It was one of those days when you are just so dissatisfied and so uninterested with the whole lot of music that you have that you’re willing to look for something new even in obscurity. An acquaintance had once suggested a classic progressive band- Camel. Obscure… but still new and yet unchecked. A search through the internet didn’t really yield anything about them and no surprises there. But persistence born out of boredom finally gave me some leads. But disappointment waited again, for most of the songs were mediocre and none of the ones I heard interested me much. But the boring persistence again and intriguing names of some of their songs pushed me into randomly picking and downloading songs.
So when all the deed was done, heard a few more tracks. By now I was prepared of what to expect. But, to my eternal surprise some of the tracks were worth becoming a regular fixation!!! I also realised that I liked Andrew Latimore: the lead singer/guitarist etc etc’s style. But the real discovery was their track called Vopos. Their ways are strange and strange were the ways they played with words. The song came from their 1985 album titled Stationary Traveller. To return to Vopos, the song fascinated me. I couldn’t figure out the meaning of the title and the OED didn’t help either. But that did not bother me much and I continued to play the song day in day out. I was simply enthralled with the dreamlike images that the song created. Its “atmospheric instrumentals” would create myriad detailed soundscapes in my mind. But for how long can one really ignore the lyrics? Words would only fill in the mental imagery of the song. So with the lyrics the song came anew to me, but with strangely harsher tones this time. The dreamlike images shifted and they sang on…...
“They woke you in the night
a glare from bright headlights.
Sentry's in a row……”
“Can it be a nightmare?
Will you wake and still be there?
So you try to run,
Frightened you're the one
Left inside.”
Images were more disturbing than ones I had imagined earlier. I was dying by now to know just what the words all meant, what the title signified. And this search took me back into history.
In 1952, The Times Magazine did an article on the Vopos and from there I realized that Vopos stood for Volkspolizei or People’s Police in German, a force of armed men from the East German region (when Berlin was divided), assigned to guard the Red Army’s (Communist) interests here. Most of them were unemployed young men, initially lured by the state into becoming a part of this army but later forced and threatened into joining it or face the possibilities of working in the dreaded uranium mines. Dressed in blue, this group of about 10,ooo soldiers of the Red brigade were trained in quite a few aspects of military activities like operating heavy machinery, platoon manoeuvres on field etc. They even boasted of a small scale naval and air force fleet. While former Nazi officials drilled them in the art of war, Red partisan veterans and their Russian counterparts (the Sovietniks) indoctrinated them and brought Communism to their midst.
Now the song grew more in meaning. It was more cohesive. The lyrics and the history that they hid within them now became more apparent. I could corroborate the song with all that I read in the article in the Times. And things became clearer still when I realized that the album itself was a concept album done by the band based on the division of Berlin and its subsequent political, emotional economic cultural impact on the people’s lives living at that time.
So between ignorance, boredom and dissatisfaction I chanced upon a piece of history within a song. The band and its work most often has been criticized owning to its failure to converge the lyrics and the music, and so pulling the listener in two different directions. I wonder if that’s what happened to me initially? No I don’t think there is any rationalisation of /to my ignorance. All said and done I am glad that they made this album, glad that at least someone was bothered enough to incorporate the sufferings of so many and transform it into a piece of art.
And for those who care to read more about the Vopos itself, well I also include the link to the article in the Times magazine here:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,859786,00.html
J
Friday, June 12, 2009
AN OBITUARY
January 23rd. 5:35 pm.
The cold statistics of a death.
The frantic ringing of the phone and the continuous repeating of details. The passing of news from one person to another. Soon, the steady trickle of mourners. The crying of the women, their red eyes, the hushed whispers of the men outside, their carefully controlled faces….and the heavy silence stretching throughout. A house of death.
The death of my sister.
Slow hours of waiting. Nearing midnight, the cold red flash of the ambulance, and the sudden increase in subdued voices….
They are here…they are here!!!!!
And all eyes turned towards the gate.
My sister comes back home…..
The wailing begins…..
Death gets bound up, in a thousand rituals through the thirteen days that follow. Everybody falls into the cycle of numbing performances, of rituals, of social demands and of collective mourning…..
When the days of ritual mourning will have passed by, life will calls on. It will be a turn to normalcy for most of us and to a broken one for her husband and daughter. Even as they assume a carefully studied normalcy, their lives seem to stretch out before them like a bleak endless road. Or perhaps time should be expected to heal….but how much? And before how long? Could healing be a diminished remembrance?
The death of one who gave their lives and their individual existence, so much of meaning.
Pictures are shown and passed out, stories are told and re-told…..people remember and people recollect. But I had nothing to say, no stories to tell, no contribution to make. For I was without any concrete memories of her, with her. In the limited association I had with her over the phone and over very infrequent meetings there wasn’t much I could salvage by way of memories…but through the days, it was through the stories and through innumerable fragmented memories that she came alive, yet again.
And pictures filled out.
One seeks a justification of death. But none comes. You want to not believe in god, like an act of defiance. And yet somehow somewhere along the day you loose that silent battle with god, or with whatever it is that one believes in.
A few days ago I found some pictures of my sister and her daughter; taken long years back at our grandparent’s house. Candid shots they were and I had seen them a million times before too. They were just a few of those hundreds of pictures one keeps stuffed in albums, envelopes and some old corner….
But not so anymore. They become symbols now of a part of life gone by….a tangible memory of sorts. They would be more precious for her daughter than they are for me. In time I will probably give them to her. But as of now, I don’t want to part with them.....a selfish act on my part. But I have managed to justify it to myself. The pictures I keep hidden in my drawer…..and I cling to a memory which isn’t even mine….
Nothing else of hers remains with me. Without these pictures I fear how I would remember her.
I realize even as I write this that I still struggle to find ways to mourn her and to miss her…..to remember …..I debate whether I should write this or not….I have nothing more to say or add to this obituary of sorts. I have to end it here for now it seems to be lingering….and I do it, I stop. But an obituary calls for words of loving remembrances, of beauty and grace for she who is dead, of expressions of loss….and I have none to give.
G
The cold statistics of a death.
The frantic ringing of the phone and the continuous repeating of details. The passing of news from one person to another. Soon, the steady trickle of mourners. The crying of the women, their red eyes, the hushed whispers of the men outside, their carefully controlled faces….and the heavy silence stretching throughout. A house of death.
The death of my sister.
Slow hours of waiting. Nearing midnight, the cold red flash of the ambulance, and the sudden increase in subdued voices….
They are here…they are here!!!!!
And all eyes turned towards the gate.
My sister comes back home…..
The wailing begins…..
Death gets bound up, in a thousand rituals through the thirteen days that follow. Everybody falls into the cycle of numbing performances, of rituals, of social demands and of collective mourning…..
When the days of ritual mourning will have passed by, life will calls on. It will be a turn to normalcy for most of us and to a broken one for her husband and daughter. Even as they assume a carefully studied normalcy, their lives seem to stretch out before them like a bleak endless road. Or perhaps time should be expected to heal….but how much? And before how long? Could healing be a diminished remembrance?
The death of one who gave their lives and their individual existence, so much of meaning.
Pictures are shown and passed out, stories are told and re-told…..people remember and people recollect. But I had nothing to say, no stories to tell, no contribution to make. For I was without any concrete memories of her, with her. In the limited association I had with her over the phone and over very infrequent meetings there wasn’t much I could salvage by way of memories…but through the days, it was through the stories and through innumerable fragmented memories that she came alive, yet again.
And pictures filled out.
One seeks a justification of death. But none comes. You want to not believe in god, like an act of defiance. And yet somehow somewhere along the day you loose that silent battle with god, or with whatever it is that one believes in.
A few days ago I found some pictures of my sister and her daughter; taken long years back at our grandparent’s house. Candid shots they were and I had seen them a million times before too. They were just a few of those hundreds of pictures one keeps stuffed in albums, envelopes and some old corner….
But not so anymore. They become symbols now of a part of life gone by….a tangible memory of sorts. They would be more precious for her daughter than they are for me. In time I will probably give them to her. But as of now, I don’t want to part with them.....a selfish act on my part. But I have managed to justify it to myself. The pictures I keep hidden in my drawer…..and I cling to a memory which isn’t even mine….
Nothing else of hers remains with me. Without these pictures I fear how I would remember her.
I realize even as I write this that I still struggle to find ways to mourn her and to miss her…..to remember …..I debate whether I should write this or not….I have nothing more to say or add to this obituary of sorts. I have to end it here for now it seems to be lingering….and I do it, I stop. But an obituary calls for words of loving remembrances, of beauty and grace for she who is dead, of expressions of loss….and I have none to give.
G
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