'Swan Upon Leda' and Other Thoughts

It is raining in Dublin. It is one of those corners of the world where it rains perennially. As a Bengali who has grown up loving more poetry than anything else, it reminds me of Shakti Chattopadhyay's "Brishti pore ekhane baromas/Ekhane megh gabhir mawto chore" (It rains here all twelve months/ The clouds graze like cattle upon an enormous sky). 

I am trying to draw up a comparative analysis between classical fascist systems as an attempt to locate the first part of the PhD thesis. And while listening to a range of other things, Hozier's 'Swan Upon Leda' caught my eye today. Again. A heavy lot has passed over the course of the last year. I wouldn't truly know where to draw the line between the private and the theoretical, but I suppose, reaffirming the 'political' in personal is oftentimes more important to what lies beyond the self. I write for what seems to lie beyond the self. 

In perhaps what I imagine would posit a stark contrast to a happening "professional life", I went through a series of delirious, excruciatingly painful experiences that I find oddly similar with the nuanced plot of Alex Garland's 'Men'. To top this off (as if everything else was not enough), I was living in a shared house before moving in to my current accommodation, and that was an impending disaster. Finding the right kind of housing in Dublin can be difficult even for people hailing from other parts of Ireland. But what truly baffled me was the gendered nature of abuse that was going on: in professional spaces, at the place where I was living and how pervasively that was penetrating my personal spaces, until there was little or none left for me to breathe in.

Amidst that mess, I was writing my master's dissertation, elucidating on the Lefebvrian idea of spaces, touching upon neo-Marxist theories of education and intellectual capital. What now appears intriguing, from a distance, is how I had to somewhat forget the demarcation line that compartmentalises 'academic' and 'personal', because on the one hand, work has always been so important, so painfully passionate for me but also because my circumstantial situatedness would not let me detach myself from the reality that I was having trouble coming to terms with at the first place. This kept building momentum, like a centripetal force around a chaotic center of intersectional conflict, until it grew so big that I figured I needed help. And so, like the rest of Alex Garland's story, "help" began to assault, to dismantle my definition, my autonomy, my agency over sanity. 

And that took me back to Plath. Of course it did. It took me back to thinking about how the oven became her life, how the clinic dismantled her into a psychiatric case, it took me back to "bombastically crazy" (Parker, 2013), it took me back to the shroud of paternalism that has been cast around the idea of hysteria, it took me back to Betty Friedan, and Beauvoir, and the father and the colonel and the streets of Chile and that of Iran and that of Ireland not too many years ago from now. It ascertained the many schizoid (Deleuze, 1972) ideas I had about the hyperpragmatic discourse of mental health over the years. This, coupled with the verbal description of discourses of abuse experienced by fellow women (mostly women but also men) over the years to start a conversation on the same at a plane that surpasses the individual, and the specter of the doctor, and his black shoe (Plath, 1965). There is an impending number, a burgeoning number of issues that seem to constitute the distance between the expert/alienist and the (curated case of the) patient. There is a bubble, a cascade, there is imperialism and there is another kind of fascism that Foucault (1972) talks about: the fascism that lies within individuals, the kind of fascism, when emphasised upon, terrorised to outdo itself exudes its characteristic mark by embodying itself into a greater body of culture such as, let us say, the narcissistic culture that has been engulfing metropolitan cities around the world. [We would soon be inviting more people to join an initiative I would be disclosing in the next post].

So, somehow, amidst all of that, I have been really lucky to find myself surrounded by beautiful, kind people I am able to feel a genuine sense of camaraderie with in a great university that is letting me do what I academically want to do at the moment. 

Palestinian Mahfoza Oude (75) Throws Earth in the Air Next to One of Her Olive Trees with Israeli Soldiers in the Background in the West Bank Village of Salem

Collected from Getty Images/Shutterstock. 

This evening, as it rains outside, I came across this song. I read that Hozier had finished recording the song when Roe vs. Wade was overturned. It takes me back to sleepless nights in 2014 following watching live coverage of the 51 day war. It takes me back to Abbas Kiarostami and it takes me back to Bahman Ghobadi and about what war has done as..."occupier of ancient land". I have indeed thought about writing on Hozier's work as a poet many a times before, I only have refrained because I have trouble writing about something I know is honest to its core, honest to every inch of its genuine beauty. And while Alex Garland's 'Men' was imperfect, I remember the cold air blow across my face on O'Connell street that night after having watched the film as I walked to the bus stop, and I remember thinking how I felt solidarity with the sentiment that went into making that film. 

Dublin has been my flawed, broken muse for a lasting while and at least some of Hozier's work has grown to be an indispensable part of that journey. Although I have hardly had the heart to find fault in the man's poetic prowess, let us just say I am grateful Hozier chose to write 'Swan upon Leda' and wielded it to share an important message about autonomy. There is beaming vulnerability in its language, and yet it juxtaposes the strength in the message the song conveys (resonating with some of Sam Beam's work I have admired ever so often). There is a sense of dread, a kind of haunting that is characteristic of songs such as 'Shrike' and 'Like Real People Do'. Tonight, as I finish writing my report on fascist institutionalism and ultranationalism in the mid-twentieth century, occasionally leaning into the role that the gendered politics of bodies (political and personal) play in constituting hegemonic bodies of political power and control,  I would know there will be people who would be writing gracefully on the issue of body (and bodily) politics - and then there will be people who would write:- 

"The swan upon Leda

Empire upon Jerusalem

 

A grandmother smuggling meds

Past where the god child-soldier Setanta stood dead

Our graceful turner of heads

Weaves through the checkpoints like a needle and thread

 

..................................

..................................

The gateway to the world,

The gun in a trembling hand,

Where nature unmakes the boundary

The pillar of myth still stands,

The swan upon Leda

Occupier upon ancient land

But gateway to the world

Was still outside the reach of him

Would never belong to angels

Had never belonged to men"

References

Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1972). Anti-Oedipus. New York: Penguin Books. 

Foucault, M. (1972). Preface in Anti-Oedipus. New York: Penguin Books. 

Parker, J. (2013). Why Sylvia Plath Still Haunts American Culture, The Atlantic, June 15. Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/06/why-sylvia-plath-haunts-american-culture/309310/ 

Plath, S. (1965). 'Daddy' in Ariel. New York: Harper and Row Publishers.