MAMMAS, DON’T LET YOUR BABIES GROW UP TO BE COWBOYS by WILLIE NELSON
In just under three minutes, this classic songwriting feat gives us insights into the mind and heart of millions of cowboys who presently live and those who came before them. It’s akin to taking stock of generations of men.
Whether he’s singing it as a solo showcase or with his Highwaymen compatriots and Merle Haggard, Mr. Nelson’s words flank truth about the essence of independence and solitude that the country entails for its fabled inhabitants.
Putting them beyond the myths and legends, this is a sobering and utterly unforgettable portrait of individuality coexisting with social etiquettes. It’s bittersweet.
GRANDPA( TELL ME ‘BOUT THE GOOD OLD DAYS) by THE JUDDS
This is gentle, practical songwriting evincing the affectionate permanence of our elders’ infuence on our lives.
Mother-daughter duo Wynonna and Naomi Judd gives this a meta touch as the union of generations helps both women to absorb the lyrics and the sublime melody to design expert harmonies. It is a quest for comfort and shelter pitted against the alienating forces of the modern world.
Every time I listen to it and am soothed by its guitar strums, I go back to my maternal grandma’s unconditional love. The sense of loss becomes all the more poignant. The power of this song is that it is universally resonant.
WIDE OPEN SPACES by THE CHICKS
Championing gender equality with trademark fiddles and guitars, The Chicks arrive at the most distinct symbol of country music- one where the storytelling itself is a means of breaking chains of conformity and seeking freedom through one’s vocation.
A coming of age narrative delivered with exquisite ease, this one is also about a sense of generational pining and then achieving freedom to live a life of dignity, especially germane to young women. The greatest gift here is how in the final verses, the baton is passed from the previous era to the next to make one’s dreams living realities.
PARIS, TEXAS & HOUSTON IN TWO SECONDS by RY COODER
This dual instrument suite by Ry Cooder illuminates the many-hued journeys that define human lifetimes.
After watching Wim Wenders’ iconic PARIS, TEXAS(1984) where both themes permeate the stark and yet supremely compassionate tale of familial rediscovery, it has become one of my favourites. Without the use of a single word, the guitar gnarls and sways to the rhythms of transient solitary lives searching for an anchor.
A SONG FOR YOU by THE LUMINEERS
Wesley Schultz and his ever-sincere band mates give us goosebumps by the way they pay tribute to Willie Nelson on his 90th birthday honours.
A SONG FOR YOU, delivered here with beautiful piano notes, soothes our senses as Schultz lives each and every word with empathy to spare.
Live performances have a way of transforming artists’ repertoire as I’ve said before. This here constitutes five minutes of vocal brilliance that do complete justice to the lyrical journey of decades defining a lifetime.
COWBOYS ARE FREQUENCY SECRETLY FOND OF EACH OTHER by ORVILLE PECK & WILLIE NELSON
First it was Shania Twain on LEGENDS NEVER DIE. Now it’s the evergreen cowboy, Willie Nelson, himself as a duet partner. Which is grounds to confirm that Mr. Peck is not only on a creative roll but has sanctified his country bona-fides with each passing year.
The greatest aspect of this bonafide country number is that its rhythms and energy are in the traditional mould with a simple melody. Yet the manner in which it candidly acknowledges intragender bonds and subverts binaries with a wink and a grin is commendable.
Never has the word “queer” been used in the country canon as a normalising matter of fact before. Mr. Nelson’s role as an elderly statesman opening the gates for greater discourses beyond the binary is a historic feat here. Along with Peck, a veritable queer icon and profound artist, it also becomes generational.
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ALL BY MYSELF by ERIC CARMEN
Chances are that like me, Celine Dion’s definitive interpretation of this song has already been a part of our lives for the longest time.
But going back to the long-form employment of empathetic vocals, piano notes and guitars on Eric Carmen’s original classic is a requisite for all listeners.
The “to be or not to be” dilemma here yields compelling results as the clash between being self-sufficient and sociability designs a tune for the ages.
Employing the verse form, yours truly disseminates a canvas of emotions, inspired by landmark cinematic works recently watched by him.
***
PARIS, TEXAS(1984)
Lone stars leave their predicaments on the freeways.
Across these state lines and heatwaves, phone booths script tales about raggedy loners, their choices hanging like sweat beads on the brims of their fedoras.
The desert palms always sway in them.
***
WINGS OF DESIRE(1987)
Empaths falling with golden eves and morrows, You are Poetry and the Confessional.
Let Berlin be. It conserves its biennale for you.
***
ANATOMY OF A FALL(2023)
You are not a victim. That’s what they believe and say.
Till frostbites and cold hearts announce themselves with heavy mastheads.
The moral of the story never really comes. It always is a strangers’ battleground where those crossing boundaries butt in.
There are always losers on the lam.
***
DUNE- PART 2(2024)
On the port of call, a higher legend seethes and raves in the eye of the Sun.
On mounds of spices, in pools of cavernous secrets, Kings consecrate the second coming of a desert hawk.
These sand dunes have returned. From the deep into the eye of a storm.
***
AMERICAN FICTION(2023)
In the freedomland, our words fail us.
In this freedomland, the paperbacks and hardcovers don’t aim for the colour purple.
They sliver our skin and put garbled, marbled words in our mouth.
We all lose our voices in that conference of extremes.
The books are sold out and merely catered at the clubs.
In this freedomland, true poets find diminishing returns.
***
VOYAGE OF TIME(2016)
The master has lifted his chords and played the minor key.
The maestros have been bowed at and Time has assented.
Go with this voice. It alerts this land of mine of its own upstanding brilliance, gathering itself languidly.
***
THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION(1994)
My cell is beyond the open-air forks and lifts.
It has been there for quite some time.
Fallen angels shrink their body size to get me out of here.
Let them desist.
***
NOT WITHOUT MY DAUGHTER(1991)
Will there be a revolution against sedition.
Will there be the land of the free.
Or feet touching familiar soil and higher levels of human grace.
Men of the court (And how innoble they are!) slid in their testaments with the Sunday mail
The smell of mendacity on a tired holiday!
***
COURIERS- PART 2
The brown package looks suspiciously gigantic for a reader’s haul
Is it really for me or does it carry an appliance?
I’m keeping it with me: I will open it at twelve.
It may finally be the vintage poetry books sent by you, the lucky last copies likely to grace my bedside manner for life.
***
COURIERS- PART 3
The postman, that grinning old dearie, has rung the wrong door bell.
The white package that he carries with him is swept in April sweat.
He asks for a glass of cold water. I give it to him- only a moment of relief.
I also give him a journal to record his thoughts.
He takes on so many words everyday.
***
“In my mind, I have always chronicled every face, every deed, every book and every home where words come to live more than extravagances”, he once told me.
He takes it and goes with the kindest look I have seen on a man.
That’s what words do.
“I’ll share some of what I write with you”, he says, carrying his final courier for the day to the third floor.
For me, music has always remained a borderless entity. If it moves you in the way this eternally classic George Jones tune does then it springs forth from the lap of life’s melancholy-tinged center.
Yet to dismiss its distinctive country storytelling in the affirmative will be to neglect its affectionate melody and arresting, warm vocals, the passion and the poignancy kept at its restrained best with strings and backup harmonies.
Those particular traits make this universally heartwrenching as a lifetime of maintaining human relationships transcends just the markers of unity.
WHY NOT ME? by THE JUDDS
The iconic mother-daughter duo of Wynonna and Naomi Judd has given the world its surplus of beautiful harmonies and memorable tunes galore.
This one is the gateway to the country-rock sound that demolishes boundaries of genre and still fills us with the spirit that its musical conventions stand for. I love how the pre-chorus vocals toy with expectant tempers and then both voices fuse for its joyous refrain.
SEVEN YEAR ACHE by ROSANNE CASH
In recent years, I have warmed up to Ms. Cash’s singular body of work with her Particle and Wave era and her befittingly generous tribute to her parental legacy with the musical counterpart to father Johnny Cash’s poem THE WALKING WOUNDED.
So it makes complete sense that one of her biggest early hits employs formidable lyrics to show us a familiar mirror to the ways of the world especially those mind-games played among the sexes. Its traditional structure of country-rock with a drone-like effect used prominently is enlivened by Ms. Cash’s clear vocals. I also love how the title relays sustained melancholy against petty surroundings by being on the other side of a “seven year itch”
PASSIONATE KISSES by LUCINDA WILLIAMS
Lucinda Williams, who continues to make the power of her musical gifts stand out and topple genre restrictions, will always be best remembered for this pithy tune.
The rollicking sense of joy at having discovered the power of her individuality, playing its rhythms against a wave of doubt, makes this a perfect example of imposter syndrome. Yet the confidence in its rock charge and country ease gives Ms. Williams a statement of having the best of all that life has in store for her.
The other version by country royalty Mary Chapin Carpenter is a perfect companion piece too.
HOW BLUE by REBA MCENTIRE
Here she is, our beloved Reba staying true to her country roots on this underrated standard.
Her biggest hits like WHOEVER’S IN NEW ENGLAND and FANCY are well-known to us. This, here, is a celebration of the fiddles, banjos and guitars as well as a narrative of coming to terms with life’s tribulations that puts it at her top echelons. That twang and an effortless charm in her vocal performance never wane.
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ANDROMEDA by WEYES BLOOD
Weyes Blood aka Natalie Mering finally gives us a charming new music video for her beautiful, country-tinged tune that has further found newfound traction ever since her live set at Glastonbury last year.
It’s Ms. Mering in the wide expanse of the desert, against the endless trail of space and as an extra-terrestrial entity, giving credence to the song’s lyrics and melody.
It’s a perfect accompaniment to this modern classic that deserves even more listeners to recognise its lovely vocals and production values.
THE SHADOW OF A BLACK CROW(LIVE AT TOPECA CORRECTIONAL FACILITY) by MELISSA ETHERIDGE
That legendary growl and skill-set with the guitar can hardly be diminished. So it goes on this new track from Melissa Etheridge, in time for a new documentary series filmed at the Topeca Correctional Facility in Kansas, USA.
With this feat taking us back to Johnny Cash’s iconic live sets at Folsom Prison and San Quentin, we can only say that it’s a great addition to the canon. The chorus itself packs a punch with its unyielding courage amidst incarceration and societal dehumanisation, both literal and metaphorical.
BARRACUDA(LIVE) by HEART
Finally, there’s nothing in the world quite like listening to the Wilson sisters, Ann and Nancy, share their journey of decades, with vigour, with new generations as well as their steadfast fans.
This recent live performance of the always caustic and blisteringly spirited “Barracuda” on Jimmy Fallon is part of the canon that they now take to the world stage with a tour starting this year.
It’s a classic tune and the stomp of age has done nothing to rob it or both siblings of their artistic merits.
You may remember that scene from MARRIAGE STORY where Scarlet Johansson is told by her divorce lawyer( an excellent turn by Laura Dern) that in a marital relationship, the man’s faults can always be dismissed as a whim or one-off thing; but for the mother/wife/woman, to even admit to consuming a simple glass of wine can entail dereliction of duty. That’s just, in a nutshell, the world of hypocrisy we all occupy where women are supposed to be paragons of virtue.
In AUTUMN SONATA, that painful thought reached out to me as a perennially neglected, now 40 year old daughter ( Liv Ullmann) lashes out at her absent mother ( Ingrid Bergman); but that is before she composes herself and reasons with the complex dynamics of their interpersonal bond. This Ingmar Bergman chamber piece harnesses its indoor settings and sombre lighting hence to look at both sides, knowing it’s easy to pick one-dimensional rationales because we identify those points with our own parents. The genealogy of regrets runs through generations. But what really happens when a woman pursuing a successful career is held accountable for her own sense of self-definition? How can we look at one life and differing opinions without prejudice or gender bias in the same breath?
AUTUMN SONATA, within its silent frames, bubbles with multiplicity of emotions and can be relatable with any adult who has expressed disappointment with how our elders treat us. A gamut of viewpoints opens up a can of worms here, done with care, delicacy and poignant truth-telling. One scene, where the daughter fixates her gaze at her mother as she brilliantly plays the piano, courses through with despair, admiration, regret and unjustified malice balanced by the reverence a child has for a parent. All this is achieved by Ms. Ullmann’s depth of understanding and naturalistic expressions. In that moment, this personal account becomes sublimely universal. With excellent turns by LENA NYMAN and HALVAR BJORK too, AUTUMN SONATA stays with us.
**
THE MUDGE BOY (2003)
CAST: EMILE HIRSCH, RICHARD JENKINS, TOM GUIRY.
Looking at childhood and its ritualized aura of coming of age tropes can always make one touch low points of stereotypical categorization, overlooking the fabric of real conflicts and hardly is there an internalized tilt towards pushing the envelope further. Teenage sexuality is often a taboo topic but I guess by writing about it, we gradually break that mould. A movie that touches on those frayed nerves in singularly uncompromising tones is THE MUDGE BOY (2003)
The movie, which focuses on Duncan Mudge (Emile Hirsch), marks a departure from the adult world for him as in the very first scene we are witness to his mother’s untimely death. A world sans motherly love, compassion and fortitude is a barren, sterile foliage and a moral dump yard for us ; it is equally so for Duncan. It is the space where the fourteen year old farm boy finds himself placed, in a man’s menagerie alien to his soft and sombre demeanour ( how I hate it when the term ‘soft’ is peddled as a bad trait or one equated with weakness in the context of males because it makes no sense; the film hence tries to look at the very stereotypes attached with notions of boyhood starting from that point. I use it because it is a normal trait for both genders, as normal as inherent compassion and capacity for imagination)
This sudden rupture in familial security distances him further from his father, a man given to few words or expressions exhibiting his grief. Naturally, Mudge Sr.(Richard Jenkins) has to hold back his sentimental outpouring to stack up against the larger world and make a decent living as a rural farmer in a mechanized demographic. This masculine posture and emotional stance is society’s way of imputing his weak spots and riding the crest of gender specificity. To cry over his loss will earn him brickbats instead of sympathy. He has learnt this the hard way but it’s this mute flow of internal conditioning and stifling control that renders him completely absent from his son’s domain. His mother’s loss has been a colossal one and life-altering for him, especially at a critical juncture of his adolescence. This state of personal change is one of a profound identity crisis. Duncan, hence, reels under pressure and copes with this turnaround by dressing up in Mama’s suits and gowns, down to his ‘girlish’ timbre and mannerisms, much to his father’s dismay.
**
This rude awakening, however, is seen as a passing phase. Looking closely at the movie’s foregrounding, it’s evident Duncan’s introverted nature and lack of ‘masculine aggression’ gave the uncouth, brassy kids of his culture free reign to bully and sequester him. His so-called ‘queer'( a word used by others as an invective in reference to him) transformation further makes him a scapegoat. I’m glad today queer comes to be used as a collective embrace for those deemed by our closed-minded societies as odd or non-conforming to certain preconceived rules.
Duncan is so lonely hence that he has made friends with his solitude and sought perfect companionship with a non-human, the farm chicken simply named Chicken by him. His rare flashes of pure happiness are seen in the bird’s presence.
***
Within this quagmire, his friendship with the loutish and simultaneously tender Perry (Tom Guiry ) uncorks latent passions in both. Duncan eventually confounds Perry as the latter cannot curb his attraction towards him, a threat to his acquired bravado and ‘heterosexuality’. Society and worldly laws are at the back of his mind and we understand that. In a scene crackling with subtle erotic charge, Duncan touches and feels Perry’s rippling muscles when they both go swimming, their bare bodies serving their discovery as a train passes by, the clatter coinciding with the awkwardness and surge of sexual discovery in both. Perry recoils in that given moment, stunned and yet deeply touched by Duncan’s acknowledgement of his physical appeal. It’s one of the most practical assessments of adolescent desires bubbling to the surface and is subtly filmed, with great dignity befitting the age group it seeks to address. Perry defends, castigates and pines for the sweet and honest Duncan, who, he knows, is miles away from the dysfunction of his peers and his own abusive father. His contrasting mood swings and hormonal ticks make him term Duncan a faggot. Fear of a backlash and challenge to his assigned sexual status strain him. However, it comes to a head when he forces his physicality on the meek Duncan, in a disturbing episode that rattles both.
This motif of forbidden desires punctuates the story’s bold strokes and emphatic impact since it encapsulates everything that comes before and after. These young boys essentially grapple with terms of acceptance and future adult storm for their differences of orientation which inform them of their present status as well. The milieu they occupy is one of misogyny and male dominance. THE MUDGE BOY, to me then, is a powerful indictment of male ego from which Duncan is miles apart even though his own Pa acknowledges that “he can’t even get into trouble like a normal boy.” There is care and concern for him from the father who knows the ways of a big, bad world beyond that of the already constricting small town they live in.
**
The most tragic outcome of this crossfire ensues when Duncan, in a bid to prove his manliness, mangles the permanence of his deep bond with Chicken, a harrowing and heart- rending event that joins both father and son in an embrace of long overdue intimacy. It can symbolize building bridges and signaling bugles for Duncan’s human growth and also assent on the parent’s part irrespective of his orientation, opening up the vista for his future choices.
Director Michael Burke has an astute and sensitive eye for studying the depths of his characters’ predicaments. Struggling with sexuality is a normal though hushed strand of growing up and he looks at it not as a taboo but as a necessary, individual arc incremental to understanding the pain and dilemmas of souls like Duncan and Perry.
Shears of moral decorum and manhood constitute this teenage domain with parallel lines of urgency and an honest look, not a disapproving stare.
The three principal actors justify every nuance of this realistic and understated drama, essential for widening our horizons and worldviews. THE MUDGE BOY is as poignant and universal to a teenager as to an adult. Maybe Duncan’s life script had shown traces of his altered status prior to his mother’s death but his tragedy works as an outlet for sharing his concerns. The present state matters in his depiction.
***
13TH , STRONG ISLAND ( NETFLIX ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARIES – 2016, 2017) and I’M NOT YOUR NEGRO(2016)
‘Land of the Free’ as a concept to define the American consciousness has now been denuded of that fantastical paradigm. These three documentaries strip away the facade of equality, so vehemently endorsed in its regard, by harking back at how pop culture is as complicit in fanning divisions as racialized groups. In STRONG ISLAND, painful family recountings get captured on camera juxtaposed with other photographic imagery of better days, to corral a whole timeline of injustice passed down through generations, whether passively or explicitly.
Ava Duvernay, Yance Ford and Raoul Peck are brave new filmmakers who turn the gaze inwards before scattering the whole panorama of a nation interspersed with figures, events and the modern -day standpoint on race relations. Their treatment and storytelling will haunt us to the very bones.
***
THE VAST OF NIGHT(2020)
Behold then the gripping, nocturnal effect of THE VAST OF NIGHT, a film that toys with science fiction tropes and the very pertinent fears associated with extra-terrestrial life. But director Andrew Patterson turns the cliches on its head by making it a study of voice patterns, documenting opinions of people privy to the town’s prior history and through close ups, spare lighting and its absorbing 1950s setting successfully concocts an almost Hitchcockian style of visual hypnosis.
By further including the voice of an African American war veteran ( Bruce Davis) and a perpetually grieving mother ( Gail Cronauer), its two teenage protagonists ( Sierra McCormick and Jake Horowitz) end up becoming listeners trying to make head and tail of a mysterious signal on the radio, uncovering layers within a town of merely hundreds.
Extended scenes, tracking shots and a naturalistic rhythm make this an unique take on everything we have come to expect from a generic story such as this. I found this mode of storytelling here thoroughly engaging as also the no fuss style of performances being perfectly suited to a post- modern break with conventions.
Poorer pictures of prurience have been projected in rowdy halls.
Poorer invasions of the image have barrelled down steeper slopes.
This, here, is progress stunted and starched, the blasted emulsions of freedom endorsed with a stampede of back-handed jibes and jeers at a fairer order.
These, here, are standing orders of sadism and fallen lines of innocence designing bawdy stanzas, in a limerick of troughing girlhood and womanhood’s evolving millennium gripped in the talons of a rowdy falcon- of wordsmiths and imagists putting a child’s mind against the turmeric sky, only for the marketplace to rain on it every impulse hunched by the patriarchy.
Bella- they’ve all made a harem for you.
You are homeless.
***
Your compass points south in their hands.
You were never fully alive with them
***
On the misguided, salacious travesty that is POOR THINGS(2023)
An Awadh Boy's Panorama : tracing words on these filigreed, discerning fingertips. 