Politic and Thom Yorke's Lotus Flower being my Politic

I really don’t understand why I absolutely have to do this to my thought process. It’s throwing me off completely. I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing. I certainly don’t have a whole library of concrete ideas and artwork to back up my opinion on this, but I’m very disoriented and need to write about it. I’m angry because I’m currently being pushed in a direction that is far from my comfort zone. I know that you’re going to think that bringing myself out of my own element is good for me, but it’s really just the first step of the process for me and it’s making me react this way. “You’re on the right track but where’s the politic?” “You’re on the right track but where’s the politic???” “You’re on the right track but where’s the politic?” Three times is bad enough, but it also took around three or four different people to say it to me. It’s hard for me to hear this, as I don’t like delivering concrete messages through the photographs I take or the things I make. I don’t have an answer for everything. I came into this field to find out that I wasn’t going to get many answers either. So, how can I give you a message if I don’t have the answers? I know this might sound terrible to a whole lot of you… But I don’t understand politics. I don’t understand what’s going on in my country or yours. I do understand… the gist of it. I just don’t understand the rest because in the long run, the situation never changes. Okay a new president has been elected, but the same process happens again and someone new rules all. I don’t mean to offend anyone if I have, just know that I have some sort of a point to my argument. I don’t understand the rules, rights and legislations which brings me to a stop to tell each of you that this puts me in an awkward situation in which I don’t understand how political choices in America or in Lebanon or in Egypt affect my life in Dubai. This doesn’t rationally sink in. I know that these choices being made are affecting my family and me, I just don’t understand how. I am simply not an academic in that area. This is entirely my fault, as I don’t like to watch the news or read about it. It is beyond me too how I can’t pick up a newspaper. But this brings me to how change is important. When situations are constant and I keep hearing the news repeat itself profusely like a broken record, I get immune to it and it doesn’t affect me. The news is a total personal antibiotic; it just makes my immune system stronger. I know that all of this fluff sounds super painful to some of you, but that’s okay. What I’m trying to say is that I’m not one to incorporate this politic in my work or my thoughts. It’s too systematic and cold for me. What about the rest of the liberal arts? And what about not being so opinionated and imposing your opinions onto others? What about Music? Deeply reflecting on sounds. Writing? Putting two to three words together just to ‘make sense’. What about Philosophy? Poetry? Everyone has politic in his or her life and I understand this. It shapes you up. A big part of mine just so happens to be about emotions, sensations, thoughts, and my goodness Radiohead’s newest video for their new song Lotus Flower. Yes this video is a politic to me. I’ve been following Thom Yorke’s work for as long as I can remember and I never expected him to ever do anything like this in any of his videos. The media really likes to let you think you know somebody by selling that person to you as a polished conduct. But once I saw Thom Yorke in this low budget video, I flipped. How can one man’s face and hands completely change instantaneously? I didn’t recognize the man anymore. The video would be stupid and absolute shit if it were someone else dancing in there. He was so fucking raw. I thought I knew him until I saw him dance like that. I was lost for words. This type of footage is so simple and has been done over and over again but it was Thom Yorke. He made it! It was his crazy human condition in this piece. He looked so frail. Till this day, I don’t understand how someone could express themselves as they moved like that and suddenly become so different to me. He changed! It’s not constant and I love it. I’m almost really angry with him for leading me to believe that he was someone else. Thom’s lazy eye made it apparent that it was infact him but he looked so different at the same time. It’s like he was a friend that had deceived me and I think that’s what had bothered other people too, the deceit. It’s unbelievable. During the first time that I had watched it, the video was very disconcerting and I was very disoriented as you will be when you watch it for the first time. But just give it a chance. I can’t stop watching it now. In conclusion, this video has an inaccurate and immense effect on me. I know that if I continue to make more artwork and grow, something about this honesty has to be in the lines of the work I make, this honesty that affects me or you shitloads, this ‘Lotus Flower’ that is becoming a politic in my life. Emotions, sensations, Thom Yorke’s performance piece… That sort of sensibility for these intangibles is what makes me love this place. They make me never want to leave this place. I’m dreading 2012. I don’t know if it will happen or not, but the very thought scares me. I hope that shit never happens. I want to leave willingly. But that’s another story.

Oh and here's the video just in case some of you would like to see it :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfOa1a8hYP8

Mommy, I've got some cheese for you

If there are so many memories I may begin with, this one includes an elusive love of mine. If I may speak of intangibilities, this sensation is one I could recollect the most. If there is one that is most indescribable, it is one that I can describe with every one of my brain cells scampering about at its full potential. With certainty, She knows this is about her. Certainly, my mother in the flesh. My fingers remind me of hers. I have her features, I have her gestures and I own her vocal chord in my throat. She has bestowed upon me things that I haven’t asked for and sometimes wish I never had. My fingers and fingernails upset me most because they are the exact replicas of her very own. It should be a crime of some sort to have such hands resemble others in such an impolite and inconsiderable manner.

Her structure is of nonsense to me. It is far too poetic. She begins to carry herself in a way that makes me feel as if I should never leave her, in a way that I won’t ever leave her. Not entirely at least. The problem is that she doesn’t have my fingers to remember me by; I have hers. I am my mother’s daughter. I hate the idea of having that one person that I need to depend on, or simply need. It’s funny because she told me herself never to depend on or be needy about anyone. “Not even if that person is your mother”, she said right under her breath. “You will always somehow end up getting hurt”. How can I not depend on her when I have her very fingers to remind me of her? It’s her genetics’ fault! The fault is on you mother genetic! Go back to where you came from. Hide your chromosomal selves in the darker places where no one will find you. Just so if you find yourself conceiving again mom, this won’t happen anymore and that will make it easier not to depend.

She is fleeting in ways more than one. She is a series of thought and emotion. Thought and emotion are the bases of what makes an individual. Those elements being intangible and immaterial already make her seem momentary. I do quite enjoy ephemerality to the core. Most of the artwork I make is about constructing short-lived, intangible sensations and transforming them to become wealthy in terms of life span and making the intangible tangible. When it comes to fixations like my mother, the idea of all that is short-lived expires from my life. I begin to loathe the thought. Of course, leave it to my mother to poop on my “All Things Ephemeral” party. My mother transitory? Never! Selfish I know, but what about me? I wish to transit to wherever before she ever does. Denial, denial, denial. A pretty word that starts to sound like it could be a pretty girl’s name if you say it enough times.

Dependence, dependence, dependence on your husband, on your brother, on your sister, on your father or your mother makes for a restless, fidgety life. The “on edge” quality to life makes for a sleepless one. Psychologically, I am restless I think, because I am as dependent on her as her hands are dependent on my wrists for attachment. Because of this, her life is of concern to me and hopefully will become something I may be able to control to keep in line, in sight, and wedged to the very pit of my life for as long as the both of us are still around.

Because strings sing in conversation

http://soundcloud.com/aya-atoui/strings-play-too-you-know

Here I am, a string... strung... in conversation.
you can listen to me sing in string.

humlings for my mother

This is just a short sound oriented piece for mom...

http://soundcloud.com/aya-atoui/ou-you-mommykins-intro

click on me? listen to me! critique me! if you please?

This might be an epic fail... but I'd like to know if it is...
Some constructive criticism would be wonderful.

I just had the sudden urge to make music that didn't just sound like sound or noise.
I've always had trouble with harmony and thought of trying to harmonize... it took me a while, but I think the harmony is there... i think... I just don't know if it's right... I've had a few people tell me they liked it but if there is more to say in terms of constructive criticism, I would be so happy to hear it.
Merci.


your current cottony companion (i done did an alliteration!),
Aya

oh! and here is a link to the piece in case you done didn't click on me above

http://soundcloud.com/aya-atoui/i-dont-know-what-to-call-you-yet-so-you-will-remain-to-be-untitled-for-now

peace in and from the middle east yo.

A Cottonball that Reminisces and Thinks Freud Is a Fraud

As a little girl, I used to love cotton. I used to play with it as it was a favorite toy. More specifically, I used to benefit from it by keeping it in my mouth. So very undisclosed the beneficial part seemed to be. But as I ate the cotton I seemed to have profited something out of it. I don’t remember it so vividly. I was around five when this habit had begun. It started with receiving gifts from my mother and father. They were gift boxes that were wrapped and held in puffy and swollen little toy animals. My first one was a bunny, naturally. It was indeed swollen seeing that its size was not normal. It could barely fit in the box. I didn’t care. There were many things in my life that held exaggeration very well. Held it so well in fact it almost seemed like my life loved it. It all seemed to fit with me. The bunny had one lanky ear and brown buttons for eyes. It also squealed everytime I held and squeezed it. For the longest time, I thought rabbits made high pitched squealing sounds. Not until later on did I find out that rabbits didn’t make much sound from an educational kids TV show. Cows went moo, cats went meow and pigs went oink but rabbits went nothing and nowhere, but they multiplied popping out of nowhere ever so quickly. Imagine a rabbit that squealed… Eeeep. That’s how my bunny sounded.

My bunny gift was very soft. I knew there was also more to it because bunnies weren’t meant to be that big. I was also a very bratty child. After having played with it for more than a year, I decided to rip it open. I wasn’t violent, I remember using scissors and slowly cutting a small line into it just to see. And then I ripped it open. My desecrated bunny was forcefully stuffed with beautiful white puffy cotton. As I think about it now, it was an unsettling but beautiful sight. My first reaction was to pull the cotton out and to play with it between my fingers. This stuff was what made my bunny excessively large. This stuff was so pretty. I’m not one to enjoy white, the absence of color, at all unless it is on cotton or on pale skin. I couldn’t imagine cotton being colored. The first thing I had done with the cotton was picking it up and squishing it in my palms. It was as if I was keeping a cloud captive in my hands. It felt wonderful because I knew I couldn’t really have a cloud in my hand no matter how much I wanted one. I also knew I’d be disappointed because cloud is nothing but a visible mass of water and I had enough water being forced down my throat by my mother. She only wanted what was best for me. She wanted a healthy hydrated child.

As I played with the cotton between my fingers, I thought to myself about how it would feel in my mouth and how it would taste. I immediately put it in my mouth. Ever since then, I started to love to chew on cotton. Now I am a twenty-one year old who’s very soul is wedged down the middle of a little white pufferball, cottonball. I am cotton incarnate. I am a cottonball that does nothing but sit and reminisce about everytime it has used and abused cotton when I was a person that belonged to a family. I wonder if this is payback. I think about all the other things I could have probably reincarnated to. I have put so many other things in my mouth as a child. Children do that. Was that a Freudian Slip? I’ll bet Sigmund Freud would have probably loved to dig his dirty fingers into what I just said. I won’t give him the benefit of the doubt. Children who put things in their mouths and are fixated on this don’t necessarily become smokers or compulsive eaters. It just doesn’t work that way. They become cottonballs. His psychosexual analysis lied to me. Liar.

I Am a Cottonball Conundrum

Once upon my reincarnation, I understood that I was a cottonball. I would have preferred to have been something a tad more majestic like the wind or a tree or a cloud or even pollen. But instead my soul went pummeling into the puffy absorbent form we all know and see as the cottonball. It didn’t bother me too much since I had passed away and my mother had purchased a bag of me at the market to use to remove the nail polish off her fingernails. If I knew my mother well enough, she would definitely be using me for her nails. For the sake of all things small, round, puffy, white and insignificant, I was a happy puffy. I was happy to be back with my family again after having been in an indeterminate state for as long as I could remember. I was placed on my mother’s dressing table in her room. I was cozy because I was amongst her belongings. I belonged to her again. I could see myself in the mirror of her dresser as I began to recollect how I had wanted so much to be a cottonball last Halloween. I couldn’t celebrate Halloween because I was sinking into a deep puddle of work. So many things to do, it almost felt like the work was intangible. I couldn’t touch it; I couldn’t finish it. But, I am a cottonball that enjoys exaggerations. I always was, a person, who enjoyed exaggerations.

By the time I was acquired and taken home, everyone had seemed to have dealt with my unhappy casualty. Afterthought: I am also a cottonball that thinks the word ‘casualty’ better defines the word ‘death’ because it begins with the word casual and casual things seem to be accepted more casually and without difficulty. Seeing that my mother had moved on, I couldn’t help but think to myself whether or not I should approach her, most importantly, whether or not I ‘could’ approach her. I tried to nudge myself against the other cottonballs in the plastic bag I now called home to get some sort of attention but I was inanimate. I was an inanimate thing that was also an emotional wreck but I was unable to move a single fiber in my cottony… anatomy? Structure? Arrangement? I’ll settle with arrangement.

I had come to realize that my plastic container-surrounding thing was my new home within my old home because I was lucky enough to be bought by my mother. How weird my new life is. Now I am stuck here, rubbing off against other cottonballs who, might I add, don’t seem to like me. In fact they kind of sound like the New Yorkers on television who constantly like to yell at each other about watching where the other person is going, only cottonballs keep nudging not going. I’ve always wanted to go to New York City but still be close to my mother. I guess this is a combination of the things I really wanted to do in my life before I died… only now, most of it is stuffed in a plastic bag. Being a cottonball for Halloween is now what I am for another lifetime. An impression I have of New York is now living in the bag as my mother ‘casually’ falls into a deep sleep in the bed right across me as the television is on.