Soul he said. Soul as the prison of the body. Soul I asked? What about the ones who don’t believe? In soul. Or God. Or religion. The ones that understand the body for what it is. Accept its one-way journey towards the inevitable. The body as decay. Gradual ruin. Eventual crumbling. We all know this. Or those that think the ‘inner core’, or what I presume is a ‘substitute’ for the notion of ‘soul’, is actually just an ever changing, evolving, fermenting mass of literature that grows. And grows. And knows freedom. And fear. And emotion. And love. And death. And every kind of existential angst that any soul worth its weight in gold would know! What about me? I asked. Or you for that matter. We who write and read and write and continue to both read and write while our bodies grow old and tired. But the mind. The mind remains in a state of excitement. Constantly radiant. Its brilliance grows with every new thought. What if we substitute ‘literature’ for ‘soul’ in your proud statement so that it now reads ‘Literature as the prison of the body’. The thing is that this doesn’t hold. Literature cannot be a space that restricts movement. Or freedom. At least it shouldn’t be. It is meant to be a liberating presence. Like its close companion. The dark. For me the dark is important. The dark as a substitute for soul? Maybe. Darkness is essential for literature of meaning to grow and take root.
Imagine a life in which all of us have the freedom and yes, luxury, to pursue a life of exactly what we love. After all, if you spent each moment of each day doing what you love, you can’t help but be the best in the world at it. Like music and the daily practice of it! You become not only adept at playing you excel in it. And what is more you get to smile every day for doing so. And you work at it almost to the exclusion of personal hygiene! Your friends come knocking on your door, saying, ‘‘Don’t you need a vacation?!,’’ and you don’t even know what the word ‘vacation’ means because what you’re doing is what you want to do and a vacation from that is anything but a vacation—that’s the state of mind of somebody who’s doing what others might call visionary and brilliant.
The thing about the spirit is that it knows the truth of the heart. I do not mean this in any ‘medical’ manner. I specifically refer to that part of our inner landscape where freedom roams. A space without any kind of world-driven ‘bandish’, which is a finer word (and a musical one!) than its English counterpart, ‘bondage’. This ‘roaming’ send signals of well-being to the heart and makes the mind see things with great clarity. This process of ‘seeing’ triggered by a sense of, if I may add, creative well-being is what we sometimes sense as our spirit. The spirit is a doer. One that is in instinctive opposition to its mirror-opposite. The non-doer. The ‘doing’ and the non, doing, is in this context, specific to you the individual self. It is not to be confused with ‘providing’, ‘doing one’s duty, ‘caring for others at all cost’. A Self we often neglect. Ours. Our Selves. Spending a lifetime for others is a fine and amazing way of being human. But it does build a certain ‘anxiety’ that accumulates. Layer after layer of ‘goodness’ at the cost of one’s own well-being. I am not advocating a philosophy of selfishness! Just trying to explore how one may live also for one’s inner being amidst the chaos of all our ‘other’ lives. Not by neglecting but by doing.
What do you fear when you fear fear?
What is it about the number twelve that I fear? The sundering of the night? It’s division into two? Partition? The severing of the cord? The odour of Midnight? The beginning of anxiety that the subsequent ringing of hours will not quieten? The Noir etched into my consciousness? Of films seen? The literature from my growing days? The one I read? The stories I heard repeated? As oral tales? From a father who had seen a land wracked? Made wretched? In the name of freedom? Of an entire country turned into a crematorium? For what? Are inherited memories so real that I must relive them? Like burnt images?
When the clock struck twelve that fateful night of ‘freedom’ I became a slave. To Fear.
I fear the knocking of the night at my door as the clock strikes twelve.
Refuse
refuse speech
the freedom
to speak stifle
the light
shutting tight
its eyes
the face faceless
hollow
caved in on a chest
breathless unable
to heave
alone alone
the foresaken
night night pierce
sharply
his hands
like nails
smear
his brow
with shadows
thus bloodied
let darkness reign
and reign.
Naveen Kishore is a photographer, theatre lighting designer, poet, & the publisher of Seagull Books
(This appeared in print as 'Freedom Song'.)
