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Wedding Celebration

There are five drums and one gong, played by four men, the lead drummer in the exaggerated stance that drummers and performers take, legs parted, his chin jutting forward, eyes and smile flashing in syncopation to the music, flat large round drum slung from his shoulders. The rhythm is fast with off beats, accents played against the main time, heightening the air with urgency. Measured against your own heartbeat, your own breath - the basic rhythms. Capable of great volume, insisting presence fills the narrow lane where they play. The dancers limited to a long narrow path between the watchers, hung from windows and ledges. One of the men taking the role of the woman, wrapped in a new sari gestures in imitation of the female. A sex dance, a dance of the supremacy of the male. They act out the foreplay and climax of love making in a frenzy of finger gestures and body movements. The woman protests, is afraid, pleads with her husband on her knees, he is unrelenting in his object, he approaches she backs off, she runs past him, he pursues. Climaxes are reached, accompanied by the sharp thud of the large drums. Brief ending punctuation but the rhythm is unrelenting, lowers in volume. Builds again but never ending. It goes on for hours,

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binding sound. Sound is different in India, the material of their buildings, their shapes causes natural sound to reverberate in strange ways, sometimes it seems sourceless, transparent, without direction, their instrument when not amplified electrically one capable of humanness, of speaking to you another human, of touching resonate chords deep within yourself, intimate reveling and that you become part of that becomes part of you.

You cannot separate yourself from the drums. They command involvement, resounding from all sides. Narrow, close-walled alley, women, children, men jammed on both sides, the hot afternoon sun making a bit of light down the center, the dancers and drummers sweat glistening in highlights on their bodies, propelled in celebration of the life force.

May 10, 70

For insertion into night piece

On the roofs exposed to an open sky of pressing stars lie thousands in the attitudes of sleep, suspended above the consideration of the empty streets.

The barred closed, locked in feeling, no glass fronted store or windows leaking bright areas of positive light. With drawn feeling protected behind padlocks of many doors [ILLEGIBLE: looks like "brains"], bolts, metal boxes undescribed. Wary of darkness - locked out feeling of streets - in the daytime streets and interiors are linked as one with scarcely a distinction, the street being an extension of one's private area.