". . .CHITTO JETHA BHAYASHUNYO. . ."
( WHERE THE MIND IS WITHOUT FEAR )
breath & sax
unite to form
a creature made of flesh & horn
his sax calls forth
his own ghost
it dances before him like smoke
he closes his eyes
loses sight of everything
but the song
he plays
not knowing what he plays
until he plays it
the song seems to know
where it's going
it's the man he improvises
"...where the world has not
been broken up
into fragments..."
he longs to be taken
out of himself
so he can become himself
the last note
he comes back from the nowhere
that he's found
stuck now in this
somewhere he is
made ordinary again
now he's just
a man with a limp
just another drunk
his sax
the genie of sound
sound asleep in its case
he hums inside his head
the music heard
he the instrument now
tapping on the table
his cigarette dancing
to the invisible music
the notes
half man half ghost
tapped inside his skull
even the silence
now
full of sound
"...sometimes I wish
the music would leave
me alone..."
"...the music is like
a very very big dog
taking its owner for a walk.."
"...note by note I am
transformed
until I am the music..."
"...caught in a riptide
what can I
do. . ?"
I always think a sax can take you the beyond the beyond when words fail. Riptide was his pièce de résistance. And he would always quote the Tagore poem before playing it and so that became this poem's title. He used to call it his "habbijabbi" or "thingamjig" in Bengali.
The orginal Bengali script...
চিত্ত যেথা ভয়শূন্য, উচ্চ যেথা শির
জ্ঞান যেথা মুক্ত, যেথা গৃহের প্রাচীর,
আপন প্রাঙ্গণতলে দিবসশর্বরী
বসুধারে রাখে নাই খণ্ড ক্ষুদ্র করি,
যেথা বাক্য হৃদয়ের উৎসমুখ হতে
উচ্ছ্বসিয়া উঠে, যেথা নির্বারিত স্রোতে
দেশে দেশে দিশে দিশে কর্মধারা ধায়
অজস্র সহস্রবিধ চরিতার্থতায়,
যেথা তুচ্ছ আচারের মরুবালুরাশি
বিচারের স্রোতঃপথ ফেলে নাই গ্রাসি,
পৌরুষেরে করে নি শতধা, নিত্য যেথা
তুমি সর্ব কর্ম চিন্তা আনন্দের নেতা,
নিজ হস্তে নির্দয় আঘাত করি, পিতঃ;
ভারতেরে সেই স্বর্গে করো জাগরিত৷
And in Tagore's own translation, from the 1912 English edition of Gitanjali.
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action—
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father let my country awake.