Here & There Words

Book-ish stuff and the like

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Gaiutra Bahadur on her book, Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture.

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House is Black, A Film by Forough Farrokhzad

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Mujh Se Pehli Si Mohabbat (Don’t Ask Me Now, Beloved) by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, recited by Zohra Sehgal 

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What Do Jay Z And Shakespeare Have In Common? Swagger

For our weekly word watch, we turn to "the idea of tremulous motion, swaying backwards and forward." Put another way, we are talking about swagger.

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Ruth Ozeki w/ David Palumbo-Liu discussing her novel ,A Tale for the Time Being, at Stanford University 

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I have been a stranger here in my own land: All my life

Sophocles, Antigone

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Stars and blossoming fruit trees: Utter permanence and extreme fragility give an equal sense of eternity.

Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

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As a society, you were unwilling to reflect upon the shared pain that united you with those who attacked you. You retreated into myths of your own difference, assumptions of your own superiority. And you acted out these beliefs on the stage of the world, so that the entire planet was rocked by the repercussions of your tantrums, not least my family, now facing war thousands of miles away.

Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist

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One thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire: how not to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era. By day it pursues its enemies. It is cunning and ruthless, it sends its bloodhounds everywhere. By night it feeds on images of disaster: the sack of cities, the rape of populations, pyramids of bones, acres of desolation.

J.M. Cotetzee, Waiting for Barbarians 

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"By lifting imagery associated with the global south and restyling it with an unapologetically gaudy insistence on its “otherness,” M.I.A empowers both herself and brown kids worldwide who had previously only been the subjects of Otherization, not the agents. Her reappropriation of the exotic kitsch brands subaltern struggle with dance-pop cool, while triumphantly avoiding privileging white consumption."

S/O to Ayesha A. Siddiqi for this baller essay! Check out her twitter and blog

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Alchemical - Paul Celan

Alchemical  Silence, like Gold cooked in charred Hands.

Vast, grey, near as all that is Lost Sisterly-Shape:

All the Names, all the with- Burnt up Names. So much Ash to be blessed. So much Land gained above the light, so light Soul- Rings.

Vast. Grey. Clinker- less.

You, then. You with the pale bitten-out bud, You in the Wine-Flood.

(Did it not discharge us too, this Hour? Good, Good, that your Word died away here.)

Silence, like Gold cooked, in charred, charred Hands. Fingers, smoke-thin. Like Crowns, Air-Crowns around – –

Vast. Grey. Track- less. Queen- like.

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Very cool operatic adaptation of Italo Calvino's novel Invisible Cities performed at the Los Angeles Union Station!  

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"One has to convey in a language that is not one’s own the spirit that is one’s own. One has to convey various shades and omissions of a certain thought-movement that looks maltreated in an alien language. I use the word “alien”, yet English is not really an alien language to us…We cannot write like the English. We should not. We cannot write only as Indians. We have grown to look at the large world as part of us. Our method of expression therefore has to be a dialect which will some day to prove to be as distinctive and colourful as the Irish or the American." - Raja Rao 

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I am primarily, absolutely a Caribbean writer. The English language is nobody’s special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property to the language itself. I have never felt inhibited in trying to write as well as the greatest English poets. Now that has led to a lot of provincial criticism: the Caribbean critic may say, “You’re trying to be English,” and the English critic may say, “Welcome to the club.” These are two provincial statements at either end of the spectrum.

Derek Walcott 

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Funeral Blues - W. H. Auden

I Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead, Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public     doves,  Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. For nothing now can ever come to any good.

II O the valley in the summer where I and my John Beside the deep river would walk on and on While the flowers at our feet and the birds up above Argued so sweetly on reciprocal love, And I leaned on his shoulder; 'O Johnny, let's play': But he frowned like thunder and he went away.

O that Friday near Christmas as I well recall When we went to the Charity Matinee Ball, The floor was so smooth and the band was so loud And Johnny so handsome I felt so proud; 'Squeeze me tighter, dear Johnny, let's dance till it's day': But he frowned like thunder and he went away.

Shall I ever forget at the Grand Opera When music poured out of each wonderful star? Diamonds and pearls they hung dazzling down Over each silver and golden silk gown; 'O John I'm in heaven,' I whispered to say: But he frowned like thunder and he went away.

O but he was fair as a garden in flower, As slender and tall as the great Eiffel Tower, When the waltz throbbed out on the long promenade O his eyes and his smile they went straight to my heart; 'O marry me, Johnny, I'll love and obey': But he frowned like thunder and he went away.

O last night I dreamed of you, Johnny, my lover, You'd the sun on one arm and the moon on the other, The sea it was blue and the grass it was green, Every star rattled a round tambourine; Ten thousand miles deep in a pit there I lay: But you frowned like thunder and you went away.

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Time that withers you will wither me. We will fall like ripe fruit and roll down the grass together. Dear friend, let me lie beside you watching the clouds until the earth covers us and we are gone.

Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

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Aaron the Moor's monologue 

"Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things As willingly as one would kill a fly, And nothing grieves me heartily indeed But that I cannot do ten thousand more."