[softhe4rted]

on growing ada limón, trying // florence + the machine, south london forever // felicia chiao // phoebe bridgers, garden song // ada limón, the burying beetle // shinsyl, "an afternoon in the garden" // edvan munch // ada limón, sparrow what did you say? // mary oliver, letter to _____. // amandina catrala

[tisapitysheisawhore]

La Montagne Liban (Mount Lebanon), Etel Adnan and Simone Fattal, 1973.

“In the painting, La Montagne Liban (Mount Lebanon), partners and artists Etel Adnan and Simone Fattal collaborated to create an otherworldly depiction of Mount Lebanon in saturated yellow. Under what appears to be a sun and a moon, their washed brushstrokes of pastel pink, blue and yellow illustrate a painterly landscape of day and night seemingly collapsing into one another. Produced when the two artists first met, the painting is an ode to their shared experience and mutual affinity with the natural world. A rare collaboration by Adnan, a poet, scholar and painter and Simone, a sculptor, painter and translator, lovingly combines their approaches. While both artists identify themselves as Arab-Americans based on their long residence in the United States, each artist retains an engagement with their native lands: Adnan to Lebanon and Fattal to Syria.”

Etel Adnan, shown at her Parisian home with a 1974 canvas. PHOTO: JAMES MOLLISON FOR WSJ. MAGAZINE

Simone Fattal photographed in her Paris studio by Jonas Unger, 2019

[oneweekoneband]

SHIM EL YASMINE: YOU (MASCULINE)

There is no respectful word for gay in Arabic, though one has begun to emerge in the last decade. For centuries, there were two words: one that translated to “pervert,” and one that translated to “person of Lot”  meaning the prophet Lot who, according to the Quran, begs his people to follow the straight path, and when they disobey and enforce their “lifestyle” on others, God flips an ocean on them, giving us the salty Dead Sea. This is not a problem unique to the Arabs: Europe did not have a word recognizing homosexuality until the 19th century.  In Arabic, everything is gendered too: the sky is feminine, the earth is feminine, the sun is feminine, the wind is feminine, the soul is feminine. War is feminine. There’s nothing in between, there is no It in Arabic, it gender is unknown or undefined, it relegates to male. There are two You’s too, one for men and one for women.

Shim el Yasmine is a gay love song, it is the ripple that caused a wave, but Sinno doesn’t say the word gay, he just croons to a lover: a You (masculine)

I would have liked to keep you (masculine) beside me / Introduce you (masculine) to my parents, have you (masculine) crown my heart/ Cook your (masculine) food, clean your (masculine) house/ Pamper your (masculine) children, be your (masculine) housewife.

In Arabic, these lyrics are a revolution (a Jasmine revolution). Sinno stretches each vowel, pulling from classical Arabic sounds, elongating and exaggerating the o’s and e’s until they sound like a religious chant. He draws out every habibi until it’s a hymn. Never once does his pronunciation waver, his Arabic is almost Quranic in its perfection. Behind him, the music is stripped, his voice alone can carry us across the torture.

Shim el Yasmine is not melodic the way other Mashrou Leila songs are, it’s a song for watching the world cycle by from a rainy window, a song that can simmer quietly in the background for years until one day your ear picks up a lyric and you’re wrenched. By the West, Shim el Yasmine is read as a piercing indictment of Arab homophobia, and this is not wrong. Arabs are homophobic and the hate crosses religious lines: Mashrou Leila was banned from playing in Amman by a Christian group. But I’ve always wondered, in our quickness to assign political meaning, whether we’ve deprived the song of it’s heartache and grief. In the same way that we diminish Muslim identity and experience when we validate them only in opposition to terrorist attacks, we diminish Shim el Yasmine by framing it only as a protest song.

This song’s anguish is deeper and bigger than America’s or Europe’s conception of homophobia in the Middle East, deeper and bigger than the institutional politics set in place to keep us down. It’s a song about memory, “remember, remember, remember to mention me,” Sinno pleads in the first verse, and whimpers the last line, “remember to forget me.” It’s a song about domesticity, about devotion, about loss, “I wish you had never left,” he sings at the end.

I’m brought back to an interview conducted with Sinno early on, when he’s asked what the main message of Mashrou Leila is, and he said “there’s no main message, honestly,” in English, “you know it’s like when you’re building your own artwork, it changes every time, it’s always the product of so many variables.” Shim el Yasmine is a political song, and it is an intimate song and both those sings sit alongside each other. The political doesn’t have to eat the intimate and the intimate knows that its self expression is political, but it too can still be itself, it too can be a flood of feeling without having to be a statement.

The version above, performed live with a quartet, is particularly affecting. 

[mbrainspaz]

I really enjoy just existing in hotels. The long identical hallways. The soulless abstract art. The weird noises the air-conditioner makes. Strange city lights in the window. Six stories off the ground. Strangers chatting in the hall. Nothing in the dresser. No past, but an infinite present. 

[saying]

[lovecrumbss]

lorde - hard feelings

[zeindaya]

@lorde: i was in a cab home in nyc and royals came on and i laughed and the driver asked why and i told him it was my song and he said “mine too!”

[oncanvas]

Untitled (Kool-Aid Drawing), David Hammons, 2004

Kool-Aid on paper 43 ¾ x 28 ¾ in. (111.1 x 73 cm)

[tisapitysheisawhore]

spathumpa

[valtsv]

you’re telling me there are people who listen to music and DON’T use it as the soundtrack for the intense cinematic daydream plot they’ve always got playing in the back of their head???

[photos-of-space]

Conjunction Venus and the beautiful Pleyades, from Guatemala (single capture) reddit.com/r/spaceporn

[oncanvas]

Untitled (Source), Naotaka Hiro, 2018

Acrylic, graphite, and grease pencil on paper 42 x 32 in. (106.68 x 81.28 cm)

[i-wrotethisforme]

My PIN number to this day is my second grade best friends birthday. There are people I don’t talk to anymore whose families are still in my prayers. There are shirts I wear to bed from exes of 8 years ago who are married now with kids. And I haven’t found a macaroni salad recipe better than my college boyfriend’s mom’s. Our lives are made up of so many people and when people become parts of our lives, some parts remain long after they leave. And in the same exact way, it’s comforting to know there are so many lives you’re still a part of that you have no idea about.

[emilyblunts]

Who are you making eyes at? That’s Sophie. She’s my best friend.

[tunabora]

Party town USA (at Chinatown Los Angeles)

[tunabora]

Purple, red and yellow in #mixedmedia (at Los Angeles, California)

[tunabora]

Elevate one another when you can, because giving anyone visibility and access to the rights they supposedly have will improve their life, yours, and everyone else’s along with it. Happy pride, everyone!! 🌈 #pride (at Istanbul, Turkey)