By Fall I had been doom-scrolling much more than usual. Falling deeper into a self-induced state of hypnosis, my eyesight deteriorated into rapid-fire images: cheese, floral arrangements, genocide, throwing clay, spinning wool, AI-generated studies of the body, blood, fertility, deities, instruments, ear canals, travel guides, music blogs, spiritual texts, self-care, self-help, ab workouts, false prophets, protests, and you. On my way back to you, or you to me, I have been thinking about desire paths: online, in the body, and in the mind.
Desire paths reveal the human tendency to seek the shortest route between origin and destination. The path may curve beautifully on an architect's drawing, but the line worn into the grass reveals where people actually choose to go. It is the route our bodies take when instinct outweighs design.
I use my phone as a transitional object to bring me closer, calmer, more at ease. Always in search of first home, first love. Images bring me closer to feeling. But what of the things I do not see, yet feel as true? I’m haunted by flashing scenes of the known and unknown past. Visions keep me awake at night and unpresent by day. I dreamt of a great crackling in my ear. I tossed and turned until I dug and found a large white mushroom, followed by a large coral reef.
As a long distance daughter, each day I wake up to a call from another land in another time zone. A very different story is narrated to me from there. I unwillingly impose these scenes over my visions of the day. Free falling in time, my mind still finds a way back to your memories.
In the aching knots of my neck, lump in my throat, and heavy left shoulder, I carry your phantom weight. I want to admit that the experiences don't compute.
For as long as I can recall, I’ve been drawn to what remains after departure: the sensation of a place, a person, a prayer, a song. That morning in October I woke up to the news of almost death. In limbo, as it were, I took a train to Grey and sang what I could not carry:
“I’m feeling these impossible memories
that still reside here”
Making songs is neither a hobby nor a choice. I sat next to Grey in his home studio for so many seasons layering upon one another that it became hard to recall where we started.
“If it goes with the river, it goes on the record,” Laurie said to Elia on our drive, and I remember looking out the car window knowing we’d know when to stop.
Last Sun cycle, when I returned to my grandmother’s house, my childhood home, I went to the balcony of a now mostly empty place and stared into the Karachi sky, wishing to sear into my body this warm yet uncanny feeling of a lost place.
Desire paths don't always lead us forward. Sometimes they return us, again and again, to what we've lost.
This sensation of something persisting after its disappearance became the quiet center of my new record, Afterimage.
Today, as time seems to collapse around the birth of the first single from the album, I return to a breathing meditation by Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh:
Dwelling in the present moment,
I know this is a wonderful moment.
(Photo Credit: Tonje Thilesen)
