All Fall Down speaks of the state of awareness, the consciousness, and the thinking of a man in the time of letting go of desire, who discovers the romance of reality lurking beneath desire. This Romance of Reality also needs to be let go, in order to be clear of the attachment to living a certain way of life, so he can live in life itself.
“In 1992, I attended a concert in the meditation hall of the Osho International Meditation Center in Pune, India. The hall was a white marble floor as big as a football field, surrounded by netting, with a tented roof, surrounded by a jungle garden, surrounded by a complex, called by some Club Meditation.
Hundreds, both sannyasin and local, attended the concert, given by some of India’s most honored and revered musicians. It turned out the performers weren’t able to attend, and their children, nearly as well-known as their parents, carried on in their place. In India, music is a family affair.
The stage was elevated, carpeted with beautiful rugs, and the show was introduced in Hindi and English, among other languages perhaps, since the ashram was visited by people from all over the world. After lavish introductions, the musicians assembled at their instruments; tabla, sitar, etc., and began to play. I sat with my friend, Suryo, and listened to the beautiful sounds.
I didn’t know what I was listening to, so I listened the way I might at any Western concert. I listened to hear songs, pieces of music, but what I heard had no demarcation, it simply went on, without apparent parts. After an hour, I thought I was listening to a long composition, and I anticipated an end, but none came. After two and a half hours, I had a different sense. I was led by the open-endedness of the music to the sense that I was inside the music. I was in a neighborhood of music, a park, a garden, an open space of sound. I felt free to wander around, to see what I could see, to smell and touch the music, to listen or not. The effect was not in any part of the whole, and it was not in the whole, it was in the environment.
All Fall Down is intended in a way to be something similar to that. All Fall Down was written as a long poem from many poems that became, here, many poems from one long poem, but the demarcations are almost arbitrary. There’s no need for them, or for the poetry, for that matter, except for the uses of form. Poetry is more easily digested in courses, even dishes or cups, but hopefully here, there’s an environment of awareness more cogent than any part or even more than the whole.
All Fall Down could be called teaching the unteachable to those who would learn the unlearnable, but there’s no intention to teach anything, and no intention to understand anything, either, except the un-understandable. There is an intention to be as clear as possible in language about that which has no language, using language to point in the direction of no direction, to distract from the lack of clarity in the use of the language the poem employs.
We have instruments to make music, but sometimes the effect can’t be assumed from the shape. Music can be made to accent the stillness in which it occurs. The luxury of music can become the environment in which it occurs, more than the definition of anything that occurs within it. I invite you to ride along with this language and look at the scenery as it goes. Dance to the music, all fall down.” Steve Abhaya
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