Becomings: The Cat at the Bottom of the Valley

In this dead city where I live, there are plenty of places where one can scream, or that's how I percieve them. I have learned the ritual of screaming from my mother, ten years ago we were in an empty park at 7AM, she stepped down from the car, stood near a guard rail which overlooks a dead valley, and she let out a loud monotonous scream, it didn't echo, nothing replied but I remember feeling really embarressed. The air swallowed the scream and covered me with heavy density, I didn't have the power back then to scream back at the air and shatter that heavy cloud of sound into small pieces. Scream-becoming-heavy-air.

Last night we went to the same spot, parked the car and walked together to stand before the same dark valley. My mother screamed, her scream was low pitched, agonzied and muffled. Nothing replied, no echo. So I took her scream and amplified it tenfolds: It was really loud, lasted about a minute, till it scratched my larynx. There was no echo, but my scream had to turn into something else, a scream never dies out, it morphes into different shapes that can be intangible. I heard a cat yowling, I yowled back. It was somemwehre down the dark valley, it heard my scream and turned it into a series of frantic sounds. The cat and I, kept meowing at eachother for more than five minutes, throwing my scream back and forth as if it's a repulsive thing no one wants to catch. Scream-becoming-cat-sounds.

My mother went to the car and brought some water and food for the cat, we went down together but the cat escaped in fear when it saw us, took our screams and ran away.

          

                                                *photo by me

On Becoming a Part of Leslie Jamison's Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain

I dreamed that I wanted to write about my life with my brother, that he hit me and instead of feeling pain I exclaimed "Ah, I need to write about this!" and my sister told me that I should stop exploiting other people's stories for my own writing. But it's my story and mine alone, and it's my writing, my reading of my story. Does that mean that the story has been already "written" and I'm simply reading it? does that mean that I am after all, exploiting the stories of "others"? I've actually dreamed that my brother fell from his room's window and that I saw him sitting on the window sill with his face towards mine, he closed his eyes and then dropped back. I couldn't save him, I went to the window and he was down, I told him to move his legs and he did. I realized I was still dreaming, nothing really happened. In my dream I exclaimed "Ah, I need to write about this!" and my sister told me that I should stop exploiting other people's stories for my own writing. But I need to tell this story and I don't care about it's origin. I've always thought that writing about (my) life and (my) pain would entail exploiting the people I live with and around, and that it would turn me into someone who keeps dwelling over her own suffering, that it would turn me into a show.  But pain is not mine alone, I feel it because I am a part of a large mesh of criss-crossing pain, and because I can give my pain over to others, like a gift, even if they can't "see" it.   
Yesterday, I've written for the first time in Arabic. Arabic is my (mother) tongue, this is how "native language" is translated to in Arabic. They have told me that I have a mother tongue and I've laughed in their faces, a menacing laugh and walked away. I had no idea that going back to it, getting closer to it, would be so painful. The distance language entails is painful, and I gasp for words, The reader would sense the heaviness that drenched every word I tried to conjure up. It was hard but I had to feel pain in order to write.  
I fell in love for the first time when I was fifteen years old, he broke my heart. I stopped eating, I cried for weeks and I remember telling the story of this breakup to everyone I've talked to. Over and over again, I repeated how much hurt I feel and how much pain he had caused me. I think I've done that not as a mechanism of healing, but more to tell people that I am a person with deep feelings who has the ability to suffer, I did it to feel better about who I am. I had no idea back then that this repetitive showcasing of pain, might have repulsed everyone around me, that it had been a cliche. I just knew, and still think that I had a right to my pain and that everyone should listen to me, LISTEN TO ME. My pain is grand and it's real and it deserves the attention of the world.   
I happen to ruthlessly defend the poetry of Sylvia Plath, and every time I do that I feel that I'm doing something as rebellious as starting a revolution. The other day, a friend of mine posted that Sylvia Plath is a "Tragedy of a woman who committed suicide, nothing more." I was so enraged and I honestly felt like crying. He hadn't even read her. "Would Sylvia Plath be as famous today if she hadn't committed suicide?" Sylvia Plath's suicide has taken the status of being almost a part of her oeuvre. She has indeed written many poems on and about her suicide attempts, she has written Ariel shortly before her death. We can't reduce anyone to their suicide, but why view her suicide as a reduction? It is a "tragedy" in one sense, but in another it's a culmination point of pain. It's a protest of a writer who has been locked inside a repititve day-to-day routine: between writing poetry, taking care of her kids and doing her chores. Her suicide is a part of her ongoing story, it's not her reduction point, it's a point opening to infinity. "I have done it again/ One year in every ten/ I manage it--"   One year in every ten.  In Ariel, she had already turned her I into grains of wheat, an infinite landscape. "And now I/ Foam to wheat" The devotedness with which Van Gogh had repeatedly kept painting fields of wheat, populating them with dream worlds, reapers, sunflowers with the "unheard of power of the sunflower seeds" as Deleuze describes the becomings in Van Gogh paintings, houses, a rising moon, and crows. He painted from the Asylum window, framing these wheat fields when he was losing his ability to utter "I." "And now I/ Foam to wheat" Deleuze had written that "A sunflower seed lost in a wall is capable of shattering that wall." Van Gogh broke the walls of the asylum with his wheat fields. In Ariel Sylvia writes "The child's cry/Melts in the wall/ And I/ Am the arrow"  Her "I" is an arrow which goes beyond the wall, beyond, and reaches the red of the sun. Pain ad infinitum, pain as liberation.  

الفاشية في الفن: ثلاث نقلات - بقلم دانة داود ، ترجمة ظافر عبد الحق.

  

النقلة الأولى 

الشخص الذي يخبرني بأن الموسيقى لا تعني له شيئا يصبح، بالنسبة لي، انسانا مائعا فور قوله هذا ، فالموسيقى تحاكي ما هو حميمي في الانسان ... شخص لا يفهم "باخ" هو انسان مهدور بالضرورة – ايميل سيوران  

المائع هو ذلك الأصم الذي يفتقد لكل ما هو حميمي ، وهو من لا يعرف ما الموسيقى ومن لا يفهم باخ .  

ما هي الموسيقى؟ من و ما هو باخ؟ كيف تحمل الموسيقى معنى ما لشخص ما؟ ما الذي تعنيه الموسيقى؟ كيف يمكن لشخص أن يفهم باخ؟ ما الذي يمكن أن يعنيه كون الانسان مهدورا ؟  

الموسيقى لا تعني لي شيئا ، هي شيء أحاول فهمه وأعجز ، الموسيقى ليس لها أي معنى ، لا وظيفة تؤديها الموسيقى ولا حيز تشغله في حقل المعنى.  

فلننضم إلى الجموع المائعة الصماء المفرغة من كل ما هو حميمي .  

الموسيقى : فيضان الجموع المائعة الصماء الجوفاء، تتخبط تائهة فتصدر أصواتا كذبذبات أمواج البحر. 

بذات النفس ، ولكن بلسان مختلف ، مدح سيوران هتلر كما مدح باخ . الفن يسمح بالأمرين .  

"لعبت الموسيقى دورا مهما في المجتمع النازي حيث تم استخدامها كأداة في يد البروباغاندا النازية ، فلقد كانت هناك منافسة _بل مزاحمة_ شديدة بين أوركسترات برلين و فينا الفيلهارمونية ، وقد يكون انضمام العديد من الموسيقيين للحزب النازي انذاك ليس سوى سعيا للتقدم في مهنتهم."  

الفن يسمح بالأمرين  

.    

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النقلة الثانية 

أطراف ملتوية / أذرع مشدودة / رقاب ممطوطة/أفواه مفتوحة / أفواه فارغة من الصرخات / حصان / أفواه/ أفواه / أفواه / عيون / نار / نار أحادية اللون / رمادي / أسود / أبيض / نار / خوف تجريدي / رعب تجريدي / ثور / ثور وامرأة تحمل طفلا ميتا/ امرأة تحمل رأسها وصرختها/ خوف/ رعب/ ورق جرائد / جرائد / أخبار / أخبار عاجلة / أخبار فورية / رعب فوري / حرب / غرنيكا .  

"أنا أرسم الأشياء كما هي" يقول بيكاسو .  

امرأة تحمل طفلا ميتا . "كانت البلدة مأهولة بأكثرية من النساء والأطفال"  

حدث أن سأل أحد الضباط الألمان بيكاسو عندما كان يعيش في باريس ابان الاحتلال النازي لها ، عندما رأى صورة للوحة غرنيكا في شقته :- هل قمت أنت برسمها؟  

أجاب بيكاسو : كلا ، أنت من قام بذلك .  

اذا قمت بالبحث عن كلمة "غرنيكا" في محرك غوغل ، ستجد أن أول مقالتين تظهران هما عن لوحة بيكاسو أولا ، تليها البلدة المدمرة .  

عندما أعيدت اللوحة إلى اسبانيا في سبتمبر 1981 تم عرضها خلف زجاجي مضاد للرصاص  

لم تقدر أن تحمي البلدة ، فلتحم اللوحة .  

"لأنه لم يكن مسموحا لأحد، أثناء الحكم الفاشي (1939-1975) أن يتكلم عن القصف والدمار الذي حل بغرنيكا ، فقد تم سلب الناجين فرصتهم في تجاوز ذكرياتهم الفظيعة والمؤلمة حول ما جرى "  

"اليوم في ألمانيا ترتبط كلمة "غرنيكا" بلوحة بيكاسو الشهيرة أكثر من ارتباطها بالمدينة الاسبانية الصغيرة التي دمرها الألمان"  

تم اذا سلب كلمة "غرنيكا"  

الفن يسلب .
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النقلة الثالثة  

كنت أتصفح الفيسبوك (موقع اخر من مواقع الرعب الفوري) ، لأجد فيديو معنونا ب "عائلة تنجو من حريق بعد قفزها من النافذة" ، قمت بتشغيله ، ثم أوقفته فجأة لأتمعن في المبنى ، أخذت بلون المدخل ، لون أصفر شبه داكن ، رسمت :- 

قمت برسم بضعة خطوط ، وكذلك برسم مثلث ، حاولت تقديم ألوان الدخان فنيا ، وحرصت أن يكون الأصفر شبه الداكن هو النجم البارز في هذا العرض .  

صنعت من الموقف عملا فنيا ، ونسيت أن أتابع مشاهدة الفيديو حتى النهاية لأعرف ان كانت العائلة استطاعت النجاة ، أم لا .  

الفن استغلالي  

الفن يذكرك ، ويفقدك الذاكرة .  

Microfascism in Art: Three Moves

Move #1 

"A person who tells me that music means nothing to him is straight away liquidated for me... for music stirs that most intimate region in human beings... Someone who does not understand Bach is lost." - E.M. Cioran, (Wakefulness and Obsession: An Interview with E.M. Cioran by Michel Jacob.)


                             

                            The Vienna Philharmonic in concert in Bucharest in 1941. Photograph: Ullstein Bild (the guardian)

Liquidated: deaf people, those who lack an intimate region, those who don't know what music is, those who don't understand Bach.

What is music? What is Bach? How does music mean something to someone? What does music mean? How can someone understand Bach? What does it mean to be lost?

Music means nothing to me, music is something I'm trying to understand, music has no meaning, music does not function in the realm of meaning.  

Join the liquidated deaf who lack an intimate region.

[ Music: The flood of liquidated deaf people who lack an intimate region making rippling sounds like the sea.]  

                   

With the same breath but in different tongues, Cioran praised Hitler, Cioran praised Bach. Art allows for both. 

"Music played an important role in Nazi society and was used as a propaganda tool. There was a strong rivalry between the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic orchestras and many musicians may have joined the Nazi party in order to advance their careers."(the guardian)

Music allows for both.

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Move #2


(Pablo Picasso, Guernica 1937)

Twisted limbs, stretched arms, elongated necks, a gorged horse, gaping mouths, gaping mouths, gaping mouths, fire, monochromatic fire, gaping mouths, abstract fear, abstract horror, a bull, a bull and a woman holding a dead child, and her gaping mouth...abstract fear, cubed violence, cubed fear, newsprint, newsprint printed news, news, immediate news, immediate horror, immediate fear,, eternal return of fear, of war, Guernica. 
"I paint the objects for what they are."

A woman holding a dead child: "The town was mostly populated by women and children." 

'When Picasso was living in Paris during the Nazi occupation, one German officer allegedly asked him upon seeing a photo of Guernica in his apartment "Did you do that?" Picasso responded "No you did."'


If you google search Guernica, the first two articles you get are of Picasso's painting, and the town in ruins. 

When the painting was returned to Spain in September 1981, "It was first displayed behind bomb and bullet proof glass screens."

Couldn't protect Guernica, protect the painting.

"Since no one was allowed to talk about the bombing of Guernica under the fascist rule (1939-1975) the survivors were robbed of their chance to process their horrible memories." (spiegel)

"In today's Germany, the word "Guernica" is more often associated with the famous painting by Picasso than with the German attack on the small Spanish city." 

The word Guernica has been robbed.

Art robs.

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Move #3
I was scrolling down my news feed on Facebook, another site of immediate horror. I found a video titled: Family Survives Fire By Jumping From Window. I played the video, and I suddenly paused to take a screenshot of the building. I was amazed by the color of the entrance, an ochre yellow. I made a drawing:

I made lines and a triangle and rendered the colors of the smoke, I made sure the ochre yellow was the star of the show.

I made art and I forgot to watch the rest of the video to see if the family had survived the fire.

Art is exploitative,

Art makes you remember, but it makes you forget.


   

Marginalia: Three Poems

I have been thinking about this since the 26th of September, although thinking is not what I have been doing. Writing this has turned into an obsession that has left it's marks everywhere in the form of fragments: notes on my diary "I want to write alot", tiny torn pieces of paper under the bed with unreadable handwriting "writghtheh?", faded ink on the inside of my palm in the morning "re", and a series of facebook messages "9/26, 3:18pm Future poem project", "9/28, 11:15am Idea for poem to come", "9/29, 6:32pm On the poetry in the margins of used books."  
I have been reading something that I haven't had written yet, a reading which I haven't had an access to, the lack of time and space has been pushing me to the margins. Today, the 12th of October, I write and I read.

Writing this is an obsession in the form of marginalia, for over two weeks I have been imitating the written words left by readers on the margins of books. Curled on the farthest sofa in the margins of the living room, leaving marginal notes everywhere I go. Every book has margins even if they were not visible, and every reader leaves their mark. I'm only concerned with the poetic here, the elusive mystery which veils the few words which are a part of a reading that I'll never have access to. I find this specific kind of marginalia seductive, because the few marks left in pencil by previous readers are caused by layers and layers of inaccessable readings. These layers of infinite virtual and actual inaccessable readings, are marked with written notes which themselves allow for an endless number of readings. I've spent an hour trying to decode the bad handwriting on the margins of Jean Anouilh's Antigone with no avail, my eyes have become red and wrinkled from this effort made in reading, my body is marked. and my reading has become marked too.

Today, I'll read three poems which have been left on the margins of books. It may be harsh to distance the margin from the book, but an inaccessable reading has allowed this distance to happen and allowed me to exploit it for my own means.


Poema #1 


re
presentation
re-construction
of the message


Poema #2


I made a line under
under that I made a line
and then I made a line under
another line


Poema #3



a premise at return
a promise of return
I promise of return
I promise
I return