This is my newsletter #36: Tiyasha Chaudhury
What others found in art,
I found in nature. What others found
in human love, I found in nature.
Very simple. But there was no voice there.
— October by Louise Glück, Averno
'Seeing', I consider this word extremely shallow. Just seeing. What an act. 'Is it enough to be an act?' Or an action perhaps? Or in some cases, is 'seeing' an action enough? And anything beyond that is just too much derivation from human imagination. Seeing the clouds and not looking through. Seeing the mountains and not looking through. Let me ease this as writing—at times—should be clear.
I have started to live life in such a way that every action is started as—and closed leading to another—meditation. It sounds absurd, I understand. Yet, looking through things, hearing through things I have started to believe, not too long ago, a year or so, that to really exist I have to consider other things' existence. In the case of a wall, or a chair, or a branch of a tree neglected by the wind, I try to hear the vibration of life otherwise my mind says I am just seeing things and not looking through. And with me not looking through I am fulfilling the purpose of a material, an object made and kept.
When I wrote these two paragraphs, I had just been listening to a few waltzes and letting the wind in. It is scary for me at times to be thinking about losing the wind, to have it go away. I live in a place where the sun marks 48° degree of its love, sensing we've been deprived. But here is a paradox, 'deprivation' followed by an 'overflow' is just harm. It is not really a paradox but something to think about. So I felt the wind too deeply and in my mind drew a picture with soft pastels proving that I could see the wind, and then I confronted myself with a question. Is seeing enough? Or am I doing it right? Am I thinking a lot or was I meant to be in a state like this where thinking a lot seems normal? The art of looking through is, as I would like to say, existing with what one is looking through and in that, I discovered myself in oneness, in being.
I quoted an epigraph of Louise Glück above, it had sparked something when I first read it.
But there was no voice there.
To this I add:
"But there was not any voice in the world till you sang and then out of you, everything had a sound."
—
If I am asked what my life consists of, I will say books, poetry, art, a lot of films, and thunderstorms. And music, of course.
Here is a film recommendation:
Portrait of A Lady On Fire
"A relationship is about inventing your own language," says Sciamma. “You've got the jokes, you've got the songs, you have this anecdote that's going to make you laugh three years later. It's this language that you build. That's what you mourn for when you're losing someone you love. This language you're not going to speak with anybody else."
Héloïse: When you're observing me, who do you think I'm observing?
—
Here are a few excerpts from various poems of these various poets I admire:
What do shadows give one another?
-From 'In a Place to Escape Oneself' by Alejandra Pizarnik
your mouth a moonless system
of caves filling with dust
the dust thickened to tar
your mouth opened and tar spilled out
-From 'Palmyra' by Kaveh Akbar
we are both pigeonholes written over the top of historical bodies, excesses washing out our pigment and other bruises[I’ve known I been good; why do I need to remember I’ve been black ]
-From 'Imbrute' by Isaac Pickell
—
And here are a few artworks to bewitch you (they have already bewitched me) :
—
And, remember to listen to these songs next time the city is hit by a thunderstorm-
On The Nature of Daylight by Max Richter-
Bicameral Mind by Ramin Djwadi
Sense of Home by Harrison Storm
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Wicked Game by Chris Isaak
Ending this, I am leaving you with a poem I wrote a week back or so.
Here it is:
My body has twisted in ways I cannot fathom by Tiyasha Chaudhury
And see how this is so complex:
This act of putting words inside of you
Eating them,
strapping them tight around your neck, sometimes tracing them on the outlines of your body.
You may realize it is common for all the words
till you realize it is not.
Till you know that with everything you have put inside of you,
your body has turned into something else.
Foreign.
That with everything ready to be put inside of you,
your body has twisted in ways it didn't know how to.
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For any other correspondence, write to tiyasha.chaudhury17@gmail.com
May you never lose words and nature.