The splash page for Ramesh's web site is a rainbowed declaration of sorts, which begins, "I wish I could have understood that the hardest part of becoming a man would not be the part where you had to find yourself, but rather the part where you had to lose your center, by walking away from everything you love." That's a man standing at the foot of his problems. He's trudged through a lot, found most of it to be counter-productive and then stared at the distance traveled and chalked it all up to frivolity. If he didn't chalk it up to that, he chalked it up to wasted days, riding one painful riddle after another through some sickening despair that might still linger like a fog or a mist. The sentiment comes from a man who will never get over the ills that he's endured, the broken relationships that he's been through or the way his body feels weaker and less tolerant of strain because of everything that had already been presented to it over the years.
From Amelia Gray's brilliant short collection, "AM/PM, she offers, "With practice, Hazel learned to paint rooms. The evidence could be found in the botched green walls of the room she left and would always remember, even when the house is sold and the room is repainted.
Understand that if you don't paint a room properly, you will know those pieces of wall forever. Understand that every piece of paint not properly applied continues to quietly exist. The misapplied strokes hold a dull truth that remains despite new coats."
The men in Ramesh's songs have been good painters and they've been poor painters. Either way, they've found that they remember the walls that they covered.