sometimes.

I am only thinking about how I should drink some water and survive the one hour bus ride home and eat some kurma sitting in my fridge. I don't need to buy myself a slice of pizza right now.