KHOJLIVE : March 28 2008

WHAT HAVE YOU HEARD?

During this event friends colleagues and members of the festival going public were invited to donate two sentences, one beginning with 'i heard...' and one begining with 'it is...' as contributions to the public domain from which Vivek composed a work for performance. Contributed lines are shared here for free use as public domain material, with a further invitation to share remixes of these collectively generated lines.

PUBLIC CONTRIBUTIONS

I heard...

I heard cycles.
I heard a chirp.
I heard F dance.
I heard a foghorn
I heard love letters.
I heard boom-boom!
I heard the fan whirl.
I heard lightning fall.
I heard the tube-light.
I heard a message beep.
I heard there is a house.
I heard the crackling fire.
I heard just the other day.
I heard that he drunk it dry.
I heard what you didnt hear.
I heard mathematical tables.
I heard the sound of a conch.
I heard new-sense (nonsense).
I heard the songs of my past.
I heard it through the grapevine.
I heard a yellow man drumming.
I heard entropy is winding down.
I heard the silence fall and shatter.
I heard a thousand oceans meeting.
I heard the jackhammer late at night.
I heard a mosquito buzzing in my ear.
I heard that heaven is a beautiful place.
I heard it will be the great performance.
I heard it all but it wasnt true after all.
I heard the bulbul fart on the neem tree.
I heard a flower pot crash on your head.
I heard a telephone ringing in the night.
I heard somebody knocking at the door.
I heard the argument on the second floor.
I heard that Delhi Belly knocks you out.
I heard that eyes can be a carnival mirror.
I heard I should come and watch, so I did.
I heard percussion coming out of a speaker.
I heard the world sticks to maiden answers.
I heard it was ok to be gay if you dont say.
I heard a woodpecker hammering at an oak.
I heard the unhindered turning of the world.
I heard the pressure cooker on the first floor.
I heard that I can be successful if I work hard.
I heard a siren, then someone called my name.
I heard the tape dispenser crashing to the floor.
I heard that being on time didnt matter in India.
I heard, three days: taptap TAP TAP TAP taptap.
I heard tigers growling in the empyrean drainpipe.
I heard the delivery truck of Tegelmann backing up.
I heard the shriek of elipses colliding into a full stop.
I heard a squirrel nibbling on my window this morning.
I heard that life can be beautiful within a positive mind.
I heard Eric Clapton streaming from Fillmore East, 1970.
I heard that the cure for what ailed me was warm, dry air.
I heard you should never cut your toenails in a public toilet.
I heard that air travel isn't the main cause of global warming.
I heard that tar invades our lives and that we are in a tar zone.
I heard paper being collated and then stapled; people laughing.
I heard metal vibrate when the heating went on in the other room.
I heard her say she was bored and that it was a deep kind of thing.
I heard contented cooing, and walked in to find pigeons in the room.
I heard the best minds of my generation blame the silence so offered.
I heard everyone is in their 30s or early 40s who were kids in the 80s.
I heard of us in the forgotten village, the one past the last railway stop.
I heard the gurgle of my coffee-maker inviting me to face the new day.
I heard... the bird call itself awake, or alternatively, cry itself to rhyme.
I heard that its slightly difficult and yet quite fulfilling at the same time.
I heard that Barack Obama doesn't talk about his mother, an anthropologist.
I heard the reel swishing in the wind and the crunch of my crispy French fries.
I heard, as though from inside my head, the sound of sand grinding in my teeth.
I heard what the Zen master said to the hot dog salesman: make me one with everything.
I heard my soul sing in the breeze just like the rustling of leaves casting shadows as I write.
I heard the train - the invisible train - that people think is a train only because they can hear it.
I heard the bird, the dolphin, the monkey, and the zebra, and they were all talking at the same time.
I heard him through the night and it was exquisite and painful and I wept for two out of five hours.
I heard about the Good Friday and Easter Sunday services at the Khasi Jaintia Christian Fellowship.
I heard the nubile girls of the then metropolis muffle their pain of tattoos with warm starch water.
I heard the seed pods rattle against each other, or maybe I was just remembering walking in past times in quiet places.
I heard the cling clang clack of pots being washed in the alley below and I strained to hear dust falling on curtains.
I heard the man on his cellphone say, don't worry, soon they'll figure out you're gay, and then you'll be out of the army.
I heard the sound of a sigh, it is the hollow beat of an empty heart filled with longing for a distant star on a new moon night.
I heard my Dean yelling at his wife, berating her over the phone, something about their child, this really just happened, I am serious.
I heard about the Lacanian lack today, that forever-propelling nothingness which consumes us and without which we are simply voids.
I heard whatshisname is in London, I wonder for what, the tabloids don't tell you such things, it looks like he's showing off his new wife Carla Bruni.
I heard the trucks grinding down the hill out front slowing before the road crew filling potholes their orange cones, green vests, surest sign of spring.
I heard a loud instrumental (a new Nine Inch Nails piece called "Ghost 32") through the warehouse PA System; it's not the kind of music I usually play, but, singing along with it, I got to feel a part of it.
I heard many things, and believed few, heard wonderful sounds, and understood little,
I heard you were right nearby, or that you were tragically distant,
I heard everything slowly, in a prolonged torpor of dreaming.
I heard my name on the phone spoken by someone I wasnt calling, sounding as surprised as me, and then, on this rain-soaked cloudy day when nothing seems to connect, the line went dead and I checked the number-- no way had I got it wrong, and no way could the woman
I heard have picked up the line and spoken my name.

It is...

It is. (undated paper)

It is blue, shiny and cold, with chipped paint at the top. (undated paper)

It is a house that grew around a tree. (undated)

It is a mild storm in the Saharan desert.  (March 25, sunset?ibya)

It is not so, Indian stretchable time will hereby be considered only applicable to business interactions and not art communications.  (2.00 pm, 26th March, IST)

It is important to love nature whether inside or outside. (2.15 pm, 26th March, IST)

It is a beautiful sultry afternoon in March (2.40 pm, 26th March, IST)

It is turquoise, glass, and film strips flapping in the wind. (3.00 pm, 26th March, IST)

It is said that human beings always need a clean environment for well being and life. (3.40 pm, 26th March, IST)

It is grey outside my window but if I turn I know the light behind me will be dusty yellow.   (26th March, 6pm, IST.)

It is an announcement of a concert, the blank side of which I have used to take notes about this concert by the James Fei Alto Saxophone Quartet. (March 26, 9:00 AM East Coast USA / 6.30 pm IST)

It is eclectic. (26th March, 6.30 pm IST)

It is full and a policeman squeezed through quietly with a long bamboo pole. (6.45 pm, 26th March IST)

It is crowded, sweaty and a bit dark.  (?ould be the 25th or 26th, but I?e lost track; it must be 7 though it feels like 9.30? IST)

It is not what it was just two weeks ago. (26th March, 7.30 pm IST)

It is held together with two rubber bands.
It is addictive.
It needs staples.
It must be done today.
(8 pm, 26th March, IST)

It is the quintessence of the abstractability in the fungibility of the creative nature of art.  (8 pm, 26th March, IST)

It is quite a feat (8.15 pm, 26th March IST)

It is crowded. (8.20 pm, 26th March IST)

It is crowded. (8.25 pm, 26th March IST)

It is a gaudy yellow (toy) submarine. (26 Mar 08 8.30 pm IST)

It is a small room full of bewildered chatty people driven by beer and boredom (8.35 pm, 26th March IST)

It is buzzing. (8.40 pm, 26th March, IST)

It is not tough to find heaven around us. (8.45 pm, 26th March, IST)

It is alienating (8.50 pm, 26th March, IST)

It is fluorescent. (9 pm, 26th March, IST)

It is a refugee neighbourhood and its deadwood lust. (9.00 pm 26th March, IST)

It is a conversation set in blue (9.10 pm, 26th March, IST)

It is lonely here in Freeport, Illinois. (Illinois-- March 26, 10.45 am / 9.14 pm IST)

It is a madhouse of form-filling, need and endurance. (9.20 pm, 26th March, IST)

It is totally theatrical activity. (9.30 pm, 26th March, IST)

It is an educated animal. (9.40 pm, 26th March, IST)

It is the spiral whirl of the earth's dance; we are its prisoners and its partner souls. (26th March 10.48 pm IST)

It is the answers that we make that I question in my troglodytic ways. (10.30 am 27th IST-- Delhi)

It is three off-white walls, one glass wall and a sliding glass door decorated with little frosted-glass squares. (March 26th 1:48 pm East Coast USA / 11.15 pm IST)

It is tart and irrevocable. (26 March, 1:17 PM, East Coast USA / 10.45 pm IST)

It is a sleepy fluffy bunny drooped against another sleeping fluffy bunny beside a sleepy chicken, glazed with rain. (date and time of writing:3/28/08 1:20 p.m. East Coast USA / 10.50 pm IST)

It is a cigarette butt between an acoustic piano with several broken notes and an electric keyboard with little action and too much tint. (date and time of writing: March 26, 2008 (5 pm - California / 5.29 am IST)

It is a room too small for two. (12.01 am EST, Mar 26 / 9.32 am IST, Mar 27).

It is what it is (March 27, 9.47 am IST)

It is a sticky night, not the one with laden with the humidity of heavy air, but one that clams on with your sore memories, moist with the sweat of a failed start. (10.57 am,  27th IST)

It is trying to be something that actually does not need to be tackled in the first place.  (11.00 am, 27th, IST)

It is windy, but warm. (11.30 am, 27th, IST)

It is our job to break laws if they?e blocking the doors.  (12.00 pm, 27th, IST)

It is the only brown dry tree between the hospital and the  taxi rank but I watch it the most. (27th March,  1.41 pm IST)

It is nevertheless never too bright to say hello to the sun. (27th, 2.10 pm IST)

It is the hot sun that burns my shoulders now. (2.27 pm March 27, IST)

It is soaring and slicing the air.  (2.30 pm, 27 March IST)

It is a flowing wall of images blowing in the breeze.  (2.30 pm March 27 IST)

It is dry, warm, lit simply beautiful. (27th March, 2.45 pm, IST)

It is plastic, yellow, circular. (27th March, 3.00 pm, IST)

It is dark-genie instrument. (27th March, 3.00 pm. IST)

It is so fun to play with the baby. (March 27th, 3 pm IST)

It is the kind of garden you never want to leave. (March 27, 4.03 pm IST)

It is a sunny, cold morning. (Berlin, March 27  12.00 pm / 4.29 pm Thursday IST)

It is eerily early as sirens compete with stories from around the world. )March 27 /  8:48, East Coast USA / 6.15 pm IST)

It is early morning, and the light is turning. (East coast USA  7.15 am, March 27 / 4.45 pm. IST)

It is a blinking bright face that hums and ticks that I'm staring into. (4.53 pm, March 27 IST)

It is Thursday, the 27th of April, amid the lating afternoon of an internet cafe in Bhopal, a rare sense of leisure plants me here, I (the Farenghi) having appeared onstage for the first time as a sarangi player (albeit simply in the junior chorus, so to say, of the ensemble) at Ravindra Bhawan last night, an event now over, now here people speak in languages I know not, as is entirely usual, autos -- as everywhere -- rumbling in near distance. (March 27, 5.26 pm IST)

It is possible that you are now dead. (March 27, 6.12 pm IST)

It is time the ice around my mailbox melted; write me a proper letter, why don't you? (March 27  8.45 am East Coast USA / 6.12 pm IST)

It is as if you might reel me in when I needed some safety.
It is as if I might catch some fish for you.
It is a spot with pine trees, mist and a post office.
(March 27  9.20 am - United Kingdom / 6.50 pm IST)


It is a particular reality rescued to fit their anecdotes. (19.40 March 27 IST)

It is near the faux-green Chicago River (27 March 9 am-ish Illinois / 8 pm IST)

It is a quiet street in Giesing, Munich and a corner of my balcony is full of empty beer bottles. (Munich, 27th march, 4.05 pm / 8.30 pm IST)

It is the time of the day the mother cat steps out to hunt.  (March 27, 9.21 pm IST)

It is the smell of nothing arriving, nothing moving; the smell of suffocation. (March 27 / 9.51 pm IST)

It is the sound of a child reading aloud, voice splintering and cracking, a child growing by himself in light and forlorn love. (March 27, 2008  9.55 pm IST.)


It is good that we are not friends.
It is better that we will never be.
It is what they say it is.
It is my favourite time of day when the sleep starts from my legs.
It is a brand new headset that i'm imprisoned by these days.
It is time for a new sound.
It is the same place over and over again.
It is never just peaceful.
It is tenuous.
(March 27th, 11.04 pm IST)

It is a room lit dimly in the mid-afternoon by light filtering through the overcast sky: only the red table cloth seems to shimmer, sending rays up to the ceiling, coloring it pink with its glow.  ( March 27th, 1:45 pm, East Coast USA / 11.30 pm IST)

It is water, 5 liter costs 1,49 pounds, that? about 16 ZAR (South African Rand), its ok; I can drink tap water but buying distilled water is a way to make sure that I DO drink water, otherwise I won't, I know myself, I keep it on my desk, next to my iBook G4 and am always careful that I don't spill when and if I pour. (March 27, 7.05 pm  Brixton / March 28, 12.35 a.m IST)

It is these midget pencils of M.K.Gandhi nosing their lead out of the wee little haiku yellow cup like Lilliput or Alice. (March 28, 12.45am IST)

It is an attractive distraction to hear your ring tone. (Texas - March 27, 7 pm / March 28 5.32 am IST)

It is not a pipe, nor a pipe-dream, nor a poem or a line in a live-stream. (March 28, 6.05 am IST)

It is the benign sun rising in the east with no sign as yet of its mid-day fury. (28th March 2008, 07.10 am IST)

It is a sadhu in a saffron loin-cloth holding the conch and blowing it to announce his arrival; he wears a smile - seen through his black beard - and holds a 'Parasurama axe'. (March 28, 7.23 am, IST)

It is cool in the morning like rain, but we knew that all we would get was blown dust and smoke. (March 28, 8.00 am IST)

It is windy outside, and snowing: I can see the rotten, overlong branch outside my window rocking. (March 28, 9:43 a.m. ?ast Coast USA / 7.13 pm IST)

About Vivek Narayanan & Sophea Lerner