Now on route to a tourist zone to check that its acclaimed changes are "all that".
Hi CoSo!
I've been consumed by my ego this week.
How are you? How've you been keeping sane? (Or at least from going more nuts?)
What's one small triumph in your life as of late?
Name one (1) art that's moved you as of late.
If you had your druthers, where would you be today, and what would you be doing?
"Name one (1) art that's moved you as of late.
If you had your druthers, where would you be today, and what would you be doing?"
Music. It is almost always music, that moves me the most.
Marjaa: The Battle Of The Hotels
by Mayssa Jallad
https://mayssajallad.bandcamp.com/album/marjaa-the-battle-of-the-hotels
I am home. Nowhere else would I rather be.
Walking in the Forest.
And personal to me:
My best friend, had been living in Beirut for some time, fled in the fall of 1975, never to return. And she still today suffers the trauma of losing one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
Thank you for sharing that.
What a deep ache to carry.
I don't know if she reads much these days, but a potent tale of migration, Hala Alyan's THE ARSONISTS' CITY, has some excellent depictions of more recent Beirut, with all the complexity of art & minority subcultures woven in. The story follows a family in diaspora trying to keep the father from selling their ancestral home in Beirut. The book reflects on the complexity of longing for what's lost amid what's risen from the ashes.
Thanks I will look into this.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-arsonists-city-hala-alyan/17211302
(Of course, if she's got any recommendations of her own, I am a very ready ear and eye for more learning!)
Well she reads mostly French, Levantine Arabic, and some Berber. She was born and raise in Algeria and France.
She speaks fluent English, but it is not her first nor favorite language.
I will ask.
I have been an incompetent student of Levantine Arabic for the last few years - the poetry especially! So an Arabic recommendation would be well-received; I mostly practise with music these days (the piece you linked is clear enough for me to grasp most of the words, for instance, though it still takes time and I can only speak in painfully short sentences).
I used to help a Syrian poet in Canada with his work, & now Arabic is an excellent aid to my understanding of Spanish's history.
Ok.
I will let her know. Might be a while since we mostly communicate, by pen paper, and snail mail.
لا تثق في التكنولوجيا، فهي ترسل رسائل القلب
(Trust no technology, for messages of the heart)
That, I could read! :)
And I am heartened to know someone else who corresponds at a distance with one who is most dear. It is a strange, private, and wonderful thing to do.
Thank you again for sharing.
@corlin
💛 Lovely choice. I had a suspicion from the title that this was inspired by Lebanon.
"The album is a reference to Jallad’s Historic Preservation ... thesis, in which she detailed the history of the “Battle of the Hotels”, a 5-months battle that took place in Beirut at the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War, from October 22nd, 1975 to March 29th, 1976. Jallad saw architecture as a main protagonist of the battle, as she discovered it was the first high rise urban battle in the world."