ريم

 

Verde que te quiero verde.

I was thinking of what to write as a final post for a long time. And after lots of thinking and mumbling and reading, I decided to pick up a brush and draw how it made me feel.

I remember saying that this class was my only salvation in my crazy semester. Indeed, my hands automatically drew a bird. The bird is free, strong, determined. Being in this class gave me the strength to persevere and strive forward.

It was interesting for me to revisit the songs, learn beautiful new ones like Luna Tucumana, and more than ever enlightening to learn about los retablos, go in depth about the difference between corridos rancheros boleros and clave, and all the incredible stories that go with them.

It was interesting and enlightening to hear about a new usage of Los Moros – and served as a reminder for me to not be too engaged with a certain word without reflecting on the intention of the person saying them first.

Instead of talking about the background-foreground, or curb corners and street widths, or man and machine, this class was an opportunity to reflect on the human condition. Everybody needs a farolito sometimes, everybody needs to hear la Llorona. Although they’re canciones de mexico, it feels to me like they touch on a part of humanity that no other culture can truly get to. While some songs try to shove a feeling inside you like an insulin needle, the corridos and rancheros specifically try to hug you and embrace you with so much love and melancholy – until you feel the need to hear them again. They leave you thinking, imagining and breathing “verde, que te quiero…. verde”.

I can not understate how much I needed this class this semester, and how much I needed it after long studios with so much focus on the drawings themselves and not enough on the substance. Thank you for giving us the time and tools to reflect, absorb and inund ourselves in the vast sea of las canciones, and for making me convincingly say verde, without thinking of any color or composition, but thinking about a story and an emotion.

 

Sin tí, es inutíl vivir… This beautiful song evokes a drawing I saw by Diego Rivera. I attempted to find it online and sketch it multiple times. The woman seems to have an innocence of a child yet the worries that come with age within her. The melancholic look on her face and her looking up seems to address some sort of God or higher power within her. This feeling from the song, the melancholy, innocence yet fuego del amor  all seem to be visual in the Diego Rivera drawings for me. In an attempt to reproduce it twice, I tried to express or highlight certain features that would be in the song itself.

 

My heart feels like a stranger between my ribs. Time passes and days rot and my heart shrinks, but somehow your love only stretches through my body.

Farolito, que alumbras apenas mi calle disierta. Cuantas noches me has viste llorando llamar a su puerta??

I spent four hours that week in lectures about a goddamn statue. Naturally, I wanted to print a photograph of it, paint on it and rip it apart. What happened to studying art that comes from the soul? What happened to taking a moment and listening, feeling, breathing our surroundings? What happened to thinking about nature instead of placing objects inside it and writing fifteen page bullshit about it, enough for a four hour lecture…

The first image is the statue broken up. Its aura is nothing more than white, empty, meaningless. The second image is a letter I wrote with las letras of Farolito in Arabic, wrapped in masking tape I found in studio, between the lecture notes about the statue and the cancionero. The letter has flowers on top of it, because even with desperation, hay un farolito al fin de la calle, y este farolito va a alumbrar mi corazon.

Soy un hombre muerto atrapado entre cuatro paredes

Yo soy…. Soy… Soy un hombre moderno.

I don’t believe in poems or flowers or colors. I’m a serious modern man. I listen to techno music, cook a 200kcal bacon for a snack, I go to the gym five times a week because I’m disciplined. I don’t smoke, I only drink with my coworkers, I don’t drive because I can just call an uber cab from my iPhone app. Courting a woman is a middle-ages thing, I can Tinder.

The age of chivalry and corte amor is dead, the age of entitled assholes thinking they’re better than any woman they encounter has dawned.

 

VOY CAMINO DE LA VIDA
MUY FELIZ, CON MI POBREZA,
COMO NO TENGO DINERO,
TENGO MUCHO CORAZON.

 

Quien es el hijo del pueblo? En el Arabe, la palabra significa “la gente del país” con una conotacíon rural. ِ

El hijo del pueblo es el hombre que camina cincuenta kilómetros al día para vender las verduras que cosechó y volver a su casa con dinero y camina por sus hijos.

El hijo del pueblo es la sirviente que pasa sus noches recoger la piel de sus manos del sol, sus manos que han visto mas espigas y espinas que ternura…

es mi abuela, una mujer que crió tres hijos sola, que se dispierta cada dia al amanecer para orar en la colina.

 

La representacion de mi pueblo en los medios es una representacion sin dinero y sin corazon. El hijo del pueblo no es el hombre que ora en la paz de las collinas sino el hombre vestido de su rostro a sus pies en una ciudad que espera una bomba, una explocion, o qualquier gesto de destruccion. El hijo del pueblo es un hombre peligroso. Es un hombre falso en una falsa sociedad.

 

Sonecitos de la tierra, parte dos.

A Berkeley professor/feminist once told me that from a very young age, she had to master the art of the frown to be taken seriously, and not seen as just a beautiful woman. In thinking about Adios mi chapparita, the objectification of the woman, and the “feminization” of nostalgic objects is intriguing as it reminds us of a time that not just happened then, but is happening now on a daily occurence.

“Lo mas revolucionario hoy en dia es conservar la alegria”

-Benedetti

When I had to think about “fuente” two years ago, the image was very mysterious in my mind. I evoked sentiments of being lost, nostalgic, unsure, and perhaps even weak.

Pero en este momento, los dos fuentes me dan el sentimiento de certitud, de  affirmacion, de saber en el fondo de mi alma que los fuentes que habia una vez describen una hesitacion,  se transforman en una estabilidad. En luego de nostalgia melancolica, una fuerza en fuego se dispierta en mi y me recuerda que yo soy aqui, en los estados unidos, lejos de mi familia mi patria mi cultura…. pero yo soy aqui gracias a mi familia, mi patria, mi cultura. Y esos dos fuentes, uno que me brisa el corazon hay dos años, y el mismo que me da fe, esperanza y confianzia hoy.

This is a dream I have of a summer that passed sometime in my childhood, one with my family in our house in the mountains in Lebanon, holding my mother’s hand and walking towards the infinite. Los fuentes.