Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: aziza chaouni, bassam el okeily, brownbook, hanni el khatib, middle east, nada debs, writing
Given that I’m pretty much blogging near-daily at THE STATE, might use this space as a kind of record of pieces up elsewhere. For now, at least.
In the intervening months? Almost entirely Dubai, with a recent trip to Bangalore and Ooty. Summer is looking like a return to Brooklyn, with a possibly move to Istanbul (!) afterwards, roundabout October. More on this later, though; for now, have at Brownbook’s gorgeously redesigned site. I have four pieces newly up there, mostly from the last issue that I was with them:
East is East—on Nada Debs, and a design aesthetic that merges the Middle and Far East(s) (more…)
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: academia, brownbook, driving, dubai, evens, future gutter status, gonzo ethnography, headspace, ian mackaye, june, justin pickard, malinowski, metanarratives, perfume, sheila heti, sillage, speed, summer, uae
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In June, everything was lovely and nothing was bad. I got a tiered mesh tray, and everything was organised. I switched my default gmail font to Georgia, and felt a little bit more articulate. I read a lot of perfume blogs and shamelessly appropriated their beautiful vocabulary. Sillage, chypre, fougère. Head notes, heart notes and base notes; rationality, emotion and ferality.
It’s actually only the eleventh of the month but I’m projecting. Last winter was brutal and May kind of ugly, but June? June is going to be wonderful, I can tell. And now that I’ve swapped Brooklyn for Dubai, there won’t be any winter anymore. The weather is heavy and sticky, but it feels oddly earnest. An overly enthusiastic mouthbreathed hug and both cheeks pinched: unwelcome, but still comforting. (more…)
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: anthropology, brownbook, dead time, deira, dubai, estrangement, evan collisson, expat anxiety, future gutter status, ghost of petrodollar bubble past, headspace, karama, skateboarding, summer, uae
Dubai again and a strange affection for a city that I guess is my home, little as it does want me here. Jobs here seem impossible at first hunt, perhaps I should look to skip and dip on standby tickets for the next two months? I will definitely be in Cairo (and not Berlin) for a fortnight sandwiched in June, and Kashmir/Mumbai for the first 2-3 weeks of July. Hopefully finding an affordable (!) sublet in NYC for August and couchsurfing for the last dredges of July til I can inshallah move in. My life is currently packed into six boxes in the radio station – I fascinatingly had five last year and four the year before. I suspect the number could go down though as I have scores of books to disperse (like theory, like cats) into the atmosphere, and several boxes lined with wake-up-an-hour-before-kickout-time dump and run panic. [you can't go home again..]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: beirut, brownbook, dissemination, headspace, july war, lebanon
[photo by Piax]
Beirut. A beautiful seaside city between cedar lined mountains, replete with forgiving blue skies and beaches. The ‘Paris of the Middle East’; the sparkling jewel in Lebanon’s crown. Breathily multicultural and sometimes painfully hip, its boxy nightclubs, falafel joints, shisha cafes and tiny galleries provide the regional answer to NYC’s ice cream, brownstones, boomboxes and beer. The city is definitely buzzing, yet sometimes all that can be heard is the faintly uneasy static hiss of a radio stuck between channels. Earnestly ignored, it continues in the background, a little like the hum of an air conditioner that you’ve already grown accustomed to
Yet in a city decimated by fifteen years of civil war, sometimes the past is hard to forget. The fast growing skyline of stylishly glassy towers remains underscored by bullet-ridden buildings – once impossibly elegant in their characteristic French-Ottoman style but now quietly falling down. Like much else in Beirut, it forms a strange hybrid: neither nor, but something in between. Like much else in Lebanon, it reflects a society of contrasts and contradictions: one that is always shopping, and one that is always at war…
Sometimes Malaysian universities are shaped like canopies. And sometimes I have a Monday deadline with at least 700 words to go and Kant to shuffle at in between ohdear.
