Ravi Shankar & George Harrison Are Both Dead & That's The World We Live In

It is 12:16 AM on Wednesday night or Thursday morning and I am writing this instead of working on the short story I'm supposed to be working on but I'm okay with that about myself. Tonight I had a terrible night at work. I was stressing out about how I was stuck at shitty work instead of working on the short story I'm supposed to be working on and I felt like I was dying and like I couldn't be real with anybody. I was not myself. I've had staggeringly bad headaches all week, headaches so bad you can taste them all gristly at the top of your nose like you just got punched. On the subway home I didn't read and I didn't listen to music, and I thought my feet were going to fall off. 

I came home and took my shoes off. It was one of the most beautiful "taking my shoes off" experiences of my life. I might go bathe my feet in hot water. I poured myself a glass of Sangiovese and found my copy of The Sounds of India on LP. I stole it from my father, P. Faulds. He bought it in 1967, as you can surely see. It's weird to think about my dad making the choice to buy that record 45 years ago and then 45 years passing and Ravi Shankar dying and his daughter blissing out to the very same copy. Though I am 100% sure my dad doesn't find it all as sentimentally gorgeous as I do. My 2012 dad is generally pissed at me for stealing all his records and taking shitty care of them.  

I sat cross-legged on my bed drinking my glass of wine and listening to Side B because there's less of Ravi explaining scales on Side B, more of Ravi playing songs. This music sounds like the sky. The sitar is the sound of the sky; that's my big "sitar opinion." I think it's a little bit sad that the record is called The Sounds of India, since Ravi Shankar was from Bangladesh. He was George Harrison's sitar teacher. Ravi Shankar being from Bangladesh is such a big part of why I have George Harrison's name tattooed on my wrist. I want to be serious like they were serious. 

I felt so warm. The wine was warm and the music was warm and my headache went away but now it's back, obviously, because I'm looking at the staticky abrasive white of a computer screen. I don't know why I'm so stupid that I forced myself to come to my computer and write it down instead of keeping on living it, I guess because it felt like a solid compromise between doing nothing and working on that story, and also because I wanted to remember it. I knew if I saved it writing this down for tomorrow morning it'd be crappier and I probably wouldn't even write it. So here you go, Laura. Always remember sitting on your bed drinking a glass of Sangiovese and listening to Ravi Shankar the day after Ravi Shankar died. You were warm and you thought you might cry but you didn't. You wished you could trap yourself in that moment forever. Then you blogged.