“‘Feel”was released when I was in school. It makes me nostalgic about something I probably haven’t even experienced; still, this song gives me that feeling.
The Cure is my latest obsession. Robert is so unapologetically cheesy in this song, yet he still sounds like someone saying these words for the very first time.
St Micheal’s
My old friend, his name was Sinclair. He must be half-decayed beside the church beneath the tile.
As I overheard the cellphone conversation, she says, “I am a whore, that’s right.”
St. Michael’s Memorial is a place to pick up everything that once we left behind.
We fight until we fall in love, we fall in love and keep on making love until we pick another fight.
A house next to a urinal where a boy fell asleep, wondering what it is to live that lavish lie.
Remember, the motherfucker at the beginning of the song is the unknown father to that child.
Sade is one of the eternal muses of music, and this track in particular is a simple love song that hits home for me. I think Sade Adu and her fantastic band always seem to provide the perfect background score for many ascending moans. This one is “By Your Side” from the *Lovers Rock* album.
My evening runs are my little rituals. I pick a record and run until it ends. There’s a purity in that rhythm, when the sweat takes over and you’re no longer pushing, just cruising. That’s how I first disappeared into A Love Supreme by Coltrane for an hour straight.
Last night there were light showers in Mumbai, the air soft and pleasant. I laced up and put on Bowie’s Outside (Nathan Adler Diaries: A Hyper Cycle) a record I’d never heard before. Metallic, dangerous, almost a predecessor to NIN but with Bowie’s phantom voice threading through crime, chaos, and strange beauty. It’s a whole ambience, a story in itself.
One track A Small Plot of Land hooked me. It felt familiar yet strange. Back home, digging through Reddit and old references, it hit me that it’s in Basquiat, the film I love where Bowie plays Warhol. No wonder it felt cursed, lingering in me till morning.
So here I am, stuck replaying it, sending love from the haunted land of fallen music. If you’re a little psychotic, give Outside a spin.
You know, it’s funny how everyday noise becomes part of our soundtrack. Every building seems to have that one neighbor who’s constantly renovating after three months, it’s like they’re building a new world up there. I swear, every place I’ve lived, there’s been an upstairs neighbor that somehow reminds me of the opening line from *Paranoid Android* and just like that, I’m hooked, listening to that record again.
Growing up in Mumbai teaches you a lot about silence amid chaos, how to carve out space for your own peace, even in the loudest environments. Maybe that guy upstairs is also posting about a lone wolf under the house, howling and shredding overdriven guitars, calling his friends to turn the place into a racket. But we’re civil, no complaints, no fuss. We smile in the elevator, and once we’re off, maybe flip a finger at the shiny steel door, the silent rebellion of a middle-aged man.
Speaking of Bowie, his music was such a force that I never felt the need to look him up. I had already drawn his caricature in my mind: that Oscar Wilde-ish, slightly eccentric figure. Turns out, that image fits him perfectly. And Tony Visconti, what a legend crafted an album where I’ve never skipped a single song.
From “Space Oddity” to “Unwashed and Somewhat Dazed,” “Cygnet Committee,” “Wild Eyed Boy,” “Oh! You Pretty Things,” and “Memory of a Free Festival” each track is a masterpiece, a window into Bowie’s unique songwriting and fearless spirit. He lived and expressed his truth through his work, right till the very end. David Bowie an icon, a trailblazer, and still a huge influence.
A thought is not reality nor is reality truly the reality. When such realisations strike, one wonders am I alive, or dreaming in death? Lately, I’ve been questioning everything not out of remorse or gloom, but in clarity. People might assume such reflection means depression, but it feels quite the opposite. I feel in sync with everything, the way the body breathes without command. Thoughts are the breath of the mind arriving and leaving effortlessly. Hold on to one, and you disrupt the flow of existence. Perhaps the essence of existence lies in not existing at all.
Back in my teens, I had this strange habit of sleeping with my iPod on. I’d often wake up with a song playing in my ears, songs that somehow reached into my dreams and pulled me back to consciousness. One of them was Opel by Syd Barrett. Syd’s music never screams for attention; it just echoes soft ricochets of thought bouncing in a vast, empty valley. Opel felt like a glimpse into that space, maybe even the other side he wandered into. There’s this particular visual of a beach that Opel planted in my dreams, which eventually turned into a song I wrote called Breakfast. Some songs don’t explain themselves. They just stay with you. Like Syd’s music, I’ve learned to leave some things unspoken.
