TSL Prompt April 29th based on Sufjan Stevens latest instrumental album in five parts.

 TSL Prompt April 29th based on Sufjan Stevens latest instrumental album in five parts.

Convocations

There have been no convocations in my life so far.

But once I went for one for my daughter

The photographs remain

Of her convocation

In Bangalore, a school

I had barged in to for admission

And they had given my daughters shelter

A miracle

At a time when I had just shifted there for my son

Who had been diagnosed with autism

Angels littered my way and ended in that

convocation. There must be something to

This quaint tradition

Here Stevens calls together "a

Large number of people

For an assembly" that is not formal

Unlike the degree conferring one

To listen to his music.

Sonic scapes accompanied by swirls of psychedelic images

My daughter wore a white sari.

Stevens is calling us to an epic

As is this poem

Mini.

Meditations.

An album of 49 tracks

Of which the first ten are meditations

What does he meditate on?

He mediates on death

Father's, mother's, O Lowell O Carrie, his

by association, mine

and everyone's

maybe even God's

Let us stretch our imagination

It is about meditation

It is meditation

It is meditation on meditation

It is mediation

Lamentations

We lament

death

grieve parting

long for reunion

feel sad at absence

Sorrow over memories

Nothing brings back the dead

Except moments

Unexpected

The dead who live in us

The living who die is us

Sufjan's mother and father

My sister, father, mother, mother in law, sister in law's son

Who else died

I am familiar with death

This music creeps by me upon the waters

And we sit still by the rivers of Babylon

To weep

Waiting for exile from life to end

Waiting for our mouths to be filled with never known laughter

Revelations

I have had revelations galore

It tired me

If only I had been able to make them into

music

and not poems

Sufjan

it might have produced

a better result.

Poetry makes nothing happen

does not drive away

delay or make death depart

Revelations, it seems, are not enough.

The story does not end there.

Celebrations

After sorrow there must be a time of joy

After rain, sunshine

To cliche it

After poetry, prose

When you take stock of loved ones' lives

And come to terms with their departure

I am writing this not only for myself but my friends who are grieving

I am writing this bittersweet

I am writing this with the pain(t)brushes of autumn

I am writing this with hot tears of happiness

I am celebrating oxymorons

Love and death cuddle in my poems in music

No one hears

I am 'lost' in the celebration

I wonder if anyone will ever read these lines

Or listen to the music of the spheres in Sufjan

When nothing matters anymore except to go on

For the sake of loved ones

I celebrate

by lighting up black candles

to give light

for my loved ones

one step at a time

Incantations (One less and unreleased)

Njaan Malayalathil ezhuthaarilla

I never write in Malayalam

But if we come to incantations

I would say

Kaka/Crow

Rathri/Night

Iruttu/Dark

Velicham/Light

Swapnam/Dream

Nishabdatha/Silence

Deivam/God

Maranam/Death

Jeevitham/Life

Raudram/Blood-Red-Anger/Destruction

Madhuram/Sweetness

Kalkandam/Rock sugar?

The poem trails away into chants somnolent

Sound(e)scape

The poem

Ends

With a(n) manthram/incantation.

29th April's Prompt

Convocations- Dr.

Ampat Koshy

Convocations in five parts divided into ‘Meditations’, ‘Lamentations’, ‘Revelations’, ‘Celebrations’ and ‘Incantations’

based on Sufjan Stevens latest album. Write one or 5 poems using the 5 words in it

Be inspired by Sufjan Steven's album

https://youtu.be/Ivpq4VDFC1I

Convocations, the new instrumental album from Sufjan Stevens, moves like a two-and-a-half-hour electronic/ambient mass for our present age of anxiety and dread; its 49 tracks work through the stages of grief and gladness with emotional mood music that is dreamy, dissonant, vertiginous, rhythmic, repetitive, urgent, and calm—that is, all the things we undergo when we inevitably live through isolation, uncertainty, and loss. Its five sonic cycles (Meditations, Lamentations, Revelations, Celebrations, and Incantations) replicate different stages of mourning, healing and catharsis, working both to soothe our unease while savoring a renewed sense of awe and wonder for being alive in these unprecedented times. Stevens initiated Convocations in response to (and as an homage to) the life and death of his father, who died in September last year, two days following the release of The Ascension. It is, then, ultimately an album about death, and an album that reflects a year in which we have all lost so much. That said, this is not a personal record, but a universal one. Convocations is built on a shared experience that seeks to be honest about how complicated grief can be in these difficult times—the pain and separation, the anxiety, the unknown, the absolute joy of memory. This is also an album made in lockdown, when we were all cloistered in whatever space we had. Convocations arrives just as we begin to emerge from a year whose losses we will calculate for a lifetime. It is, then, right on time, as we begin to process our grief and try to carry on with it. ©2021 AKR P.O. BOX 1282 LANDER, WY 82520 USA ALL MUSIC PERFORMED, RECORDED, MIXED AND PRODUCED BY SUFJAN STEVENS © 2021 SUFJAN STEVENS MUSIC/ASCAP

Meditations live now. Lamentations live now. Revelations live now. Celebrations: April 29th Incantations: May 6th