I follow the Islamic calendar for a couple art projects, and prayer times as well, because it helps me be in tune with the natural cycles of the universe, and I can better place myself in the context of that universe keeping in mind the new and full moons. When I scribble on trains, I follow the tradition set before with monikers of including a date reference/time stamp, but I’ve always done the Islamic year. When 1444 came around a few months back, I got excited to switch from 1443s to 1444s, and the first Sunday after the new year, I was up before sunrise to hit a couple of my favorite nearby yards that required that type of early morning stealth. I like day time in yards better than night, but day is when workers are there, and workers don’t like people fucking up their jobsite with their presence, especially not in train yards. So it’s gotta be the right day of the week at the right time, and Sundays at sunrise are just about perfect (and always have been, my whole life). I was bumping Quelle Chris’s latest album, especially “Alive Ain’t Always Living”, so I ended up writing that a bunch of times on hoppers in the yards that day. Scribbling on trains is sort of like writing little prayer poems, and the combination of phrase/year definitely creates ties for me to where I was, both physically but spiritually/emotionally. “Alive Ain’t Always Living” was also a perfect meditation to scribble onto giant industrial hunks as a reminder/manifestation for the new year, signed with the 1444 to make it real for the whole ride around the sun. That song, and sentiment, is completely wrapped up with this whole rest of the new year in my heart, which doesn’t match the Gregorian calendar that’s more commonly known and accepted as the norm. The whole thing is esoteric, strange, but completely obvious, and not weird at all. It’s just doing things to make life more magic and less fucked feeling. That’s all prayer is, or poetry, or being alive to be honest.
No comments:
Post a Comment