Writing is the most Basic form of Visual Art

When you strip down visual art to its constituent parts – paintings, photographs, material installations, movies, concrete skyscrapers, embroidered textiles.. – they all seem to speak the same fundamental language. Just like mathematics is the foundation of all sciences, writing is the bedrock of visible artistic form. A word is more than just a movement with the hand, or a stroke of characters on a keyboard. It is a visual expression of human interaction honed by memory and experience. It is the most basic visualization of emotion and thought nurtured by generations of culture and civilization. When a word is breathed on paper – just like a painter’s brush on canvas – a calligraphic shape soon becomes surreal. The only difference is that with writing, we all have access to this imaginary world. For every true writer is an artist and every true artist is a writer. What do you think?

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Istanbul Enterprising

Can you smell the dawn
Grazing along the surface
Of the foamy sea
Can you feel the breeze
Push against your face
And fill your lungs
With endless love
Can you hear the morning prayer
Echoing through the city’s stones
Silent sponges, hardened memories
Can you see the seamstress enterprising
The baker smiling
As she tosses life between her palms
Can you taste the sweetness
Of an innocent hope
And steadfast faith
Staring the centuries in the eyes
Without budging
In the sea
In the air
In the people of this place
A testament to god’s magnifecence
And his eternal grace

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Sand Castles – Excerpt from Andalusia

“The history of this world has unfolded from a stone cast many times into the sea only to find its way to shore again until the world in its entirety was filled with endless grains of sand each speaking of an age and time that once befell. What stories can we learn from playing with the sand. What stories can we tell from drawing shapes in dust and molding castles, moats, and gates with towers high. For sand is the essence of life. In every grain we can hear the cries of the millions that have perished before us and in every grain the joyous laughter of the millions that will be born. Cordoba was no ordinary sand castle in the playground of this world.”

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I am currently working on a new book that tells the story of Cordoba an ancient city in medieval Spain. Cordoba has so much to teach us about coexistence, tolerenace and love. Yet it remains forgotten in our modern accounts of history. More than 1000 years ago and for a brief hundred years or so, it was the largest and most extravagant city in the world where people from all walks of life lived together in harmony – until Cordoba was destroyed. I hope to share with you some bits and pieces of the story along the way.

The Alchemy of Hope

Confined to the very elements that make up who we are, we struggle every day to break the rules of nature. And little do we know that nature’s rules are only broken with little blows to our inner selves and to those we love around us. Above the rubble of what we break are countless heaps of problems that need repair. And only through the same collective pain that wrought this err can we find amends for our transgressions.

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jungle mungle

That longing
Slowly dying
At the bottom
Of your chest
You can feel its heartbeat
Faintly throbbing
Rising every morning
With you
Still awake
For years
Like a school of daisies
Waiting innocently
For the sun
To shine
Feeding from
The coldeness of
The earth
Taking refuge in a soil
Roughened by the days
Each grain of sand
A thousand years of memory
Stale waters
Soaking roots
Soggy pores
Sleepy buds
Blossoming peacefully
Only when its time
Beyond the stories
Of this world
Transcendent is
That uncivilized passion
That raw melancholy
That natural desire
To expand
Germinating in every grain
Of pollen
That instictual love
That beauty
That currency of existence
Ethereal
Swaying beneath
Our ignorant eyes

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The Broken Hourglass

I see this castle here
Water flowing
Above the sand
Greatness down
To the very last
Golden grain
Time is flowing
Underneath my feet
Waves dancing
With the sandy shores
And even the sharpest rocks
Lose their temperament
And become glossy
Like the sea
An eternal patience
Eating slowly from the land
From our homes
From our lives
From our dreams
Testifying to a universal truth
That nothing is what it seems
The world is a broken hourglass
And we are just its means
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The Liberation of Mortimer

Slow footsteps, but sure ones through the morning mud. Mortimer was awake and waiting for us to save him. But as we walked around the mountain tops the day fell victim to the dark. What cometh then, we could have never known.

Long winters hibernating through our memories, spring cleaning for a braver day. The cold inside was profound. The darkness bleak like raven skin. A thousand pies would never make me smile, a thousand winds could never take our ship to bay.

And in the jungle of that island land, a thousand days of rainfall. Pounding drops of a saltless sea falling from above. Dampening the mud below our naked feet. With every step a squeeling ooze of muddy throngs yearning for deliverance.

I turned to Annabel, she was dead. Our chains still binded us as we dragged her corpse along the way. Our horde was destined to work the land. Towards that quarry we walked with dying footsteps counting down the days.

I turned to Mortimer, he was awake. Waiting for the morning sun. Waiting for his friends to save him from the coldness of his home. And when it was my time, I bathed inside the mud. Stripped naked, dragged along an endless line of misery. I closed my eyes and slipped away hoping that the load of my decaying corpse won’t be too much a burden for those who chose to live another day.

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When Adam Blogged the Taste of Mortal Sin

Sun melts sky
Burning curtains
All that’s left
Are sprinkled stars
Across a day
Called night

Twinkling truths
Sexless constants
There is no black or white
In light
There is no darkness
There is no bright

My home this world
And all it’s living things my life
Your face is all I see
Your eyes a gateway
To a better world
A better self

I learn to lose that self
And join this greater good
I smile and laugh and cry
And hurt and live
Until my every moment
Is an act of love

And like a sunset there
Lifts a dawn
In some place else
I want my soul
To lift this world
Towards the sky

So that we melt togehter
Into that burning truth
And join the stars
Making concious love
Freed from tasteless
Immortality

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Dialogues on a Boat Ride

What’s that on your hand?
Too long a story to be shared
Longer than a boat ride then?
I don’t know where to start
Where does your heart take you?
Everywhere
But now its hovering around your lips
Its floating around the crevices of your smile
Trying to understand
The stories behind that pensive look
Shrewd remarks
Laughing but shy
Humming but not carefree
Who are you stranger?
I’ve told so many lies
I feel I know you well
Have we met before?
Impossible
Why are we so different then?
I could never tell
Are you afraid of water?
It’s cold and I am tired
But yet we are so young
What’s your name again?
No need
How could we sometimes feel
So connected, just for a bit
And never have the courage
To ask for more?
Accustomed to being who we are
And with who we usually are with
I may have met my soul mate
We may have shared
So many early morning laughs
But now that’s just another story
To be told
Thought about at night
When reflecting about the day
As I’m getting old
And nearer to the bay

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Poem 104

Crosswalks

 

Sidewalk cliffs
Beauty bounded
But smiling still
Her fingers wrap around
A cigarette
Her phone pulled out
From skinny jeans
Pockets ripped
I can see her skin
She takes a call
And walks on still
She looks both ways
And falls away
Forever

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Poem 103

Rendez-Vous

It’s sobering when sitting by your side
A heavy presence laid upon my heart
Just like a whistling kettle I am free
To drink the fire of our love at start
Then burn inside consumed with my own doubts
Until I spit it out so uselessly
An old affair with passion and some clout
Is nothing but hot air before a tea

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Poem 102