Those Precious Moments – Part 6

I don’t know how to answer Zush’s last post. I thought that by leaving it, my mind would somehow sprout into all kinds of wisdom. I’m staring at my laptop screen now, blank like a canvas devoid of it’s painter. A good beginning is important. I suppose I’m still looking for that beginning, the entrance to the conversation. Give me a few hours. Please.

I was ironing a big pile of clothes today. They were crisp with deep wrinkles . Maps of land that don’t exist. But if you used your imagination, you could definitely see a world living within the heap of shit I like to call, clothes that haven’t been ironed for months.

I started this post yesterday but never came back to it. I listened to old jazz records instead. And after that, opened a few cans of beer. I then ventured up into the attic, plugged in my guitar, turned the amp on, and jammed for hours. When I began it was light. When I finished I couldn’t see my hands. The whole thing was something else. Mind, body and soul disconnected from the physical, entering an exclusive haunt.

My guitar opens up a world. A world I walk in and out of, living through anything I want to live through. Be it the past, present of future, my guitar lets me into these places. It is my hero, my lover, my best friend, my conscience.

Our love for music, I later thought, must give birth from the same source. Zush explained “When you listen to any kind of music, you want to make your life more bearable. You get kicks from that music”. we connect with music because it understands us. Because the artists behind the instruments and the microphones are living and breathing the same air as us. Songs are mini riots. Explosions of colours that make up the world. We create the paintings from them.

Artists work for themselves. They have big egos and self-indulge. Its all part of the process. But no matter what they want us to feel from their songs, we take what we make of it. We’re all artists.

My clothes still looked liked maps after an hour of solid ironing. I didn’t care though. Hitomi Yaida’s –Kodoku na cowboy’ began to roar from my headphones. I was back in Malaysia with my best friend, being woken up by my little cousin at 6am in the morning. The cicadas were still chirping outside the window. The faint sounds of a dog barking. The draft of the air-conditioner. The mickey mouse clock ticking away annoyingly on top of the old television. The smell of cooked breakfast outside the bedroom door. My auntie telling off her son for breaking into our room. –Kodoku na cowboy’ takes me back to –that’ place.

I’m currently playing the song now. My heart remembers. It remembers because it’s telling me. Heavy like clouds about to rain. The chorus sends me back to that whole holiday. I’m now in –that’ place. That place Zush has mentioned before. Here is good karma.

 Wu-san

[to be continued]