Isn’t it time you let me go? (ii) with Late Araj Ali Boyati
Red mud, sandalwood incense sticks, camphor, water, cow milk, honey, tea-infused water and mud- five natural ingredients according to Baul practices, plastic curtains, LED stage lights with blue filter. 15 – 22 December, 10 am – 6 pm, 28 hours, Serendipity Arts Festival, 2017
Photo: Ahmed Rasel
Practicing Bauls are open and as close to as nature. They explore life by their own bodies like playing with mud. They are the people, Heidegger epistemologically referred ‘open’. I have become astonished to find how an epistemological idea is practiced, understood and explored by Bengal line of philosophers, the ‘Fakir’.
In this performance Aruj Ali Boyati from Jhinaidoho, Bangladesh is repeating a verse like a ‘Zikr’. The verses are not music, but Philosophical discourse in Bengal. Philosophical discourse in Bengal, particularly of Bangladesh, is essentially oral. Music is not considered as a performing art, but a linguistic and metaphoric medium to pray.In the 2nd iteration, I am trying to de-mystify the idea of body and the way of knowing self to the context of forgetting time considering time is an illusion.