Days on the shores of the Mediterranean improvise dark clouds which preside over fanatical light. They die before they get to speak... They roam off not developing any ties to anyone.The salt swells your eyes like you've been weeping for lifetimes and the callous majesty of those visions might well ruin your face, this one sea like a jagged edge, this one uncompromising sea that deflects you. Imagine the worst thing one lover can say to the next, and repeat it every day as he runs back to her bed... And that is the sea. And that is Zuhrun.
Imagine neither of them knows what they're doing......
The most beautiful music I've ever heard
Will never equal a single second
In the time
That will start
After I die
And am born.
The Beatles
Coltrane
Mingus, Hawkins, Bird, Monk, Duke, Diz, Miles, Satchmo, Ella, Charles Brown, Ray Charles, Billie, Ornette, Yusef Lateef, Red Garland, Pharaoh Sanders, Freddie Hubbard, Archie Shepp, McCoy Tyner, Evans, Cannonball, Wynton, Branford, Paul Desmond, Herbie Hancock, Wes Montgomery, Evan Parker, Eric Dolphy, Rashied Ali, Sonny Rollins, Cliff Brown, Count Basie, Bill Dixon, Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, Joe Harricott
Jeff Buckley is the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit Radiohead, The Mars Volta, Rage Against the Machine, Bright Eyes, Elliott, DiFranco, The Strokes, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Verve, My Bloody Valentine, Sigur Ros
The Postal Service, Zero 7, Portishead, Stereolab, April-March, Frou Frou, Mum, Air, Massive Attack, My Jazzy Child, Joanna Newsom makes me weep, DJ Shadow, J Majik, Thievery Corporation, Howie B, Malcolm McLaren, Tryo, Broken Social Scene
Pink Floyd under Syd Barrett not that Roger Waters nonsense, Hendrix, Van Morrison, The Doors, Velvet Underground, The Yardbirds, The Kinks, Zeppelin, Bowie, The Clash, early U2, Joy Division, Depeche Mode, The Sound
Beethoven, Bach, Debussy, Satie, Vivaldi, Ives, Schubert
Umm Kulthumm, Abdel-Haleem Hafeth, El-Hamm Madfa'i, Fairuz, Nathem El Ghazali, Anouar Brahem
Skip James, Booker T., Leadbelly, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Chris Thomas King, Ali Farka Toure
Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke, James Brown, Etta James, Maceo Parker, Toots and the Matols
Mos Def, Common, The Legendary Roots Crew, Talib Kweli, Dead Prez, Fine Arts Militia, Black Star, Pharoahe Monch, The Rza & early Wu Tang, The Last Poets, De La Soul, MC Solaar, Guru, Tribe Called Quest, Disiz La Peste, Kanye West, J-Live, Roots Manuva, Saul Williams, Sage Francis, People Under the Stairs, Spleen, Us3, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, Brand Nubian, 5 % Nation, Jazzmatazz, K-Os, Digable Planets, The Coup
Les Quatre cent coups, The Battle of Algiers, Andrei Rublyov, everything by Hitch esp. Rope, The Man who Knew Too Much, North by Northwest, anything with Peter Sellers, everything Buster Keaton ever breathed on, The Third Man, The Thirty-Nine Steps, Rebel Without a Cause, Godard esp. À bout de souffle, Bande a part, Éloge de l'amour; Bertolucci esp. Il Conformista, some Fellini, most Tarkovski, all Truffaut except the last Doinel movie and The Last Metro, Buñuel, Before Night Falls best biopic of all time, City of God, The Pacifist, 2001, Paradise Now, Kilometre Zero, A Vot' Bon Coeur, Bataille dans le Ciel I don't remember how to say it in Spanish, Cocteau esp. Orphée, The Loss of Sexual Innocence
THIEF
Today, in honor of the world full of false loves,
Committed my first theft in over two years.
    &
;amp;nbsp;   Bessam the thief resumes his body.
He stalks up and down the aisles of the library, The vault for the periodicals,
Sits in the middle of an empty room, the bare microphone.
    &
;amp;nbsp;   Ceiling fan
Off his eyes the blinds are burned, trembling lightly under some pressure,
All the chairs collapse,
The walls contract,
The lights and exit signs flicker into nonbeing.
12/12/04
L'Etranger - Camus, Une Saison en Enfer - Rimbaud, The Prophet - Gibran (the holy trinity); Les Illuminations - Rimbaud, Le Petit Prince - Saint-Exupery, The Birth of Tragedy - Nietszche, The Wretched of the Earth - Frantz Fanon, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Solidad Brother - George Jackson, The Book of Disquietude - Fernando Pessoa, Memoirs of the Blind - Derrida, Poema del Cante Jondo - Lorca, Sleep My Son Sleep - Ra'ad Mushatat, Van Gogh: the Man Suicided by Society - Antonin Artaud, Notre Dame des Fleurs - Genet, Bless Me Ultima - Rudolfo Anaya, The Fire Next Time - Baldwin, Howl - Ginsberg, The Double Flame - Octavio Paz, The Pleasure of the Text - Barthes, Celestino Antes del Alba - Reinaldo Arenas, The Broken Wings - Gibran, Soldiers - Ra'ad Mushatat, La Civilisation Ma Mere - Driss Chraibi, El Mundo es Ancho y Ajeno - Ciro Alegria, My Name is Red - Orhan Pamuk, L'Oeuvre - Zola, Emile - Rousseau, Contempt - Alberto Moravia, Spleen de Paris - Baudelaire, Nadja - André Bréton, La Carne de Rene - Virgilio Piñera, Le Chant du Monde - Jean Giono, Les Chemins de la Liberté - Sartre, The Souls of Black Folk - Du Bois, The Plum Plum Pickers - Raymond Barrio, William Blake - various, Constantine Cavafy - various, T.S. Elliott - various, Li Po - various, Langston Hughes (too bad he was such a housepet I still admire his aesthetic), Freedom and Death - Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ - Kazantzakis, Farewell to the Sea - Arenas, Alcools - Guillaume Apollinaire, The Enuma Elish, Inanna's Descent to the Underworld, The Popol Vuh, The Iliad and Odyssey of Homer
ARTHUR RIMBAUD, Pablo Picasso, Gibran Khalil Gibran, Federico Garcia Lorca, Alexander the Great, Giacomo Casanova, Albert Camus, Mohammed Ali, Vincent Van, Antonin Artaud (Nanaqui), Frantz Fanon, Patrice Lumumba, Jamal Abdel-Nasser, Naim Badawi, Steve Biko, Ché Guevara, Emiliano Zapata, Malcolm, Huey P. Newton, Jawaharlal Nehru, Aimé Césaire, Edouard Glissant, Ra'ad Mushatat, Driss Chraibi, Mouloud Mammeri, Pablo Neruda, Ahmed Rami, Jean Genet, Jesus of Nazareth, my mom, my father, my uncle, Abdul Jabbar Abdullah, Sheikh Abdullah Sheikh Sam, Gilgamesh, Meursault, Inanna, John Lennon, John Coltrane, Jeff Buckley, James Dean, James Baldwin, Johnny Depp, Pierre Clementi, Morrison both Jim and Van, the god of the Mediterranean Poseidon or whoever he might be Thank you from the bottom of our hearts, the one I can't name, the sun, [el Cristo moreno and all gypsies]
Tes yeux m'ont rappelés les jours partis
Ils m'ont appris de me lamenter
Du passé et ses blessures.
Ce qu'ils ont vus
Avant de te voir, mes yeux... Ma vie perdue,
Comptée contre moi.
Ce qu'ils ont vus
Avant de te voir, mes yeux... Ma vie perdue,
Comptée contre moi.
Ce qu'ils ont vus
Avant de te voir, mes yeux... Ma vie perdue,
Comptée contre moi.
Ce qu'ils ont vus
Avant de te voir, mes yeux... Ma vie perdue,
Comptée contre moi.
Tu es ma vie
Tu es ma vie
Conçu par ton aube lumineuse.
Combien de ma vie avant toi est passée ?
O mon amour, ma vie perdue ...
Tu, tu es ma vie.
(The preceding lines are my humble translation of the sublime "Inta Omri" by the inimitable Ahmed Shafik and sung by the unchallengeable Voice of God, Umm Kulthumm.)
Asare is one of the names of Marduk, the solar god who defeated Apsu in response to his plot to kill the gods for the "noise" they created; Marduk then made the sky and the earth from the body of Tiamat, the goddess personifying primordial chaos. In other words, he's the ancient counterpart of Lucifer, that most disgraceful character intended to demonize rebellion for all time. The difference is that the ancients held ideological value for the power of revolution and the defiance of oppression The difference is
That Marduk WON
2-27-06: Yann, Julien, Vincent, Rogatien, Romain, François, Blanche, Bastien, Rozene, Corrine, Marguerite, Raphaël, Pierre, Anaeïs, Simon.....I got my real education in France. Vive la lutte
"We are African. And we happen to be in America. We are not American. We're a people who formerly were Africans who were kidnapped and brought to America. Our forefathers weren't the pilgrims. We didn't land on Plymouth Rock. The Rock was landed on us."
"For the white man to ask the black man if he hates him is just like the rapist asking the raped, or the wolf asking the sheep, 'Do you hate me?' The white man is in no moral position to accuse anyone else of hate."
"But I'm not anti-American, and I didn't come here to condemn America--I want to make that very clear. I am here to seek the truth. And if the truth condemns America--then she stands condemned!"
"Je sais que vous y êtes venu pour m'assassiner. Tirez, lâche; vous n'allez tuer qu'un homme."
7-1-06: My love for you is not eternal but it will never die even when you have pushed me to hate you. My love for you is the love I felt when love's fragile wings first lifted Gibran from the ground. You see, the one I loved passed, and remained, the world is nothing but what it impresses in my palm. The sweet girl crouching by the lake about to be born....
All life beats against my skin
"But when I was in prison, chained at the ankles and condemned to death, I wasn't unhappy. I had fought. It was the price I had to pay. I kept thinking, let me be lucid enough so that when they lead me to the guillotine, I remember to shout, "Long live Algeria!" --Saadi Yacef
2-18-07: Sean, Mike, Jackie, Amanda, Sina, Lee, Rich, Matt, John, Noah, Sally... there is an oasis even in the vastest desert. On les ecrasera