Morning Ragas One and Two

 

 A raga is a particular form of  Hindustani classical music. For those with ears more musical than mine, there is much to explore within the tradition and the complexity. Unlike most western music, there is a specific association in many cases with time of day and even season. As the sun was lighting up the sky this morning, I remembered a concert of ragas in a church hall in a suburb of Indianapolis many years ago. It is music to get lost in and find yourself again. It is, like jazz, played by musicians who know their instruments and the traditions of the music well, but play within that framework--riffing off each other, if I can extend my mini-musical knowledge with another cross-cultural metaphor. I remembered watching the music unfold and the feelings it created within me.

I miss the music and music making and the friends who dubbed me 'Ganesh-an' after the elephant-headed God, Ganesh. Ganesh is known, among other things, as the remover of obstacles and seems to be associated with travelling and good beginnings. In the early morning on the far north coast of Scotland, those motifs began running in my head. 

Ganesh is often pictured dancing. I have several images gifted to me by my friends. In the one on my mantel, Ganesh has bells on his ankles and is dancing. If you look at it for more than a moment, you can hear the bells. In another miniature, a tiny Ganesh stands still with a parasol over his head. Perhaps it's meant to indicate a traveller, but to me it looks like the doo dah man of New Orleans jazz. 

And so what else could I do but make my own morning ragas?

 

Early Morning Raga I

Perhaps the sun arrives today with news

to lift my heavy tread. When did my feet

become so earthbound stiff and slow?

If I could fly what would I see instead

of walls and floors and all the chores to do

for those of us born out of clay and sea?

 

After Coffee Morning Raga II 

Begin with mismatched socks

stripes on one foot dots on the other

or stars or sheep whatever once

made you smile

Put on that smouldering red shirt today

What have you been saving it for?

We’ve already had the rainy days

More than Noah and his overcrowded ark endured

Before the flood washed the world clean again

Come out among the flotsam and the jetsam

fabric torn and left flapping in the breeze

prayer flags for wayfarers in our strange new old world.

 

Boris Johnson’s New Hairdo and the Rhetoric of our Times

 

I am a writer. I used to be reluctant to say that because I have a great deal of regard for writers, and I am by nature someone who thinks I am too small for whatever needs doing. In the sense I want to offer up today, we are all writers. A writer constructs narratives or stories. We all do that to make sense of our world. We need stories in which we can tuck all the troublesome details of everyday life so we can get on with things.

Boris Johnson was renowned for his singular narratives that were more expedient than factual long before he became prime minister. If I were an investigative journalistic kind of writer, I’d insert here references and examples. I’m telling a story so familiar to us all now that I don’t think that’s necessary. Despite knowing he told porkies—as my husband says—he managed to become Prime Minister. And that brings me to his hair—again I might properly insert here examples or references to expert opinion, but I hope without that we can agree for the moment that deliberately mussing up his hair was part of his, self-generated narrative—the part that was meant to say something like ‘Gosh, I may get it wrong sometimes, but I am just a guy trying to do my best for the team.’ And we were supposed to feel as if we were a team.

The team-based rhetoric has also been the narrative of the mainstream media. The news and the newspapers, where we could and should get more nuanced storytelling, report on Covid as if it were a sporting event. Every day we have scores—Covid cases, hospitalisations, deaths—always delivered with just the right emphasis to show some sympathy. As if to counter that, we have numbers of vaccinations and boosters, including a grand total of those vaccinated. Covid is the bad guy; those of us on the booster side are the good guys. As with the Olympics coverage, we are also regularly treated to vignettes of heroes or tragedies. It is, of course, much too simple. Dangerously simple.

That simplified story allows those not on the right team to be vilified. I actually heard someone say of a person not vaccinated who died of the disease that ‘he got what he deserved.’ It also precludes looking at the things we can do—in addition to the vaccinations—to protect ourselves and our loved ones—opening windows, staying home when we can, but most of all being kind to ourselves and to each other no matter what story we tell ourselves.

Truth, they say, is the first victim of war, and I think now the mainstream narrative is shifting to that of a war time drama. And it begins with Boris Johnson’s hair. Now that the ship he has not been steering for some time is sinking as the Covid scorecard gives the game away, he has combed his hair as if to say I am your captain and we will ride this out together. It will take more than a haircut to get this narrative to float, I think, but I am often befuddled by the stories people choose to tell themselves.

As a writer, I am starting here to construct a more inclusive narrative, and I urge you all to join in. No one asked for Covid; no one ‘deserves’ whatever the wily little collection of proteins dishes up. Scientists don’t have all the answers—nor is there a single ‘answer’ to any of the many questions raised by this pandemic. The government could have/should have done better. Public health has been underfunded with now drastic consequences, and we need all of us to be looking around with an eye for more complex narratives: beyond heroes and villains, winners and losers, and above all beyond any rhetoric that puts us at odds with each other.