An ode to breath
The edge of the roll-up glass does not quite meet the window’s edges. As the vehicle wades its way through potholes and puddles, the wind whistles in. If it is a hair-wash day, I can feel bony fingers of the breeze stroking my scalp, the moisture forking through strands. There’s something comforting in that caress; it is as if meeting a familiar, someone saying, I’ll always be there, for you to draw inside we can warm up together.
I have said this before, perhaps, some call breath as ‘cooked air’. I love that imagery; the innards humming and heating up air, and there, it is just done right, before releasing it again to the world. If breath is cooked air, a song is a feast; a secret will give you a tummy ache; and silence is communion, a sacred repast.
There’s a song that is an ode to the wind. It starts with the guitar strumming, akin to your own heart beat. And then slowly, you become aware of where you are. An open field or a mountaintop; acres of sky beaming at a land below carpeted with a a thick overgrown vegetal cushion. The grass sways and desire unfurls, you are but a dewdrop trembling. Aasai oru pulveli, adil aan penn iru pani thuli. At times the voice rises, and you feel like someone is calling you, and then fades; it doesn’t matter, you don’t feel the need to answer, for you are now stretched out on the ground, eyes closed, and they are next to you, the breeze in your hair, your breath commingled. Koondalum, meesaiyum, both, a tease.
With every note, every note chosen (mostly the ones in the middle) and the languor it evokes, it tells of a quiet breeze, the one that calms you down and lets you breathe easy. That desire that strums through newborn love, a little chaste, a little naughty, and ever so flighty, much like air. The breeze teases you, it promises, and even a sigh is but air in the shape of longing.
The literal cousin to this song is Pink Floyd’s Pillow of Winds:
A cloud of eiderdown
Draws around me
Softening a sound
Sleepy time, and I lie
With my love by my side
And she's breathing low
It isn’t all sunshine and all sun kissed grasslands. It is as if Pillow of Winds takes off where Aasai oru pulveli pauses. It gets darker, and then the song continues to whisper:
And the candle dies
When night comes down
You lock the door
The book falls to the floor
As darkness falls
The waves roll by
The seasons change
The wind is wry
Now wakes the awl
Now sleeps the swan
Behold the dream
The dream is gone