This is my newsletter #40: Sawani Kumar

This is my newsletter | Sawani Kumar

This is a letter of heartache.
Let me make no bones about it.

Times when I’m feeling whole-
I breathe. I am present. My notebook is blank.

But when I'm feeling half or broken-
I gasp. I lose agency. I write.

And then, there are times, times like these, when I'm unable to bear cognition to my state of being-I lie listlessly. Make feeble attempts to go about my day. And if I write, the writing summons heartache. 

(06.04.2020) Gluppyskin

I was hoping it didn’t. I hoped that I could uplift you, Dear Reader, to feel whole with me. But if there’s one thing I have come to terms with over the course of the past year and a half, it's that it will be the way it is, until it isn't. (Apologies for the premature and garbled profundity! But tell me the pandemic hasn’t pushed you into a corner time and again, with your only way out being ‘allowing it to pass’? ) So when I began to write this letter, I welcomed the trepidation that came with it. 

You see, the nationwide lockdown began quite synchronously with my own personal heartbreak story and the only advice I got, given the circumstances, was to sit with my feelings. So I sat and I wrote couplets of anguish, of despair; in fits of hysteria, in bouts of desperation, in plateaus of helplessness, I punched away at alphabets on my phone keypad, I looked for resolution and I cried. 

(26.04.2020)  Gluppyskin

I sometimes opened the vault of my Notes app, I unearthed the half-baked ramblings and wove them together to make 'sense’. Sometimes, I let them out into the wider world- as free verse, as prose, as poem, as an unnecessarily ardent text message or as a stray paper note left where it was written (some of these outbursts I have brazenly sprinkled across this letter).

As time passed, this initial eruption of emotion began ebbing, and words or any streams of consciousness eluded me. How could they not? How does one possibly engage in creative expression when there's an unmistakable stench of decay and despondency running amok?

Did you feel it too? The stun. The shock of waking up some mornings without a single clue. When will it end? Are we going to be ok? Why does it have to be like this?
Although I found no answers to the existential questions,  this wonderful talk by Elizabeth Gilbert on the ‘elusive creative genius’ did make artistic droughts a little bit easier for me to bear. Her musings on creativity coming to a person rather than from them helped alleviate some of the pressure I felt for not being able to express. A disembodied creative spirit- the perfect alibi for an MIA artist!

(24.04.2020)  Gluppyskin

As for how it’s going, let me try my hand at an analogy (I'm such a sucker for a good analogy). 

I recently moved into a new place (a miracle, given the circumstances). After a year and something of meandering in and out of the kindness of friends and family, I finally have a place that’s my own.

My house is on the top floor of a four storey building. A barsaati.
It's open on three sides and I take great pleasure in being nestled amidst the treetops of some of the oldest and most magnificent trees of the locality. However, I have been made acutely aware of the perils of being in this living situation in the throes of a Delhi summer. 

‘Open on three sides’ really means it welcomes, with three open arms, omnipotent heat waves (which appear to become stronger the higher up you go). The killer combination relentlessly encourages dust, debris, pollen, feathers, dead leaves, you-name-it, to come gushing in on the regular. In the beginning I would be out to clean up every half hour with my broom and pools of sweat. Only to have the dust particles disdainfully blow back either into my home or onto my face.  It took me a few days to give up. I cleared what I could once a morning, and for the rest of the day I let it be (origin story of aforementioned profundity?)

Nearly everyone I know, love and hold dear, is languishing at the end of their tether. I am no exception. So I'm no longer punching away at my phone keypad looking for closure, explanations, or redemption. Just waiting. Waiting for these answers  as I wait for the violent summer loo to find its moment of tranquility. Until I can bring out my phool jhaadu and sweep away the shrapnel. 

For now, the only pertinent truth is the struggle
The answers may come later.

(28.04.2020) Gluppyskin

In the meantime, 
Here's a handrawn animated video I wish I made. Daniel Zvereff is an artist whose work I’m so drawn to. Maybe it's the guise of simplicity that I so wish to emulate.

Young man & This winter are videos that I have drawn, albeit a long time ago. More recently, here’s a music video I made with my best friends from my time in Ladakh- which is where I was living pre-pandemic. 

If you're able to share resources, give some to Creative Dignity, who're supporting artisans pull through the pandemic. 

These Letters from a Stoic for when the feelings feel like too much.

Speculative everything for some great examples of imagined realities and ‘social dreaming’, perhaps pertinent in light of our current Covid conundrum.

King Krule’s Hey world, is a collection of stripped-down versions of his songs that double up extremely well as an emotional laxative. 11/10 would recommend.

Comfortable fields for the most comfortable feels.

Dancing is depressing, because sometimes, isn’t everything?

My name is Sawani, I work as a Design Researcher.
You can come say hi to me here and consume my sporadic bursts of art here. 

Thank you, tenderly, for reading and thank you, Rohini for all the wonderful things you do in the world and for making room for my voice. 

(05.05.2020) Journal