So this morning to clear my blood of the previous night's howling, I am listening to Mickey Hart's Smithsonian Radio, in which he brings a mesh of rythms for all over the world - currently it is Grupo de Capoeira Angola Pelourinho from Bahia, Brazil. As I have bitched here previously, one major handicap of Western Classical Music, from the viewpoint of my ears, is that it lacks a strong ryhtm section with some exceptions such as Ravel's "Bolero". Have rythmic day, y'all.

so described Walt Whitman himself, i.e, a kosmos, i.e., me in his "Leaves of Grass". Of course in the next few verses:

"Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding, No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them, No more modest than immodest."

he also gave a pretty accurate summary of who I am today , sans "breeding". For that I will have to wait for the "touch" that will lead to:

Unbuttoning my clothes, holding me by the bare waist, Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and pasture-fields, Immodestly sliding the fellow-senses away,

Yes, the touch of a woman who waits for me:

A woman waits for me—she contains all, nothing is lacking, Yet all were lacking, if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the right man were lacking.

Through you I drain the pent-up rivers of myself, In you I wrap a thousand onward years, On you I graft the grafts of the best-beloved of me and America, The drops I distil upon you shall grow fierce and athletic girls, new artists, musicians, and singers, The babes I beget upon you are to beget babes in their turn, I shall demand perfect men and women out of my love-spendings, I shall expect them to interpenetrate with others, as I and you interpenetrate now, I shall count on the fruits of the gushing showers of them, as I count on the fruits of the gushing showers I give now, I shall look for loving crops from the birth, life, death, immortality, I plant so lovingly now.

...

Or maybe not. Maybe I will just be a stepson of Manhattan, and will bury myself in some smoky New Jersey town like Hoboken, across the Hudson River from the gilttering spires of Manhattan, and maybe the loveless I too will breed, if only words, like this writer has done, drunk on New York, when I get there in a few months time.

The heart is a restless beast tonight, much like a ravenous lion in the Roman circuses, and I am attempting to tame it with morsels of sound from that close cousin of Hindustani Classical music, Persian classical music. This is the music I am listening to.

...

Later, I discovered that MusicIndiaOnline (which I think, hands down, is the best Indian music site!) has the very beautiful album "Rain" by Ghazal, the Indo-Persian duo comprised of Iranian kamancheh (spike fiddle) player Kayhan Kalhor and Indian sitarist Shujaat Husain Khan. You may be interested in the liner notes from an earlier Ghazal's album for a quick rundown on these two musicial traditions.