Birds tend to think the ideal morning raga is a mathematical formula, an idea which will describe ancient silk petals, say, or nascent flowers in deep movement— objects whose proof lies in open comparison to sunlight. The birds, when they listen to this old raga, played by these old hands, still say that it’s a language which might be a new language, and not the same old drumming sound played next to their gold and silver cages. Birds truly are sensate beings.
True thought consists in singing chords that seem a repetition of this new language —even in pain, even at death— even though this cannot be. Imagine each bird singing a thousand songs at each advent of thought. Think about it— a thousand songs before the sun moves one degree, a thousand songs before each bird can take a breath, a thousand songs against that one moment, against the passing of that moment… It is impossible. It has to be. Of course this too is why I play raga.
So morning’s first raga should not just wake the sleepers, it should first disturb their dreams. It should with open eyes bend over their shut eyes, and watch them come to consciousness. It should pause at the edge of its destruction, for soon its vast body will fill the air. The day is now upon the land. The cage- bell-flute-beauty, this breath, is now an abstraction and powerful. For each day the morning raga finds its way to garden walls, to destroy those walls. And for the birds that can fly off, who are at least alive in the wind, the morning raga plays a thousand times in that wind. And then the day begins.