Ugliness is all thats left.
Today I tried to play my flute after a long time, and at the first Kharaj a sound so ugly and wretched came out that I almost threw the flute at the wall. The loss of the beauty of the sur was so heartbreaking and cruel, the awful off note Kharaj seemed to mock me, point its finger and say hah you lost this too the last remnants of beauty, of soul and this is what you have now, this pitless desolation, this is who you are now. I have been trying again to develop a routine of sitting down and giving myself time again. Playing and writing. But it all fails me. Words and music seem to have turned their backs, the final abandonment. And it all hits me crashes over in waves which I try to surface with not half as much heart as I should. I miss the days when music came natural when it was all around me, Alis bansuri floating through the crevices of our misshapen apartment, filling them with light and gold and soul. Of playing in parking lots and odd hours. Of Ustad Hanif and the way, his notes would make you transcend time and space. The way they would lift you to higher planes and center you, ground you to existence. The healing that happened at Ustad gs listening to him go on about other ustads and past events and artists. Recounting lineages and personal stories and rules of classical in the same breath. Dissecting the raaga like a scientist, breaking it down, and explaining it like a storyteller. And in the very next momment breathing it into existence, summoning it, and the raga alive present, filling the room up, filling your heart up making it expand. Feeling a heart so big you never thought was possible.
I miss when music was all around me and came so natural, when I couldn’t find words but always found the raga, when Kharaj always collided into the taanpura birthing melodies. Now away from it all, forcing myself to sit down to play every day, trying and getting distracted. Of only being able to create agony and noise. Which infuriates me, disheartens and ridicules. I feel like an imposter, a wanna-be trying to be something I am not, do something I am not. And it doesnt flow with what is happening around or in my life. There is a disconnection. I dont have the energy or the heart to face myself after all I have ignored. And now after all this time someone is here asking me to return to music again, to myself, to forgive and heal the abandoning of self. He asks for nothing in return, we talk music and he is gone before I know it. So now I must let it all hurt, break down the embankments, walls and barriers. Because you cant do music in artificial sanitized curated surroundings even if that is your heart. Or in restrained waters. Music, when met with restrictions, transforms into something else, something ugly and harrowing as have I. It needs all of the universe to ring true, a note needs to echo through the vast plains of eternity and back to be true and so do I.
