drunk with love, I wander in the dark
"Ah my brother, the ink on the paper is like smoke in the air. What words are there to tell how long a night can be? Drunk with love, I wander in the dark." Some words by Paul Bowles in A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard, high on Moroccan kif.
What words are there? So-called 'travellers' often just wander in the dark. How to illuminate themselves and the universal through their stories? That is the seed of this blog. To be drunk with love, then live to tell the tale:
"'WHERE NOTHING IS WHAT IT SEEMS, and no-one is to be trusted,' I think, walking up a hill at night after a day’s reading and writing. There is no moon, but faint stars light my way. Stumbling, I’m aware of having to forget about books, my mind is not much use out here. My breath tells me how far it is, and my heartbeat gauges any impending danger. A beat jerking up and down along the rough track, where all I can see are degrees of darkness. But I get to the top of the hill. I can turn back or keep going, either way is down. The ledge is everywhere, and with every step I go over it." Some words - an extract - from my book-length work-in-progress, currently titled No Subtitles.
When the time - the light, the love, the intoxication - is right: it will all be published. Plentiful fuel invites a fire of inspiration to rage, and can break open seeds. But to blossom, consciousness and sensitivity cannot be forgotten. Polish poet-on-the-road Ryszard Kapuscinski says it best: "One has to understand and accept the dignity of other people, and share their distress. But it is not enough, to only put your own life on the line. Most important of all, is the respect for the people about whom one is writing." (my translation from the German edition Die Erde Ist Ein Gewalttätiges Paradies)
posted by mois @ 10:21 am
1 comments
1 Comments:
Lars! Bin bei Euch in Dharamsala! Verfolge die auf und ab und ab und auf abenteuer...
Before consulting my blog today, I was reading a review of Shantaram, by Australian author Gregory David Roberts in Meanjin magazine. In 2003 I was at the launch of his very fat book, and was fascinated by the guy's life story: philosophy student who became addicted to heroin, was captured in an armed robbery to support his habit, but escaped and became an international fugitive. The book is loosely based on his ten years in India, learning three languages in the slums of Mumbai, starting up a community hospital, smuggling arms, working for the Afghan mafia, fighting on the side of the Mujahadeen...
At the launch I couldn't afford to buy his book. I kept going to intimate launches to ask questions of the authors and see their eyes, but could never afford to buy their signed hardbacks. Then this book became a huge bestseller, and like Harry Potter and Dan Brown, I left it for later reading. Why shouldn't it be good, if everybody loves it? Well, I have a compulsion to keep hunting for undiscovered gems. And just because something is bought by the masses, does it mean they all love it? Like when I went to hire a DVD the other day and chose took three 1960s films to the counter: "Did you know for an extra $5 you could hire New Releases?" I said do you think I chose this older movies because they are a couple of bucks cheaper?
Anyways, I read a review about a book I haven't read. But like I "know" New York from TV dramas, I "know" India from the novels and stories of Rushdie et al. It is this issue that the review chews over already with the first sentence: "Has there been any country as much written about from the the outside as India?" The answer is: "Why?".
"The greatest peril of travelling in India is not catching Delhi belly, but, as the author of the hefty book on the table, Gregory David Roberts, notes, it's constantly being told by other travellers what India is: 'being stared at with the vague, almost accusatory censure of those who've convinced themeselves...they've found the one true path.' And that's when it strikes me: India, even when you're in the midst of it, is an imaginary place, always has been. As Rushdie says in his book Imaginary Homelands (1992), we all create 'Indias of the mind', seeing and remembering what we want to see and rememember..."
The review is by "Australindian" Sunil Badami in the 'Australasia' issue of Meanjin. The identity politics being ripped apart in poetry, essays, letters, fiction & reviews in this issue makes proud to be Australian - because it doesn't aim to present an answer and asks: what the hell does Australia mean?
Seeing the eyes of someone on the one true path is scary. They are in denial of the fact that all we can do is seeing and remembering what we want to see and rememember...
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