Tomic Riter

Tag: music

  • The Transformative Power of Classical Music

    Listening to this raga late night. The atmosphere of the room is so relaxing. I’m dozing off while I’m sitting in my chair. There’s something magical about this music. I do not know what it is. I just want to sit back and feel the music and let go of everything. Few minutes back, I fell asleep in my chair. The music was like lullaby in my ears. Now, yawning. Again. Again. And again. One more time. This music is the purest narcotic there is. I’m transported to some place else. Rather, this place is transformed into some other, more magical and more magnificent place. I wish I broke down into tears now. It would feel amazing to break down into tears now. I wish to cry for hours. I think it along with this music can purify me.

    No tears last night. Another day now. It’s evening now. Sitting naked in my chair. Listening to this beautiful raga by Sultan Khan and Zakir Hussain. Rag Bhupali. It’s an evening raga. There’s music that’s made from the threads of human consciousness. This is one such piece of music. When you listen to it, it deposits deep in your spiritual core. It touches you in places you never thought you had within you. Imagine the world has ended and you are floating in this infinite emptiness and suddenly you get filled with this pleasant feeling. If there’s a path to feel the divine energy through music, I think it’s through the path of classical music. No modern music seems to reach in those places within us.

    A call. Need to leave this here as it is.

    – Tomic

    Spotify link to the track Rag Bhupali –

  • Dire Straits playing.

    Dire Straits playing. Walked downstairs with an empty can of beer. Sat in my chair. Dire Straits playing. All the booze gone. All the evening almost gone. Feels too hot in this t-shirt. An urge to remove it and sit naked under the fan and feel an erection. Looking at the empty beer can on my table, Dire Straits playing. It’s dire times and Dire Straits is playing. The problem with being less foolish than the ones around you is that sooner or later, you would have to carry a lot of shit that you’re not supposed to carry. The problem is people doing favors to you. The problem is you getting crushed under the burden of those favors. Better to stab everyone from the front, right in their ribs or better, right in their foreheads, than take shit from anybody. A long pause. A long long pause. Dire Straits is gone. What the hell is this playing on my speakers? No idea. I keep listening anyways. Maybe it will turn out to be something good, and if it does not, then so what. A bad song cannot bring this world to it end. Or can it?

    Copyright  © Tomic Riter. All rights reserved.

  • Jazz, Paradox, Night.

    Rubbing my eyes off cigarette smoke. Rubbing my chest. Thinking about an orange sky. Listening to Layla. Layla. Layla. That goddamn guitar riff opening my eyes for the first time this evening. It’s nothing of an evening. Nothing much but it’s there. Words do not matter and yet I write words all the time. This whole life is like a paradox. I am dead and yet alive. I do not want and yet I want. I do not need but I do. I do not care but I do. I am tired and agile. I am fed up and I feel ecstatic. Tragedy brings me the joy nothing else can. Alcohol kills, cigarette kills, love kills, seeing anybody around kills, empty bottles kill me the same, empty cigarette packs too, lack of love is a straight rusted dagger through me. I am such a kind, walking in and out of existence, walking in and out of everybody’s lives. When I think about all the jazz, I feel that Coltrane was overrated. Dave Brubeck and Mal Waldron and Duke Ellington deserve more ears. Taking a walk in the corridor. Miles Davis playing Rubberband Of Life. Coming back dancing in my chair. Thinking about a million things. The wind outside, the leaves rustling, the night, this night. My head running through the events of the day once again to see if I missed out on anything. I don’t think I have but I am sure I have. Part of the paradox, I guess.

    Copyright © Tomic Riter. All rights reserved.

    CLICK HERE TO VISIT MY AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE AND PURCHASE MY BOOKS

  • Rewind. Repeat. Smoke and die.

    The wound takes time to heal. First, there’s redness. Then a little itching. Sometimes, too much. Then the new cells form and then, new skin. After a time, the wound disappears, like it was never there. But sometimes, the hurt continues. The flexibility just goes away. The bone gets weaker. The skin wrinkles. The muscles slacken. Even a little twist begins to hurt. Sometimes, you blow wind on where it hurts hoping it gets a little better. Sometimes, it does get better. Sometimes. The song keeps changing. The voice changing. It’s a whole goddamn playlist to cry over tonight. Lou Reed playing again. A call interrupted the mood. Not an important call.It was just my mother. 30 seconds long call. That much is enough to tell her I am still alive and everything is alright. Rewound the song. Played again from the start. Almost broke down. Almost.

    Copyright © Tomic Riter. All rights reserved.

  • Blues, Coffee, Cigarettes, Lighters, Matchsticks.

    Another one of those evenings with coffee, cigarettes, old school blues loud on my speakers. Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, B.B.King. Mustang Sally on repeat. What voices! What voices! And what lyrics! They throw you right away in the sweetest goddamn blues. You can’t help but light another cigarette. And there’s nothing like lighting a cigarette with goddamn matchsticks. Yeah, right off those goddamn matchsticks. I think if a cigarette has to be lit, and if you really really want to light it and I mean really want to light it, it better be done with a matchstick and in one go. Well, that’s some cigarette wisdom right there. A lighter isn’t bad or anything to use, it’s just it’s too organised, too polished, too nice. Now, we have these lighters with plastic red blue yellow bodies. Gas lighters. Transparent. You can see the fuel right through and how much of it remains, so that you get an idea about when to buy a new one. With matchsticks and matchboxes, it’s somewhat similar but not the same. The feeling is not the same. Matchboxes with no labels or names come straight from hell. Matchsticks carry some rawness. I like that rawness, that feeling of living like an animal. Damnit give me as raw as it can be. Things too clean begin to disgust me after some time. Clean bedroom, clean kitchen, clean toilet, clean bedsheet, clean glasses and plates, clean clothes, clean face, meditation and yoga, breakfast on time, dinner on time, sleep on time, just one glass of red wine, just one cigarette, just one glass of rum, just one bottle of beer, combed hair, brushing every day, taking bath each morning. Things dirty make me unstoppable, activate all my neurons at once, fill my veins with stallion blood. Drugs could never really make me high enough. Even if they did, it was all just momentary. Somebody once told me not to chase what’s momentary. I told him to fuck off. I am chasing nothing. I am here in this moment, trying to be as alive as I can be in the ways that I know of.

    Copyright © Tomic Riter. All rights reserved.

  • Thought about your ass in my hands.

    Some cool guitar acoustics playing on my speakers. Another day. Stayed in bed until noon. Made love to you. Got up. Brushed my teeth. Threw everything out of my fridge and into the trash can. Kept the door closed. I am the biggest criminal. I am the violation, the wound, the biggest crack in this earth. I am the one who gets killed. Sat in my chair, turned on my laptop, thought about lighting a cigarette, thought about your ass in my hands again and again. Lit a cigarette and smoked and thought about your ass in my hands all through the noon. Turned of the speakers, left my chair and got in bed again.

    Finally got up from bed at five in the evening. Took bath. Played some guitar acoustics again. Sat in my chair. Lit another cigarette and smoked Looked outside the window. The same old leaves hanging down the same old branches. The same old cloudless sky. The same old sound of the rustling of leaves. Ache in my eyes. Maybe it’s from the cigarette smoke. Maybe it’s from something else. All I know is that it’s there.

    Copyright © Tomic Riter. All rights reserved.

  • Somewhat like the blues.

    Some electronic blues on my speakers. Let’s see what these new fuckers have to offer. First song finished. Next. Next. Next. Next. Next. It’s good but not good enough. Not as good as the old blues. But that’s how modern sadness is, I guess. Something only half felt or felt not at all but spoken about twice as much. Something only wading on the surface, but not ready to plunge all the way down. Also, all their music sounds the same. Which makes me think, how can two people feel sad in the same way? The idea baffles me. Have they started copying each other’s emotions as well. Crazy! This music only sounds somewhat like the blues but it’s really not the blues. Anyways, I am nobody to criticize. I am no critic. Maybe this music will sound better to me on some other day, at some other time, when I am in some other mood. Maybe. I will listen to some more. Nothing better to do.

    Copyright © Tomic Riter. All rights reserved.

  • A night without light.

    A couple of hours before midnight, the guitars started plucking their own strings. A man was singing from somewhere deep down in his stomach. Following him, another voice rose and it was that of a woman. I had returned home from a long, pointless drill. Soon after that, the man ran away and the woman changed and so did her voice. The guitars broke and got replaced with drums and echoes. I made myself a bowl of hot soup and drank half and threw the rest of it. I ate something that I cannot remember now. However much I worked on it, I just couldn’t keep the insects out for long. They always found a way. They danced around me, sat on my hands, sipped my blood. They were leading better, more peaceful lives than I. The home looked fresh but only for a couple of days. After that, I always forgot and I didn’t care about how it looked. Another man started singing, and this time, he had a banjo sticking out of his windpipe. After a minute of hearing, any song became old.

    Copyright © Tomic Riter. All rights reserved.

  • War music.

    I closed my eyes to feel the symphony

    Handel was playing so beautifully

    like a war was coming and men were readying themselves to spill their blood

    and that of others

    there is something in music that pulls me to it

    those were war days unlike yesterday and today

    today, man cannot die with a laughter on his face

    he is incapable of it

    his brain has filled with crap

    he is not here anymore; anyone who is not here

    has no chance at a good laughter.

    Copyright © Tomic Riter. All rights reserved.