Oh! Thirteen: Some Interesting Records So Far

If there is going to be a year-end list, it is most likely more than half the records listed here will be absent in it. It is turning out to be that interesting a year. It’s that or I’m vehemently hyperbolizing.

Anika – Anika (EP)

 Anamanaguchi – Endless Fantasy

Applescal – Dreaming in Key

AraabMuzik – For Professional Use Only

Benoit Pioulard – Hymnal

DJ Koze – Amygdala

Doldrums – Lesser Evil

Four Tet – Rounds (10th Anniversary Reissue)

Houses – A Quiet Darkness

J Dilla – Donuts (Reissue)

 VeronicaFalls – Waiting for Something to Happen

Waxahatchee – Cerulean.Salt

Wooden Wand – Blood Oaths of the New Blues

Widowspeak – Almanac

Letherette – Letherette

The Knife – Shaking the Habitual

Matmos – The Marriage of True Minds

Mazes – Ores and Minerals

Phosphorescent – Muchacho

Sally Shapiro – Somewhere Else

Youth Lagoon – Wondrous Bughouse

On One Missing Photograph

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I haven’t been one for misplacing things except once when I’d left a bunch of chronologically chosen photographs with a college friend because he could scan them at his home. I then took train. He took flight. There’s a slim chance I could get them back—after all it’s just been a decade since.

One that’s been rather special to me is a black’n'white photograph that my sister had lost. I remember nagging her, every time I visited hometown from work-town, she must hand it over, and she has this habit of ‘misplacing’ things. Here’s my theory as to why it went ‘lost’: She was much fonder of it than I was. It’s gone missing for eight years now.

That one is a picture of my IInd Standard wherein I stand, amid my classmates and teacher, (no one holding anything except me) holding in my hand a fancy ‘geometry’ box that aunt had brought from Kuwait. I remember it had a cushioned lid and a magnetic lid lock. I was so fond of it I wouldn’t part with it come recess, come whatever. It also brings to mind’s eye:

The knee-deep lake we’d walk across en route to tuition, father translating Tintin for me from The Week; real-life tales of the hero cop slain by thugs, the boy who drowned in a municipality tank, another who impaled himself playing with a sword; the fragrance of vibhuti, the slithering river sands under my feet right before I nearly drowned, playtimes that involved making balloons out of Nirodh, my indescribable addiction to notebook labels, and more that was Pattamadai in the early-to-mid nineteen-eighties.

And it was my only photograph from that place.

One brown sock emerged from a dusty rack, so, again, there’s the chance it could pop up anytime from anyplace.

101

(Rameshwaram beach, circa 1987 – Days of DD’s Malgudi Days)

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I nominate Subhorup Dasgupta, Satyender S Dhull, Jack Roberts to take part in ‘One Picture From My Photo Album’

This post is my entry for the ‘One Picture From My Photo Album’ contest conducted by My Yatra Diary and CupoNation.”

This contest is open for any and all bloggers from anywhere in the globe, deadline being May 16, 2013, two days from now, details for which can be found on Arti’s phenomenal blog My Yatra Diary

Taking Pictures

The beginning is near
Nearer than the third ear can hear

Parvati takes a long walk
Satyam shivam sundari
She chants as she walks

Vasuki captures photographs
Camera garlanded to her neck walks Parvati
She has many places to be

Lands rivers prisons planes people
Borders deserts birds plants cars hospitals
Oceans labs insects beasts ships shops

Satyam shivam sundaram
Satyam shivam dharmam
Satyam shivam sundaram

Forests flags offices factories fishes farms
Planets trees asylums theaters streets homes ponds
Schools weapons skies zoos rocks runways

Parvati keeps to her long walk
Satyam shivam sundaram
She chants as she walks

The end is far
Farther than the farthest star

Reflection – Upstream Color

Many things can be said about Upstream Color and still there will be things left unsaid. It is such a, one of a kind, movie one would be tempted to call it Cinema (yes, with the upper case see and, yes, tempted to). What is of concern, though, is some of its content (as opposed to its form) and its device. In that regard, one of its faults strangely as well happens to be its perfection, which is obedience (by the book), that is it cannot overcome its temptations of Chekhov’s gun—that fixation, that oft-unquestioned submission (of fiction) to what is at best a mere shadow. In a movie like Upstream Color, that is a movie that bends reality a fair bit, a punch to the face could achieve what a shot to the chest could not, yet it’s very content with—a funny sad thing—conforming, its blindness surrounding Chekhov’s gun being it doesn’t see there are choices (beyond) and beside the pull of the trigger.

Its bigger fault is it enforces human transcendence (rather violently) as though it were some kind of gospel or universalism (not that either could be validly enforced, just that they’ve often violently and deceptively been) when any form of transcendence and (rigid) enforcement never do make bedfellows (which maybe, just maybe, is what it is getting at mutely and roundabout). For it to have done that it is historically unsound, (even if it isn’t that) it is very ethically unsound and even worse—very, very creatively indolent. Again, the funny sad thing is it is deeply flawed just as it is technically, if not perfect, seemingly deeply beautiful. So, for an ideal example of if-looks-could-lie, one needn’t to look further.

Aside from its faults, its one weakness is the thin science fiction cloak it happens to wear. It is a greater weakness because with that it ends up as a (personal) utopian (myopic) vision, that vision (whatever that is) of some kind achieved by way of violence and deception. With its choice of such a sci-fi device, instead of a (say, Kafkaesque) irrealist device (when incorporating such a irrealist device would render it rather far-sighted, making the happenings less explicable, leaving it open to valid yet varied interpretations), despite it concluding in the affirmative, as it is, it is essentially defeatist and (among other things) borders dangerously on anti-life, than anti anything else.

When the Eavesdropper Acted on What was Eaved

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Shape his sinuses were in wasn’t so much awful as what’d become of his nasal passageways, or if it was any different, for the love of whatever he didn’t know. Snorting Coke (with straws stiff as storks’ beaks) turned out not so much fun as it was asserted to be. Squealed and cussed the length of corridor to tell an alarmed mom nothing better than the incontestable truth he had the effing bugs

Mom had stayed out at the clinic so he’d tell the pediatrician much more than the truth (only he’d had access to), spinning all impossibly possible clever variations of don’t tell moms, never ever agains, lying through his nose and teeth. Weren’t manywhere-elses to blame it but on the ever eluding effing buzz

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Slips of Mind

‘You consider yourself learned and well-read, well I do—so would you mind telling me how you’d felt the moment you were born?’

His wide-eyed face grows featureless and his mind goes utterly blank. There’s little to think, he thinks. ‘I wouldn’t mind telling it if I knew but … Why’d you think up something like that?’, and he pulls a credible face of cheerlessness.

‘I understand.’ … She thinks. ‘How about an hour after you were born?’

There creeps: Silence.

‘No?’ … She thinks hard. ‘A day after?’

Silence stays.

‘I wouldn’t ask you anything I haven’t asked myself and to tell you the truth I couldn’t answer it either, nor could make up a lie about it.’

A Much Softer Power

‘My dear Satellites—daughter-sons, son-daughters, sons and daughters—know that you’re not baseborn, I Efolk am your forcibly long-estranged daddy. I seek obedience. Your military disobedience!’ Efolk then came down the blasted field, dumped all the gathered IDs and flushed them down the World Commode.

Little girl wakes.

Weltgeist had once sailed ships, more often than not crashing against and into waves before it could trace shores. It also rode headless on horsebacks, from time to time sporting various head prosthetics, its horse blindfolded, falling into canyons and wells, often terrifying the daylights out of living dead, its head rolling and spinning as it rode. Then, it’d been flying aircrafts, often crashing into (of all places) residences. Lately, it’s been rather evasive.

Efolk permeates microwaves, germinates and materializes on monitors. He unmasks and his face is a collageal amalgam of a billion faces. ‘I’m terribly sorry it’s because of me, attempting to capture the me’s, Super O tripped, (falling multiple times) fell and demolished the air force and the eight Four Quarters. He the likes of whom never stay dead is not dead, only in comatose. I’ve never stood (or sat) so chapfallen as I do now.’

Super O is sleeping and experiencing rapid eye mo(ve)ments. [Place: World Minus First; Time: O Bright Irony] In the world of eternal night the Weltgeist, who’s now Mother Dominatrix whose one hand is a blunt feathered whip, whips once and it strikes a thousand gentle blows.

Tribefolks emerge from bunkers.

‘All the notified (remnants) of militants, military personnel, cops, scientists, strategists, priests, neo-atheists, godmen, domesticated Buddhas and Christs, unquestioning disciples, scientists, did I say net-evangelists, Twitterati, businessmen, leaders, advisers, policymakers, spectators, speakers, audience, readers, did I say writers, spectators, artists, entertainers, bureaucrats, militants and many, many more of mal-intent (guilty before McDhamma dictum, guilty by words and deeds, guilty more by words of consequence and deeds of consequence than mere words or deeds), I call all the listed and notified to submit yourselves immediately to your…our’ blip ‘respective representative lampposts before it…zzz’ beep ‘too late.’

The neo-tribefolks of all shapes and attire alongside tribefolks emerge from their bunkers holding on to their saws and axes. They take to streets and highways, every nook and corner, take positions, take charge and fell all the lampposts.

All the powerful line up backs to each other, into one another, in lines, nines of men, the fifth of whom facing one woman, beside, behind, all around her lines of nines of men backs to each other amid women, a zigzag assembly of tens and hundreds of thousands. Weltgeist whips once, hips thrust, and all that’s soft knead what’s stiff. With every whip, outside, the dim lights grow bright. Super O is sleeping,  breaks into a sweat.

A little girl wakes (in a world where roosters have been long extinct) to the flushing of a commode, yawns ‘Ooommhm,’ and lights a lantern. She walks to the street and witnesses a commune of the left right (center up down north south) behind. ‘Are you by chance making tee, cofi or what?’ A woman withdraws from her anti-missionary position, hops and comes to the girl. ‘Just love, honey.’ ‘Can you…fly?’ ‘Oh! No,’ looking sideways and back, ‘they call this a no-clear mutation. To me, just a pointless extension.’ ‘Where’s your leg?’ ‘Same place your nose gone to!’ Little girl runs across the lane, claws up a tree, and tunes her walkie-toykie. ‘This is Nonose, Nonose…speaking.’

The blunt whip keeps blowing and the lights grow bright to blinding and then it again grows dim. Weltgeist realizes these much softer powerhouses get overcome by fatigue, notices sagging balls and failing hard-ons, sighs, says no worries, and deploys Mayagra shots. The whips strike, hips thrust,  what’s stiff penetrates all that’s soft.  The lights outside brightens and brightens. It grows blinding and then all the lights burst, clatter and smoke. The world of eternal night turns eternal darkness. Weltgeist bellows, Oh! Dark paradox. Super O is sleeping, coughs and profusely sweats.

 The little girl woke up, came stumbling through the dark, and lit a candle.