Susheela Raman - Rose

Two centuries gone, visionary artist and poet William Blake captured in a few elusive lines the unreasonable paradox of life animating and deserting us. We are plunged into the livid redness of being alive, even as it ebbs away, the eternal tussle of sex and death playing us in and out. A beautiful flower is already haunted by decay. Innocence gives way to experience. Music flies in the night, the invisible worm burrowing into its host, pulsing in the blood, virus words whispered in the ears of musical adepts. And the English mystic-grotesque finds Javanese resonances. Blake, who spoke often of the anvil and forge, is set here to the sensual metallic dissonance of Gondrong Gunarto’s twenty-first century gamelan while Susheela’s voice spreads its many-petalled harmonies. The Sick Rose BY WILLIAM BLAKE O Rose thou art sick. The invisible worm, That flies in the night In the howling storm: Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy: And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy.