First the song it rattled.
There has to be a point of realisation, where everything that is to come would have been, pointlessly existing even before coming to life. Words that have yet to surface would plunge into the depths of the dark, staying secret before all eyes. Here is the collection of such words, just enough to pause for a moment but weak enough to demand that final point beyond which no further memory would be recorded. A suspension of all ideas and emotions. But first, before I say goodbye, let’s hear that song rattle.
When you’re as selective and undoubtedly limited when it comes to styles in music as I am, and swear by the simplicity of both lyrics and music, then the only place you could enjoy the real roots of contemporary folk music is the Boston/Cambridge area of the state of Massachusetts. There I sat in a bar, listening to any old musician who would pull out the chords and the phrases which would paralyse me. Folk music, the guitar rattling, the voice filled with emotion. The music follows a linear path and the words echo that almost dying and sorrowful but gently fragile realisation of a sometimes futile but ultimately wonderful life and its equally mind boggling challenges. How could you not fall in love with the world upon hearing that music? How could you not love the place you were in when first that chord chimed its way into your ears?
All my favourite songs took on a new meaning because I was travelling the roads they were written on. They could have possibly been written on. Were inspired on. And then I remembered home and realised that I am much alone there. For five days I was in a place with likeminded people, where everything that I love is the lowest common denominator. Where everything that I am inspired by is taken as a given on any random Wednesday night. Where a conversation will begin with not places but names, titles of songs, titles of pages that line books of grandeur. Only in Cambridge will you get a soul searching folk song with your beer. Only in Boston will The Weepies CD start playing in an indie bookstore’s coffee shop. Only on these streets will they know every single singer songwriter I praise as deity in this ungodly life of mine.
Then came the city.
Then came the city where dreams are rarely made, since it’s said to never sleep. And as threatening as it may seem at first encounter, it is the gentlest places I know. Ruthlessly fast, but shimmeringly gentle on closer look. Like a dragon waiting to be loved, it lets you touch and bask in its beauty, ready to take you on journeys you’ve never thought. You love the crowds of people hurling through its streets, barely exchanging a glance let alone a brush of shoulders. The cloud of stench that carries you from avenue to avenue, that you grow to miss when in a corner it disappears from sight. Excuse me, do you know where I could find some peace and quiet? Seek not that which we do not have here.
New York City felt comfortable, homely, familiar. I felt it embrace me with its wide avenues and orderly numbered streets, with its chaotic sections of its chief Manhattan, the island formerly boasting many hills. Now this flatland of fortunes looks only to provide you with coffee to go and a good advice before an opportunity for world market domination would arise. Still, amongst the many faces I felt at ease, like I was one of them, a nobody on the streets of a city designed to be ruled by the people of the world.
Coming down has never been more heartbreaking. Seamlessly sifting through the streets of a supposedly busy Budapest I saw that my first love is a dreamy, sleepy little town. I commuted twenty four hours to my out of town, countryside retreat, where they not only speak a different language but have sharply objectionable ideas about political and economic unambiguity. But I could not help but be glad and smile. Because I am happy and proud, glad that I am here to share the burden, happy to be here paying my way into this new world we’re building. Happy to be a part of a place with history and not so busy streets. A humane, huggable city of twisting and narrow streets, always cleared of litter lest the angry mob should build barricades in sign of their growing disapproval of the tongue in cheek politics of the so called fathers of our homeland.
Now I rest my pen.
And with this trip to a place where I felt maybe I should or could belong, I feel the time has come for me to rest my pen. I have come full circle and have grown tired of caring too much and not caring at all. You have seen much of me and have travelled a lot with me. You have held the magnifying glass, seeing deep into my soul and have carried the map open at the page where the wind took me. You have endured pages that spoke of a lover without love. You have read, all along, a fractured and misleading interpretation of an evolving democracy founded on quicksand, managing to stay standing only by holding onto a thread. You have listened to the world’s finest songs with me. You have made me feel there was a need once for the words that made it onto this page.
Thank you. Now find another blog where the writer needs all your support. Find an idea that can inspire you. Find a day when all your fears disappear. Find a city you can love as much as I love the one I got. In the meantime, learn to be kind to everyone around you.
Everyone, everywhere.
