Room for Squares

I think I am ambivalent about lunar calendars. And I hate full moons, full and fair looking down from a safe distance that says, “You can’t reach me. Flow all you want.” And flow we must. Lunar calendars make us flow faster. We age sooner, peeling off our skins until the whole thing becomes nothing short of a delirium. Ebb and flow, mere anarchy being loosed upon the world, blood-dimmed tide – you get the picture. It’s like a chaotic crescendo. You hear it rise up, like a mad fever, till it boils over and then things just fold up. The sun and this pompous, self-conscious moon would fold up too. And there won’t be any skin left to peel.

But there’s something slippery about April. Cruelest month. You bet. There’s something strange about these two guys. They talk about history and its measured movement as if it were all dissolved with a plastic spoon in a paper cup. Best to recycle. I think we’re at the edge of producing anything afresh. All this ‘meta’ talk and denial of the center. How happy we are now clinging onto the rim of this world as hopeless tangents.

Mathematics is fascinating. Algebra and trigonometry even more. I think with us – and I mean those on the other side of ‘narrative’ – everything seethes down to turning Back. You flow, fall or simply dangle – it’s all about going Back.

It’s almost been a year since I, like a tiny tangent, stumbled to make this move. 37 songs. One micro SD card. And one impersonal option: ‘format memory-card.’ And it’s amazing. It’s like affected amnesia. You consent and poof – wiped out from memory. Enter tabula rasa – a whiter shade of pale, almost like a sick moon. Tiny blackheads on its pretty, white face. And you walk out of the room and it’s all gone. Beginning from “Rebel Heart” of The Corrs, and ending with – see now I don’t remember. Oh well.

But I have accused myself of a clinical madness, something that I call semiotic fever. I read too much into symbols. Exploring ironies eh. Just today, I was told that I think Lord of the Rings is nothing but the Truth to me. And, a year ago, I was told that I take my Truth from Lord of the Rings. And strange that last year I defended myself and said: ‘No I don’t.’ And today, I said: ‘I will defend this claim till my death.’ Exploring dramatic ironies indeed. I was equally emphatic – both times.

So as I was dealing with my semiotic fever today, I remembered my old pal John Mayer with whom I haven’t spoken for a year. And I decided that I would – like a cheap loser – talk about four of his songs that complete an almost perfect square. And hence the title borrowed for this rant from his album: an aubade for the end of our pal-ship.

So I began my recalling “Love song for no one.” And two lines stood out: ‘I’m jaded. I hate it.’ Oh heck, this is what he really says:

Staying home alone on a Friday
Flat on the floor looking back
On old love
Or lack thereof
After all the crushes are faded
And all my wishful thinking was wrong
I'm jaded
I hate it

I'm tired of being alone
So hurry up and get here
So tired of being alone
So hurry up and get here

Searching all my days just to find you
I'm not sure who I'm looking for
I'll know it
When I see you
Until then, I'll hide in my bedroom
Staying up all night just to write
A love song for no one.

And so I thought of another pal, Prufrock. I always wondered what the J. stood for in his elusive name. Jaded? Maybe.

And then I tried so hard to recall one song that I would hum so much about six years ago. Six damn years. Feels like ages ago. At NCA, the three ‘burger queens from Grammar school’, we would talk about a depressing line from “’83,” ‘whatever happened to my, whatever happened to my, whatever happened to my lunchbox.’ And I still bloody wonder what happened to it? Recycled I’m sure. But “’83” was not the song. The song was “No such thing.” And it suddenly came back as some satanic verse. The cool – and not-so-satanic part – goes something like this:

They love to tell you ‘stay inside the lines’
But something’s better on the other side

I wanna run through the halls of my high school
I wanna scream at the top of my lungs
I just found out there's no such thing as the real world
just a lie you've got to rise above

I am invincible
I am invincible
I am invincible
As long as I’m alive

And so I thought about it – all. “Noble lies” were mentioned last night. And I thought that hey, I still like good ol’ John for his elemental truth. I am on the other side, right hand-corner of some elaborate constructed ‘discourse’, and I have finally figured out that it was all a goddamn lie. Because the Truth – and iktilaaf is NOT a mercy my friend – lies on the other side, in one tiny corner. I seriously want to run through that corridor of the Convent (that I think about when I am feeling that feeling of endlessness) and scream out and say: ‘It’s all smoke and mirrors.’ After almost two and half decades, it’s all smoke and mirrors.

And, it’s funny that a year ago, I would relish this bit: ‘I am invincible as long as I’m alive.’ And Mayer says this with such spirit. And today – it took me a year to see – how this (too) is dramatically ironic. I have time till I am breathing. But once the clock stops ticking, it’s over. ‘Hurry up please, it’s time,’ the bartender says in “A Game of Chess.” See, bloody squares again. Check-mate. Game-over.

So I paused and wondered. “Why, Georgia” played in my head. And I have to admit that good ol’ John was better as a lyricist than a musician. And I wondered where he’ll be at the End of All Things. Because it makes one – at least it makes me pause and wonder where I’ll be – as he says:

I rent a room and I fill the spaces with
Wood in places to make it feel like home
But all I feel’s alone
It might be a quarter-life crisis
Or just the stirring in my soul

Either way, I wonder sometimes
About the outcome
Of a still, verdictless life.

Everybody is just a stranger but
That’s the danger in going my own way
I guess it’s the price I have to pay
Still “everything happens for a reason”
Is no reason not to ask myself

If I am living it right
Am I living it right?
Am I living it right?
Why Georgia, why?

What I like best about this is when he says: ‘either way’ – and if you haven’t heard the song (which I advise you not to now, trust me) – you’ll notice that it’s the backbone of the verse. Extended metaphor of the quarter-life crisis, stirring in the soul, and the angst (God, I hate this word) with the ‘AM I living it right’ bit. And that’s the overwhelming question: am I? What to do and how to live. So says the Dostoevsky dude. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that has been Given to us. So says the Gandalf dude. And so have many other Dudes with staffs. But we’ve had our Miracle. Each verse sent down on the heart. Just today, I was telling someone that we format memory cards, and replace the 37 mp3s with the Last 10 m4as and few from in between and listen to each verse as a new, meticulous habit. 114 of those. And each on one heart. And never do we pause and think about this still, verdictless life. No either ways about this. We can be moral without a staff.

And so I remembered, “Back to you.” I remembered my Sufi days. But I wasn’t embarrassed. Nor did I feel sinful. Because the analogy does make sense. That’s what metaphors are for: hieroglyphic truths, no coercive, assertive finalities. And the whole year, with its lunar slippery slope where we dangle as tangents, came back like that damn Porter’s persistent knocking.

Back to you
It always comes around
Back to you
I tried to forget you
I tried to stay away
But it’s too late

Over you
I’m never over
Over you
Something about you
It’s just the way you move
The way you move me

I’m so good at forgetting
And I quit ever game I play
But forgive me, love
I can’t turn and walk away, (this way)

Back to you
It always comes around
Back to you
I walk with your shadow
I’m sleeping in my bed
With your silhouette

Should have smiled in that picture
If it’s the last that I’ll see of you
It’s the least that you
Could not do

Leave the light on
I’ll never give up on you
Leave the light on
For me too

Back to me
I know that it comes
Back to me
Doesn’t it scare you
Your will is not as strong
As it used to be.

And so the Sufis I think like to play with fire. But then I wonder what Momin Khan Momin meant when he said:

Kyūn suney arz muztarib Momin
Sanam ākhir Khudā nahīn hotā

And that’s that. It scares me now that at least my will is not that strong as it used to be. And it really is late, and getting later than usual. I think of the verse about the Spider. And I remember Ungoliant and Shelob, and then about what it really means to dangle from a spider’s nest. Each one would taste Death. Then (the ‘then’ adds that assertive Finality where no one would be really late anymore), unto Us you shall be Returned. And that’s the point when once the lights go out, sun, moon, stars, all would be folded up, it’ll be so dark that even bare skin won’t matter.

And this is just another April after a painful lunar year. Perhaps there is still room for more narrow squares and pointed corners on this side of the fence.

Friday, 11 April 2008