l e i t m o t i f ( s )

welcome back?

noreply@blogger.com (رأفت) — Sun, 04 Oct 2015 18:22:00 +0000

I'm not sure this is a good idea, but why not? I'm unearthing this old thing from a digital landscape that makes the present obsolete. It has been 2 years since my last post. I feel a congestion that this place used to deflate. Let's see.

draft

noreply@blogger.com (رأفت) — Fri, 21 Jun 2013 08:26:00 +0000

It's hard for a lover to understand their lover's existence outside their own realm. Negotiably harder than to accept that there is no way else. Or not. It's hard to understand and it's hard to accept. It is easier to run back to books and hide within flaps of prose. It is easier to read. It is easier to write. It is easier to question than it is to understand, than it is to accept. It is hard to step out of delirium, into sense. As it is hard to comprehend answers to rhetoric questions we decide to adopt. It is easy to adopt. Or not. It is hard to adapt. It's hard for one to understand existence outside their own realm. I want to discuss the city and I want it to discuss me. If I adapt to it, it needs to adopt me. I want to dissect it and I want it to dissect me. It’s hard for a dweller to understand their dwelling’s existence outside their own realm. It’s hard to negotiate what to share. It’s harder to negotiate how. I want to dissect the city and I want it to dissect me. It needs to understand that I need to understand. It needs to know that in the meantime, I don’t.

The Perfumed Garden

noreply@blogger.com (رأفت) — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 11:48:00 +0000

The Perfumed Garden is part of an ongoing novel project, Khan elThawra.

The project will explore the production, maintenance and manifestation of mainstream ideologies in the Arab world. It creates a constant confrontation between the visceral and the acquired notions of being. It disassembles acquired political constructs and puts them in competition with visceral evolutionary life systems.

How sustainable is an enforced construct? How dependent is a people on these constructs, their methodologies and why?

The viewpoint of this project is as broad as the construction of our contemporary arab environments, and as specific as marital fidelity. The paradigm that is being anatomized is the 'Mistress vs. Wife' and the concept of the 'Learned Unethical'. As our focal points have been shifted from the center of our bodies and lent to politically driven ideologies and discourse, life has become exhausting.

It is exhausting to live in an impersonal apartment. The decline of Arab architecture. It is exhausting to speak in acquired dialect. The decline of Arab language. It is exhausting to consume imported produce. The decline of Arab commerce. It is exhausting to not be able to live with whomever you love. The decline of Arab society. It is exhausting to be helpless - to think before calling it Palestine, Occupied Palestine, or Israel. The decline of Arab sovereignty. It is exhausting to be packaged, framed and dubbed Third-world. The decline of Arab identity.

The Perfumed Garden proposes a different mapping of the Arab world, reshuffling it geographically where one can walk from Beirut to Jerusalem, for example. In terms of production, the chapter was written in conjunction with Issue Zero of The Outpost magazine. What was used as external media were the articles in that issue. The topics and characters discussed where the main building blocks of "The Perfumed Garden"'s plot and narrative.

L'Origine(s) du Monde

noreply@blogger.com (رأفت) — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 10:13:00 +0000

While developing Issue One of The Outpost magazine, we wanted to create a supplement that would extend the discourse of the issue The Possibility of Moving Forward.

To do so, we decided to produce a children's book.

The parameters: Do not insult their intelligence.

The goal: Discuss serious topics (politics, society, life, death, sexuality and family) in a fantasy framework that would protect the children from the crudeness of the topics, not their truth, hoping that 'the perils of living in 3D' become less perilous, or at least...more interesting.

L'Origine(s) du Monde deals with knowledge, and the relationship of the individual with the universe. It presents the hypothesis that each and every one of us is the origin of the world, and to make the world a better place, each and every one of us must make their point in time and space better.

L'Origine(s) du Monde is licensed under CreativeCommons to encourage its translation into different media. Currently, it's being adapted to the theater by Lina Abiad and her class at LAU and is a selected participant at the Bologna Children's Book fair.

Text Raafat Majzoub

Illustrations Joan Baz

Edited by Layal Hasrouni

شو يعني Surreal بالعربي؟

noreply@blogger.com (رأفت) — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 09:59:00 +0000

Language becomes less intriguing when it decides to borrow words into itself as opposed to returning into its being to conjure up conversational objects of meaning.
What is Arabic for Surreal?
A conversation in Beirut. A concert in Cairo.

سريالي ؟ from Raafat Majzoub on Vimeo.

yes sir. i can deuggy --

noreply@blogger.com (رأفت) — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 14:02:00 +0000

Karkadon - Devil's Anvil (SMD rework)

noreply@blogger.com (رأفت) — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 21:52:00 +0000

Karkadon - Devils Anvil by Simian Mobile Disco on Grooveshark

shit

noreply@blogger.com (رأفت) — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 23:17:00 +0000

Every relatable piece of art or literature seems to have sprouted out of heartbreak. Artists must be skilled at getting their hearts broken. It’s either sad or beautiful, as unaesthetic beauty and sadness converge and diverge only to converge back into each other.

(2012 end-of-year lists) – HAIG PAPAZIAN by http://rupturedonline.com

noreply@blogger.com (رأفت) — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 12:38:00 +0000

Haig Papazian (musician, Mashrou’ Leila)

- iamamiwhoami: Kin
- Frank Ocean: Channel Orange
- Grimes: Visions
- Mykki Blanco: Cosmic Angel, The Illuminati Prince/ss
- Bat For Lashes: The Haunted Man
- Holy Other: Held
- Beach House: Bloom
- Actress: R.I.P
- DIIV: Oshin
- The XX: Coexist
- Tindersticks: The Something Rain
- Hot Chip: In Our Heads
- Chairlift: Something
- Cat Power: Sun
- Lana Del Rey: Born To Die

yes, he said LDR - weeeee

http://nomadbeirut.wordpress.com/

noreply@blogger.com (رأفت) — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 18:19:00 +0000

أنا والقمر

noreply@blogger.com (رأفت) — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 17:18:00 +0000

وأنت

noreply@blogger.com (رأفت) — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 11:23:00 +0000

post 680 year 2013

noreply@blogger.com (رأفت) — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 10:19:00 +0000

it's 01/01 again and you feel like now's the time to start things. start them knowing that 13/07 is also a good date

... so is every coming day.

noreply@blogger.com (رأفت) — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 22:17:00 +0000

http://rupturedonline.com/ 's 2012 end-of-year lists

noreply@blogger.com (رأفت) — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 01:05:00 +0000

and i quote

I asked some of my favorite musician and artist friends, from Beirut and beyond, to list their 10 favorite albums of 2012…
Alternately, they could also provide me with a list of the records they listened to the most in 2012, regardless of date of release.

Nadine Khouri (musician)

- Patrick Watson: Adventures In Your Own Backyard
- Jess Bryant: Silvern
- Chilly Gonzales: Solo Piano II
- Fránçois & the Atlas Mountains: E Volo Love
- J. Allen: Wonder City
- Leonard Cohen: Old Ideas
- Flying Lotus: Until The Quiet Comes
- David Byrne & St. Vincent: Love This Giant
- Fiona Apple: The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than The Driver Of The Screw And Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do
- Giant Giant Sand: Tucson

Allan Chaaraoui (musician, Lazzy Lung)

1- Death From Above 1979: You’re A Woman I Am A Machine
2- Cloud Nothings
3- Tame Impala: Lonerism
4- Zeus
5- Grizzly Bear: Shields
6- Free The Robots
7- Japandroids: Celebration Rock
8- Radiohead: The King Of Limbs
9- French Kicks: Two Thousand
10- Reverie Sound Review: An Anniversary Away

Zeid Hamdan (musician, Zeid & The Wings)

- Mayer Hawthorne: A Strange Arrangement
- Die Antwoord: Tension
- Rover: Self-titled
- EL Rass & Munma: Kachf El Mahjoub
- Alpha Blondy: Jah Glory
- Various Artists: Beirut Hotel OST
- Bassekou Kouyaté & Ngoni Ba: Segu Blue
- Sheikh Imam (various tracks)
- Oka W Ortega (various tracks)
- Zeid Hamdan: Roundtrip OST

enjoy

LX

noreply@blogger.com (رأفت) — Tue, 25 Dec 2012 19:43:00 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (رأفت) — Tue, 25 Dec 2012 00:23:00 +0000

nb

noreply@blogger.com (رأفت) — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 06:57:00 +0000

On the dancefloor in an ungrateful Beirut, pretending cities could be grateful - Yes, with terms like party, after party and the party after that, cities could.

In bed with a stranger in an intermediatary Beirut, pretending cities could be destinations - Perhaps, with terms like martyr, heritage and outlined aesthetic identity, cities could.

Beirut, in its absolute glory, fails to combust enough life force for heat. You rely on fur, relay to her, your glutinous ears, as you listen to it, things about him, as he knows all, but barely sees.

Beirut, and its untamed aura, bulging diaspora, disregarded decay and impotent day, fails in silk robes - in deathbed sheets - cannibal, it eats itself, slowly, to a never end.

I leave.
Curtains do not close.
I hear no applause.
I hear crashing waves on a man-made shore, crashing, a sound foreseeing its everything, its today, its tomorrow.

Beirut OST

noreply@blogger.com (رأفت) — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 11:44:00 +0000

This is more or less the story of everyone in Beirut. Every night, after the sun puts itself to voluntary sleep so she doesn't see us anymore. We plush. We mask. We knock ourselves off our consciousness. In the real time world, no one sees us at all. We work all our lives for this moment in time. Cerebrally-absent maniacs on the floor.

Cheers to a great rework.

And it's Friday already.

Just a Steel-Town girl on a saturday night
Lookin for the fight of her life
In the real time world no one sees her at all
They all say she's crazy

Lockin rythms to the beat of her heart
Changing moment into light
She has danced into the danger zone
When the dancer becomes the dance

It can cut you like a knife
If the gift becomes the fire
All the while you're stuck between
What's will and what will be

(CHORUS)
She's a maniac, maniac on the floor
And she's dancing like she never danced before
She's a maniac, maniac on the floor
And she's dancing like she never danced before

On the ice-filled line of sanity
It's a place most never see
It's a hard-won place of mystery
You can touch it but can't hold it

You work all your life for that moment in time
It can come or pass you by
It's a push of the world but there's always a chance
If the hunger stays alive

There's a cold kenetic heat
Struggling, stretching for the beat
Never stopping
With her hair against the wind

(CHORUS)

la la la la la la la la
la la la la la la la la

(instrumental break)

It can cut you like a knife
If the gift becomes the fire
All the while you're stuck between
What's will and what will be

She's a maniac, maniac at your door
And she's dancing like she never danced before
She's a maniac, maniac at your door
And she's dancing like she never danced before

jinglebooks

noreply@blogger.com (رأفت) — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 11:28:00 +0000

This holiday, Fetish Systems will be available in
AJEM (prisoners in Roumieh)
Catharsis (prisoners in Baabda)
Burj Hammoud Public Library
NGO Conseil de développement du littoral de Byblos

Antoine Online is launching a campaign to donate books to organizations, public libraries and NGOs. YOU can be part of this campaign by donating gift vouchers or by bringing along your used books.
--
Contact: contact@antoineonline.com
Donate: http://www.antoineonline.com/donate.aspx

--
Fetish Systems review:
http://kalimatshelf.tumblr.com/post/17655574050/fetish-systems-raafat-majzoub-it-was-the-writer
Fetish Systems in your hand: http://www.antoineonline.com/Book_Fetish_Systems_by_Raafat_Majzoub_9789953020341.aspx?productCode=0009789953020341

this is a link to a nice cover of ;i follow rivers;

noreply@blogger.com (رأفت) — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 16:34:00 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=uB0E_O6JON0

noreply@blogger.com (رأفت) — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 07:13:00 +0000

Martha Graham (May 11, 1894 – April 1, 1991) was an American modern dancer and choreographer whose influence on dance has been compared with the influence Picasso had on modern visual arts, Stravinsky had on music, or Frank Lloyd Wright had on architecture.

noreply@blogger.com (رأفت) — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 06:51:00 +0000

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy… a quickening… that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium but will be lost.

It’s not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. Whether you choose to take an art class, keep a journal, record your dreams, dance your story, or live each day from your own creative source, above all else, keep the channel open.

–Martha Graham

"i thought i told you not to touch that apple!"

noreply@blogger.com (رأفت) — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 22:00:00 +0000

"..down you go"

Super House would have been a way cooler name &

noreply@blogger.com (رأفت) — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 19:04:00 +0000

To say that (click on above image for a more legible size) about oneself is hilarious.

Click here for their facebook page, or here for their website.

If it's a good place to dance..brie forgiven