On the Boulevard

The night’s orange and there are shadows everywhere. The dog stares into my heart, and the heart is black and the dog a shadow. I stare at the orange streetlamps, and my shadow takes me by surprise. There are assassins at my back, I turn around and no one’s there. Shadows. Everywhere. Billie sings broken songs and he’s a shadow. I’m a shadow. A shadow none but my shadow can see. He’s the only one that walks beside me on the boulevard. But that’s lame. The shadow screams. I sing like a mirror. Read between the lines, he says. The assassins stare as I pass them by, lip-syncing with the shadow. I walk on. And then, it tunnels through me. All crimson orange. I smile. It’s cold. Everything is cold.

Cardiology

“I open my eyes, I try to see/ But I’m blinded by the white light/ I can’t remember how, I can’t remember why/ I am hee..re tonight!”

So sang Simple Plan half a decade ago. You must be thinking what’s with me and punk lyrics. I wonder too. It’s a wonderful feeling when you think that an artist has composed something especially for you: when you turn the last page of a novel and go “Hey, that sounded familiar!” or when a stanza from the latest national chart-buster resembles your oh-so-modest life. It’s a wonderful feeling. All through high school, I thought I had a secret deal with Green Day to write songs for me. And when the vagaries of love showed its face in subsequent years, Good Charlotte seemed to fit the bill. I found it uncanny – the regularity with which their songs came to mean something more than just a collection of emo lyrics to me.

But then came college, and life was good and busy. Intellectual even! Punk took a backseat as Floyd, Nirvana and GN’R took centrestage. I was expected to appreciate the ‘good’ music. Not that I didn’t like it. But then, the lyrics always spoke of somebody else. It wasn’t too difficult listening to Denver to imagine golden countries and brilliant sunsets. Or to listen to Floyd and dream of smoky Sherlock-Holmesque living rooms and a life bordering on the surreal. Or to sing along with Axl Rose and feel a wonderful high. Or to listen to the songs of a Bengali bard and feel the rustic tension in the air. But somehow, they were never about me.