Doors to the Doors

Unlike every piece of worth-hearing music, you don't listen to the Doors every time. They are special, not only because they remain one of the most classic hard rock bands ever, but because the Audience has to be in a "Doors" mood to really feel them out.

"There Are Things Known, and Things Unknown, and In Between Are the Doors"

True.

Doors need you to open your minds, and they dive inside, and then they swim in a never ending jelly marshmallow of your insides, and you feel faint and alive at the same time, and you can't sleep and you can't stay awake either, so you hear more and more, more and more, until you lose track of time or your senses, where every fall of the pigeon's feather bangs hard on your soul, and every heartbreak, every dejection falls on feathery ground and is washed away silently, without mattering much to you anymore.

"All right
Wild child full of grace
Savior of the human race
Your cool face
Natural child, terrible child
Not your mother's or your father's child
Your our child, screamin' wild
An ancient lunatic reigns
In the trees of the night
Ha, ha, ha, ha"

* Legends stay on forever. My Respects!




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRAr354usf8

The Great Gig in the Sky

 "And I am not frightened of dying, any time will do, I don't mind.

Why should I be frightened of dying?
There's no reason for it, you've gotta go sometime."
"If you can hear this whispering you are dying."
"I never said I was frightened of dying."

Sometimes, just some odd times, you hate the all the preaching in the songs. All that goes on about what-is, what-is-not and what-could-have-been. And to put it just so simply, you give a damn about what the singer croons about. So it’s a big deal huh!

On those nights (yes, it has to be a night), put on a spoonful of Silence into your system first. Intoxicated with the noiseless everything already, do silently turn on your players and open the Floyd folder.

Go to “The Great Gig in the Sky”.     

Hit Play. 

Hit Full Volume.

After a whimper, and a whisper, a series of searing blood curling wails fill up the atmosphere. And as they progress on, with the piano pieces, you would feel all the sense organs of your body having stopped responding to any other stimuli. None at all. Those wordless wails write more and speak more than any other strings of words tied together. Frankly, it is difficult (nay, Impossible!) to document these feelings, just as it is to comprehend how such heavenly pieces of music must have been created.

For people interested in the background of it, the Song “Great Gig in the Sky” was pieced together by Richard Wright, with the wails by Clare Torry, who again was a discovery of Alan Parsons (the Floyd Album Engineer).

Some say, Clare almost declined the offer to sing and went off to a Chuck Berry Concert that night.

Some say, Pink Floyd almost used Astronaut voice recordings in space in the song instead of the Wails.

Some just forgot how history is created!!!

-Palash

May’2013, Lumding.

The Ants of this Night

 White Ants,

Grow wings,

On this night,

Inside the crevices of our momentous celebration.

As the distant drum rolls welcome the rains,

As the parched blades of grass revel in wetness,

As the widows turn out their moth eaten curtains,

Millions of white ants,
Grow wings of elation,

Dancing in million madness’s,

Towards a lesser sun,

Inadequate in its artificiality,

And towards their untimed,

Unplanned, uncorked,

Circle of Death.

-Palash

May’2013, Lumding.

Parcels of Destiny

With his tiny platypus feet,
the son of the soil,
tags along to a school,
with bags and expectations, as loaded,
as the freedom in his rusted iron pickaxe.

Soon, pretty soon,
wrung out from the bare meals,
his farmers' family missed,
an albatross would appear,
and fly away to abandon,
guiding our scion,
to society's righteousness.

The bird would teach him life,
to fish, to hunt, to fly as the flock flies, and
no more...for all his sober hourglasses,
would tick in satisfaction :

-The day wont be far,
when two meals would turn to four,
farmlands to machinery,
trees to oriental antiques,
family to acquaintances,
and,
happiness could be bought at last,
in the daily bazaars without haggling to death.

In the confused maze of abundance then,
the albatross, which guided the very Ulysses through Hades's world,
would leave our young child,
torn in a cycle of contentment and bereavement.

"If only, you'd have asked,
If only, you'd have dreamed,
If only, you'd have shunned satisfaction,
I would've shown you,
How it is to fly,
to soar above the clouds!"

 

-Palash

April'2013,
Lumding.

The Sparrows of Joy

Two years back, there used to be a nest of sparrows in the attic of our office. Every morning, as I opened the door to our top floor, there would be a hectic flutter of activity inside-with all of them birds frantically bumping into glass panes of the windows, to find a way out from the intruder who had just disturbed their nightly tranquil. Already flustered by my 20 min delay, I would rush to my table, only to find the papers all cluttered (definitely not the way I left them), a sheaf of hay protruding from my drawer and sparrow poop littering one of the paperweights. It would then take me only about 1/10th of a second to lose my cool and start yelling at anyone and everyone who dared call me at that hour.

So not the way to start the morning with!

Soon, I would be busy with the daily activities- phone calls, reports, project deadlines, field visits, inspections and more phone calls. Unperturbed to my presence now, the family of sparrows would keep darting in and out from the little holes they made in the false ceiling, chirp some more, and then fly away to their neighbours nearby - on the Water Tanks and the Godown, perhaps to gossip or gather their  food for the day.

Every day, I would leave my desk clean. And every day, I would return to find it impossibly messy.

Things had gone too much out of hand. So, one Sunday morning, we changed the ceiling panels, and nailed a wire netting all across the attic. The sparrows were finally kept at bay. The next day, I actually relished the thought of them birds not getting a chance to make a bed out of my desk papers. I was finally happy.

Or so I thought.

Two, perhaps three weeks later, I began to find something amiss.  The sparrows were gone. My desk was clean now. There was no more the noisy chirp of their arguments to disturb my work. Still, I did not stop barking at my phone calls. I did not stop getting impossibly angry at office. I did not stop feeling distraught.

In fact, I realized (albeit a bit late) that I missed that steady hum of activity all around me. Their comical gossip. The frantic search for that one morsel that would save their day. And despite that   tomorrow all of them might actually starve, they would still celebrate the night cluttering up my desk. Perhaps my getting fumed up never was related to them poor sparrows. In their absence, they instilled in me a new belief on life. I changed. I kept a window ajar every night for them to come back. But the sparrows were nowhere to be seen.

Two years hence, a lot of water has passed down the bridge. In between frantic bursts of activity, I do think of the birds even now. Yesterday, like any other, I shut shop at 1900 hours sharp, and left the left corner window open. Today morning, the key took unusually long to turn the old lock. Already worried over a looming inspection, I hurriedly threw my folder on the desk. Over sparrow poop.

My eyes stared in disbelief and the heart danced in bliss. The Sparrows of Joy were back! Finally!



-Palash
March’2013, Lumding.

Stolid Nights

The hour shies away from the midnight gong,
reluctant to step into change,
though inevitable as the familiar tick tock,
of the famished lizard crawling on my wall.

Beneath my humanitarian back,
two cockroaches make merry,
playing jump to death,
on my crisp absurdly clean bedsheets.

In the corner,
The  four mosquitoes throw a toast-
"The summer's here at last!,
and we'll have our full"
And I waver in non chalance,
of blood draining,
only from the limbs this time around.

Dodging mysteries and revelations,
Drowned in cliches,
My atmosphere refuses to breathe today,
muting even the deafening loco horn,
to a whimper of this whimsical night.

Nothing does matter anymore.



-Palash
March'13, Lumding.

You listen to it one day, wondering what the hell in the world is that torn jeans-skinny bugger with the voice of a banshee is shreaking about. You shut it down.

You play it another fine day, cross the vocals, come over to the magical electro-acoustic solo. You shut it down again. Never coming to the end of the 8.03 min epic masterpiece of a song.

Grave injustice.

On and off, off and on, it plays, and somehow the music, the beats,and the swings start finding a niche in your soul. Slowly, You get tied to it, invisibly chained, culminating in a bond that can never ever be broken now.

It is now a part of your life. It becomes a part of who you are. The day starts with it, and ends with it. In odd little places, it springs up suddenly, raising a depressed you to the most dynamic peaks, and throwing a foolishly high you to the most sober depths.

They say its creators were temporarily, proponents of the dark-the voodoo. Perhaps some of that got sprinkled over. Or perhaps, there never was a more Godly song.

Each time, each and every single time, its a different experience altogether. The original, the remasters, the tributes, every single recording ever done.

Led Zeppelin are legends.

Starway to Heaven is their priceless gift to the world.