Jangled and tingled into harmony

by Azerbaijani artist Rashad Alakbarov

A blog by definition requires regular input - a daily web log. If not daily then intermittently. At least that's the general idea.

I find I've been unable to pay it much attention these days as so much has been going on - visitors, family reunited, daughter's high school graduation, work projects, research, not to mention battening down the hatches as bomb blasts wreak their domino effects on life in the city by the sea. Outer explosions do seem to trigger inner implosions; not so much of depression, but of sharp edged sobriety.

Perhaps if I had more than 6 followers I would feel more obliged to share my creative juices. I'm not convinced there is much interest out there in what I have to say - which is fine, because my real motivation in maintaining this blog is simply to say it regardless. The sharing is a compulsion. And I don't try to labour the posts. There's a stackload of blogposts titled and waiting to be written. When they come they write themselves quite swiftly. She's good that way, my muse.

But I haven't been able to get to the saying space much of late. Haven't even wanted to. Been too busy processing stuff and figuring things out. Observing. The multiple strands of life have been busily weaving  themselves into Kaffir Kalash braids. Vying tides swell the salty sea of existence into peaks and troughs.Like the coloured perspex pieces in Rashad Alakbarov's genius artwork, disparate shaped pieces float in seemingly random, asymmetrical order, unrelated to each other, but when light from a further vantage point is shone through them, the puzzle is resolved.

Lots of silence and emptying out has therefore been needed. So many noises and voices have been competing, half of them outside, half of them inside. There's a veritable cacophony going on in the inner menagerie. I've lost count of all the creatures and characters. And right now they are not sorting themselves out into coherent, separate narratives, but barking at each other with snarls and growls, grunts and squeals, rattles and chirps.

So jangled is where I'm at. And that's ok. I am witnessing the being jangled. I am curious about when the interior strings may cohere into a  baroque symphony, or when the timpani and brass might suddenly go fortissimo like the canon blast in Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture. Meanwhile I will enjoy the occasional and clear tingle from a triangle being percussed. They provide the punctuation in the slowly aggregating dissonance. Some light relief. A sonorous soprano sound signifying simplicity (the alliteration is accidental!) that will soon manifest.

Fa idha faraghta f'ansab, wa ila rabbika f'arghab. 

So when your work is done, turn to devotion, And make your Lord your sole quest.  

[94:7-8] trans: Tarif Khalidi