Letter to Assembly
The remnants of ‘Meji’, remain instilled in my existence. I am not very kind to the noise that is generated with the creation of sound yet silence which is possibly inside of us only and nowhere else, is constantly infused by the perception of realities. It is these realities that you opened to me and lately I have been trying to make sound of it, in vain but growth. It had been an awakening experience as it had been brisk to be lying exposed to these thoughts of yours which were provocative, as intended or provocation, as I intended them to be inside me. The nature of your existence amidst the island, of flying mist and hay and sunsets and greens with prying eyes of chattering beneath the clear bright sky, to me, is that dream of utopia which I captured with my blurred lens. Now I am trying writing to, in an address that is here.
“We are asleep. Our Life is a dream. But we wake up sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming.”
I tried to grasp us but what caught me is humanity in its prangs, cries, joys and in sanity. Each of assembly coerced by the structure, brought in a view to which I had been blind, which was unheard. Sound is penetrating when light is not. You were more about ‘ears’ than ‘eyes’, yes. All engrossing and welcoming to the strangers and kind to the hosts.
I have abstractions of my own to cater to since ‘individualism’ took you with its own, creating a newer ‘you’ each time but what remained is the ‘co-existence’ of us in this universitas. The desire of concern for fellow brethren and ecology, that assembly was inclusive to. Though the aspect of ‘inclusiveness’ remained…..
Voices,poems and music inhabited the place of your rationale in true sense of occupancy of the structure that belonged to our desires, within and without. The ship that took us across prompted in me an idea of “composed chaos” that most of us human activities are, no matter the order in our establishment. Maybe you were that or not.
In a manner to which you accepted the diversities in sense that….
“And your way, is it really your way?
[…]
What, moreover, can you call your own? The house you live in, the food you swallow, the clothes you wear — you neither built the house nor raised the food nor made the clothes.
[…]
The same goes for your ideas. You moved into them ready-made.”
And I remain a ‘third person’ to this narrative. I have come forth in the time and still I was where we were.
Of ecology, pedagogy, poetics, art. An education of desire, a contemplation of self, understanding of others wherein ‘other’ is within ‘self’. For in fire what is destruction is also rebirth. I pen to you a letter of self.
In desire you belong to one and none, but all.
Gratitude for being a part of ‘Assembly Of Desire’
Assembly of desire is a multidisciplinary symposium and festival initiated by desire machine collective, Sonal Jain and Mriganka Madhukaillya. It is an extension of their project Periferry- www.periferry.in. It took place from 7–15 January 2018. As a socially engaged project, which is site-specific on the Majuli island in Assam. The Assembly engaged with the very processes of living in the space and blurred the lines between art and life asking questions relevant to life and existence of the artists/participants. It used art to affect social dynamics and addressed social relations in talking about “philos” and friendships.
