Brian Michael Barbeito is a Canadian writer and photographer. Recent work appears at The Notre Dame Review.
Spirit of a Place, Spirit of a Thing (Artist Statement)
In an off handed remark during an interview, U.G. Krishnamurti, called by some an anti-guru, and by himself, ‘Something like a philosopher,’ said that he once thought he could sense the spirit of a place. But then he brushed it off through words and body language. It didn’t fit in with his philosophy and message. But I resonated with his statement anyhow, because I had always felt that I could feel the spirit of a place and also a thing. Old town, lake still and wide. City street, carnival game vendor and prizes. Bee. Spider. Flower. Vine. Ridge. Summit. Stone. Petal. Stream. Sun. Cloud. Bird and dusk, horizon and dawn. Lock, denoting love, affixed to lonesome bridge alone in the rain. Artifacts. Areas. Some saturnine and some sanguine. Hundreds of places and things, their spirit, against reason and logic, somehow speaking out, not with language of course, but calling out nevertheless. Semantics and nomenclature could argue what spirit means. Is it the atmosphere, the daemon, the angel, the area, the vibration, the feeling? Is it physical, metaphysical, true and there, or purely imaginary and projected? Difficult to know conclusively. But there is something I think in all that mise- en-scene, and so on the rural footpaths and metropolitan worlds also, I try and photograph it and also write about it, this spirit of a place and spirit of a thing.
…please remind us using the provided pencil + so kindly since last time the string’d come ‘part provided as a token of our appreciation + hung there for this reason but somehow broken and crank, who’d a’ “known it”, ^why’s it wrong to do things different, Gimi^ who’d a’ “thunk it”, you know, “Doctor”? Do you know? You must know. I must have seen that…s..ss..no no okay maybe can a car crammed so but that’s as close [pillo] with a cow as they can without
touching.ss..s…pencil {and not just back here at the cooler oh no} dozens of times, and, uh each time I said to myself, Yes I know ^I know when I lie down I lie down very very differently from how others lie down Gimi^ there is something {what is it?}I’d like to write down there for the % kindness of their hearts brigade to go get right now, shaking down my head, and provide me uh % ice cold drink zipper, but. I could not think of it “Doctor”. No no no, just quite really
ver’simply, could not. You know that old thang, (slash) G’, eh there it was, hung on th tip o’ my tongue ( hissssssss ) so ah, I know, yes I do; that there’s something inside me, exploding to be made so much happier by the simple inclusion of one particular drinksnack to our very own communal beverage cooler, but, ^and I know they will not like me for it Gimi remember you said that yes you did Gimi^ as I cannot think of it now, I’ll just think it for next time, and, in the time between, “Doctor”, there should be plenty of time to get it out past my tongue-tip, and from there to my hand. Know sweet? Know sweet, “Doctor”? Hey, “Doctor”, know know know know, so very super
simply…z..zz..inside which also but oh yeah well half with a tipped of that’s close but not has a car touching.ss..s…damned sweet! Sooo o oo oo o o, next time I can ask for sure, but each time, “Doctor” * why does it seem some freak-law of nature { that })* nearly immediately there I am again, my dear Mickey-Wah, pressed up ‘gainst the cooler door, Mickey-Wah, slapping myself ^why’d you lie to me Gimi^ slap sl’ ‘lap ‘tindah foerre-head, thinking on thinking that What’s that Big Cyst off Your Ear? gaaaaa, here we go I plum forgot gosh-darn here I am again I could remove that for you really fast I could, “Doctor”, with it at the tip of my tongue { thin ‘s an’ ‘parro’ flying coo fly! } HUP and the pencil is there hung with write it, f’ you want it, so use me, jot it over onto the provided taped-up-tight paper, but no, so as always { sigh } I settle; ^why didn’t you mean it when you said it Gimi^ shaking and shaking down my head, I settle like I always have ended up settling, and always without fail, for much less. I get out a Pepsi settled into for less, and I say scre’ myself thu’t next time I’ll
remember ‘tween now and then I’ll think this name up but over again for X number of Pepsis I drink, forget, need a break, go there and gahhh; forgot again, ^when I stand up yes I do do it differently Gimi^ damn the sillies, so I settle; until next time always next ‘gain o’ forget, need a break, go there and gahhh; o’re and ova’ and always [ da fyne deestra-fahne’d “Hoons” ] —The same the exactly same same {oh my} So that’s the nut of my whole ‘dica”men”’ t-t-t-t, “Doctor”. ^you told me that Gimi I never forget anything you tell me Gimi^ And I swear, this goes …c..cc..so hey hey over out-spilt can you’ve been caught in a crammed inside.ss..s…on as many times as possible, in as many days as possible, yah as many times as it’ll end up to take, that we’re all stuck here doing this stupidly silly, ‘ll pointless, day after day high-priced mood and attituctivity in lieu of prison time, p-p-p-
personal improvement plan ^remember you told me I didn’t care at all what happened to you Gimi^ (hic”cup”) planet Earth Census ah, yes; but now that magical time comes when, ah, a break is needed | ah HAH ditch that bayonet right “this instant”, young man!| and ah; there it is! Snatch it down so I git it and I got it and there it is ha I got the name, ha ha ha yes yes “Doctor”, [ awk Linkletter’d-downe distra’d ] this time around’s so destined to be different—shush yah yoh ooh ahh rush to the cooler that name in my hand; stop short there’s the sheet ( ugh honeypt’d rag-man “ though ye may be” ) write it down ‘fore forgotten, yes; This time I’m different, here I am, different time hold the name in the left hand ^why’d you say that Gimi when you’ve told me over and over you know I really care^ get the pencil in the right here it is look at it but where there’s no nahh don’t dare say that write it down …c..cc..no no okay maybe with a cow so but that’s as close also has a as they can without touching no no okay with a
tipped.ss..s…no NO where’s there there’s no damned ^I want to help people Gimi I want to I do but^ Pe NO do not know that, that cannot possibly be not this time write it NO there is no pencil this time BUT yes up top the cooler NO there’s no there’s no HOLD Breath do not lose the name in the left b-b-“b-but”, slow, 0, d-damned down (eck); slow down slower to slowest drain “I am not one t’ be ‘countrashaane-shoopt’d’ ” down there’s it can’t be gone and this can’t have happened this way + ‘roun’ do-daht’s big Romanian teakettle’d clash + ho “Doctor” this the pencil the name of the thing my . left palm’s not empty .. ^why is it wrong to do it differently from other people Gimi^ !! . . hung limp brown string and I slump’d down “Doctor” that’s ::::: how I found myself walking eck ack O Doc . tor . I quit I just walked clean out off the place d oc’ TOR what can’t have ever happened to be had happened “Doctor” why was I born into this shaking and shaking and shaking down my head, and my head and my .
eck ack s n s oon, {Ah!} swoon …sh..sshh..so hey hey you’ve been car crammed inside caught in a lie.ss..s… . “Doctor”? . Why could I not have been born into that? Or those—over there “Doctor” why could I not have been born into one of those over there? Or these here?????? or possibly this ‘un up there, “Doctor”. There. That. “Doctor”—r-r-r-r-r-r oh. Leaned into the cooler, eyes closed down, a voice, Voice behind. Voice of. (8) “Say-y-y-y, excuse me, could you step aside, I need to get something out of the cooler, thank you.” . ^why can’t you tell me Gimi oh why you do this to me Gimi^ O? . Jesus Christ, Samuel, you’ve left your used Harvies all over the place [ there’s cans for that, honey ] … dont.you.know.that.honey be’damned why’s all these big spill?
. aka big Ben Harko . ‘round ‘bound me an’ that when I let go s-hot(!) into, Why? So-o-o-o, so-ooo, that you can get your very favorite drink out this “very favorite” cooler to mock me down yes yes yes yes to mock me down all the hell of the way down and get it out right ‘front of my face with ha ha ha ha see what I can do and you’ll never ha ha ha ha ha look what I can do that you’ll never be permitted to ha ha ha never be permitted { here, passacaglia!! } ^why can’t you tell me Gimi oh why you do this to me Gimi^ to oh hey who’s that dumb one we’re never to permit anything good to ever happen…sh..sshh..so hey hey you’ve been car crammed inside caught in a lie.ss..s… here, L’il whoa-whaah’td ittl bitti fugue!! }to oh this one right here officer I am glad you came fast officer this one is not right in the head, “Officer”, and you know as well as I do ^oh why oh why^ that the ones not right in the head are the really really most dangerous and deadly ones of all ones he he he he ah ha ah—why sure, be my guest.
Cooler opening blow by—somebody who’s not—me.
“Thank you.”
Not me.
You’re welcome. S-a-a-i-dde (honnk) beye, ^o’ ‘hy o’ ‘hy^ somebody who’s not me not me any more not not me s’let me quick sorry to bug you step back let me get another what is this, this’s a damned ^’ ‘h’’ ‘h’^ Pepsi, “Yanni”, s’ shut the cooler and get ‘ur fast ass back down to/or or {???} into the God-damned line that’s ^0^ what you’re here for God damn man God damn what the hell did you think do you think you were here for anyway if not no if not that?
Takeaway Quotable Quotes ‘Whether or not you write well, write bravely. Write without fear and edit without mercy’ and quintessentially Hogwarts would have been alluring and enticing as the epitaph of Hagrid, ‘Hagrid has been known to befriend giant spiders, buys vicious three-headed dogs from men in pubs and sneaks illegal dragon eggs into his chamber’. Bernard Shaw’s heartfelt lines ‘The theatre should be a factory of thought, promoter of conscience, elucidator of social conduct, armoury against dullness and despair and a temple to the ascent of man. and Existentialist Beckett’s re-envisioning ‘Yes, yes, we’re magicians.’ benignly mainstream cognitive narratives.
I am writing in Ariel spirits surmising the incantation of Raphael and Gabriel as they are the epitomes of Archangels with their dukedom and kingdom. In multicultural and pluralistic sovereign global village epoch’s literary accolades and British Library’s Discovering Literature ‘treasure hunts and golden nuggets’ prospects echo the voice of transcended relationship between independent extension project work and non- examined assessments. Creative Writing and English Literature have mainstreamed their destinations with the stars of heaven. Eventually Dead Poets Society showcases personification of abstraction toward nebulous and mercurial film productions and movies adaptations integrating to the confederacy of theatre and performance studies. The scholastic and intellectual terrain and arena have gone to highlight features of romantic theory and critical traditions spotlight. Swedish universities offertory of diversity and variety stylistically and aesthetically bestows the upcoming prospective learners and apprentice pupils with the multifarious majors and minors. An Oxford graduate working in historic Shakespearean theatre and a Cambridge post-doctoral fellow with the essence of literary critique’s appetite have their fantabulous perspectives in demarcation with trademarks of legacy hallmarks.
I am not discoursing upon the issue of bleakish modernists’ cosmopolitan viewpoint in alluding to the harangues and tirades of social, political, economical, cultural phenomenon –the boudoirs, saloons, cafes, restaurants, pubs and taverns, attics and ottomans, chest drawers and closets and so on. They are today ,in fact, hackneyed notions of idiosyncrasies and that’s for sure. Why would I have to abandon reading Hardy’s harrowing pastoral landscapes and relegate Tess to be the subject of exploitation under ecocritical feminist perspectival regime. A damnable shit of effigy caricatures and frolicsome buffoonery would be succulent and amorphous rendering to the catering of farmyard’s hullabaloos banishment. William Golding’s ‘Lord of the Flies’ as skeptics critics venerate to be of utmost devotional subject in contextualizing modern times and whatsoever, whosoever, whomsoever might be gregarious to compare and contrast HG Wells’ ‘War of The Worlds’. I must profess the lionhearted proclamation and extoll the integrity of ‘Interpreting Undergraduate Research Posters in the Literature Classroom’. ‘Crystallization’ connotes exploratory critical responses and explanatory noteworthy arguments. Gabriel’s announcement in rendition to the poster presentation startles Ariel, compelling the fantastically misanthrope Caliban and devalues exhumation of sea-wayfaring, mystic recluse, maiden-mermaid Annabelle Lee. Caramelization of marmalades through ‘close readings, negotiations, integrations, theoretical generalization and aesthetic judgement’ awestruck wondrous magic and splendorous flora-fauna. Coffee conversations and beverage-interviews in addition to bookclubs and library workshops truly enchant poster sessions in the domain of public ‘peer-review and critique’. Perfunctorily declaimed by ‘negative silhouettes’ of ‘nihilism’ in Shelley’s Alastor-The Spirit of Solitude cannot be feigning throwaways of the decoupage disharmonizing of sublimity.
Netherworld tram accidents wouldn’t have banished my forlorn industrialized solitary life to exploded ashes if bequeathment of fantasy fiction prevailed in the earthy heaven’s halcyon amidst the solitude of Desdemona, Cleopatra, Ophelia, Sebastian, Juliet Echoed Recitals of Magical Charms-Enchantment of Harry Potter’s Glory!
My contemplative conscience cognition rekindles sparkling flames arousal in my imaginative faculty of the brain to be blessed by the revisiting Jibananda Das’s ghost-hobgoblin in my dawn of sunlight and dusk of twilight.
What if Jibananda Das’s Phantom Spirit Drank The Life Of Hogwarts and Hanged Out With Dickensian J.K. Rowling? Crystallized Me Living With The Frozen Muggle World and My Imaginary Voyage of Figurative Troupes; The Magic of Literature In Interpreting Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone
Province of pedantic rhetoricians and their intellectual circle of linguists-and-literary critics and professional philosophers revival of interest in the classification and function of figurative language such as Sister Miriam Joseph’s Shakespeare’s Use of the Arts of Language [1947] and the bibliographical archive of M.H. Abram’s ‘Mirror And The Lamp’[1953].
‘Hagrid’s big hairy face gleamed over a sea of heads.’ Take another instance, ‘Hundreds of faces staring at them, [//] looked like pale lanterns, [//] flickering in the candelight.’’ Roman Jakobson’s highlight featuring spotlights ‘metaphoric’ or ‘vertical’ and the ‘metonymic’or the ‘horizontal’. In synecdoche [Greek for ‘taking together’], a part of something is used to signify the whole, or [more rarely] the whole is used to signify a part. In this enlightening glimpse ‘sea of heads’ could crave the treasure hunt in metaphorical synecdoche. On the issue of metonymy [literally change of name], the literal term is applied to another with which it is closely associated, because of contiguity in common experience. Would skeptics and cynics be compelled to sbift their pattern focal convergence and divergence into ‘pale lanterns flickering candelight’. So, we have here inviting banqueters with picturesqueness of marmalade porridge, Yorkshire puddings, apple pies, treacle tarts, chocolate eclairs and prosopopeia the Greek term of personification whereby inanimate object [lantern and candelight] and abstract concept [hundreds of faces] is spoken of as though it were endowed with human attributes and feelings [pale and flickering]. The meter of this line of poetry having iambic feet and the fixed or nearly fixed pattern of accented and unaccented syllables producing the pervasive rhythm. Inversions in iambic verse with the dispersion of troche.
[It is possible to distinguish a number of degrees of relative syllabic stress in English speech, but the most common and generally useful fashion of analyzing and classifying the standard English meters is to distinguish only two categories-weak stress and strong stress-and to group the syllables into metric feet according to the patterning of these two stresses]
‘The crystal trophy cases glimmered where the moonlight caught them’ and ‘A few embers were still glowing in the fireplace, turning all the armchairs into hunched black shadows. In this extended metaphor the tenor embers and arm chairs implicitly and figuratively transfigure, transform, or transmogrify ‘glowing’ and ‘hunched black shadows’. Embers and armchairs are literally different objects notably dissimilar, incongruous, unallied and impropriety of the material world and their tenor are adrift and abroad the vessel vehicle and work like noun, verb or adjective.
‘Although I was fond of blowing my own trumpet
Nonetheless I knew that a rolling moss gathers no stone;
Here I have embarked on my salad days
When I was green in judgement and cold in blood;
My self -the reed-that was too frail to survive the storm of its sorrows!!’
My laboratory handwritten manuscripts and the desktop typewriter
Shakespearean effigy lettered a caesura
‘‘Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow?’’
A gleam of delighted divination
A dawn of ethereal fortune
The stony pebbles pearly tides
thunderous rocky shores
Book of Psalms-My dreary refuge
that shuddered astrophysicists knells in extolls
‘The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer’
Is but a sustained metaphor
Every simile can be compressed into a metaphor and every metaphor can be expanded into a simile. Nesfield’s ordeal in parchment of enlivening and enriching figurative language through the implication of ‘informal or implied simile’. Except the marker of comparisons ‘like, such, as, so’. And so on and so forth, I cannot be lingering to prolong the discourse to the harbinger – cradle and grave mausoleum and sepulcher since the spirits of literary criticism in linguistics should be crowned wreathed. Or else this wondering and aweing notes would be a teaspoons of life’s journal annihilating the heart with a dagger!!
Jivananda my favorite Bengali poet laureate welcoming my Ariel’s wings-the freedom of liberty- in cordiality and joviality. Whilst the stalwart novelist Kavigurus’ Rabindranath sculpture flickers seashore sea shells in harmony’s nectarine tides and waves choreographing dysphasia. Ushered by the beverage hubbub, my poet counselor spiritual enchanter chanting ‘dysphasia’ which dumbfounds me. ‘Vulnerability and victimization encroaches my reading and writing of the brain totally or partially silhouetted by agraphia and alexia that elixirs would be dwelt later in neurolingusitics.
Standard British English –thevariety of a language with the highest status in a community or nation and which is usually based on the speech and writing of educated native speakers of the language. News media and literature, dictionaries and grammars, non-native speakers conservatory and English as a foreign language sanctuary … ‘Dotted here and there among the students, the ghosts shone misty silver.’ Reading this metaphorical figurative language from the Sorcerer’s Stone, Professor Jivananda Das exclaimed ‘Guffaw! You’ve been my student residing in the international hostel and I’d want you to perform this years’ phenomenal pageantry with endoglossic audio-visual method’.
‘Recorded dialogues picture sequences to language items and focusing on speaking and listening preceding reading and writing through discouragement of mother tongue usage and encouragement of behavourism and structural linguistics ’
+
We rode
the same storm cloud together
and the Draft caught
your guard down
when I resisted
the fullness
of the moment
I LOVE Ours
It is who We are
& I am still in the Dark
entering the Light
as is often our path
and
I'm included in our happiness
that Absolute closure will
Always Leave some feet
in the door
Like We need more Sales people
I guess
that's why
it never ends
The Future always knocks at the door
and if I resist
the hing pins Lift
fall to the floor
I am convinced
My Locks can't stop
What I feel inside
Let the winds carry
I see that
& that is new to me.
thank you
• • •
We rode
the same storm cloud together
& Like one droplet of water
Breaks the stunning Light
turned to drain its brilliant Breath
to say hello with colors
I can carry the moment
in my heart
to see only the future
where I AM
always rising
..................................................
by John Edward Culp
January 4, 2020
♡
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I have read through some of your blog posts and I must say, have enjoyed the read… you said that you were involved in the “meat poets” …. ok… the only one of them that I know anything about is Bukowski and he was independent as much as a part of any school… I guess… anyway, I discovered Bukowski when I first read “Post Office” which I ran across in a book store, shortly after it was published… I loved the slice of life feel of the writing, the wry humor and the view from the bottom of the working class which is not overly represented in American Literature… I read his other novels as they came out and as I ran across them and picked up a few volumes of his poems as well… I don’t know that the poems amounted to much as “poetry” but they had the same lively style as the prose and were vigorously accessible and full of wit and humor… like the prose…
I was working at a factory printing telephone books at the time that I first ran into Bukowski’s writing… I was going to grad school as an English major, driving the hour plus to River Falls, Wisconsin for classes in the daytime and working full time nights printing telephone phone books… I got a lot of breaks during the job and would write my college papers as my rolls on the press wound down… and later, after I dropped out of grad school in the mid 1970s, I would spend the free time reading, writing and drawing with ballpoint pen on telephone book cover stock… I had been an undergrad art major at the u of Minnesota and had mostly learned from that experience that the world of contemporary art had no place in it for me or the artwork that I was doing and wanted to do… so, I went to grad school at River Falls as an English major… I was writing and submitting poetry regularly, at least one or two submissions a month, and was getting rejections on all of them… this pattern continued from 1970 to 1984 when I finally had a poem accepted for publication…
my job involved putting rolls of paper on a printing press the size of a house and I would write prose and poetry in my head while working and then write it down as my rolls ran down… I had no interest in contemporary poetry beyond Dylan Thomas and maybe a bit of Ginsberg… I had learned about poetry from my mother who’s taste went toward Alfred Noyes and Rudyard Kipling (from her father)… I had discovered the British romantic and Victorian poets and so was trying to be Blake, or Tennyson… updated with contemporary images… needless to say, the editors were not impressed… I did not save the ms when they came back to me… I figured that if the poems were not good enough to be accepted by an editor, they were not worth saving… so, by the time I started publishing, my poetry was one that would often incorporate half remembered or fully remembered images from a poem that had been submitted and tossed, into a new poem… thus, if anybody ever cared enough to read through my published work, there would be a to me interesting, repetition of words and images…
after the acceptance in 1984, I decided that I had proven to the world and to myself that I could write a poem that was good enough to be accepted by a prestigious literary journal (the “GW Review”)… and I decided to quit writing poetry… of course, within a few years, I was back to writing poetry again and submitting…. so I had my second poem accepted in 1994… after that, pretty much everything I submitted was accepted… so, I continued until the twenty teens when I really just stopped writing a lot of poetry… my poetry had changed and was no longer formal rhymed poetry, and I am not sure any of it has any literary merit, and even if it does, I am not sure that having literary merit has any value to the modern world at large… is writing a good poem as useful to the world as turning over a shovel full of dirt, or doing any other mundane task??? well, I don’t know… probably not…
so, anyway, I always have been a voracious and fast reader and when I would finish reading a book I liked, back in my printing press days, I would often send a fan letter to the author just to let them know that I had enjoyed the book enough to take the time to let them know… so, it came to pass that I wrote a letter to Bukowski, a fan letter, about one of his books that I had enjoyed… I remember that I wrote the letter while sitting on an ink can in my little nook, under a steel stairway, behind the “reel stands” of the old Wood Hoe, web fed telephone directory letterpress… the air would have been thick with paper dust, chemical smells and vaporized oil and oil based ink… the gigantic press would have been roaring like a freight train… I would mail a letter like that at the post office, on my way home from work at 7 a.m…
much to my amazement, a week or so later, I got a reply from Bukowski… a personal letter from the, by this time, famous author… I was excited about this and wrote him two more letters, both of which he responded to… I then thought that I had imposed upon the famous author enough and so did not write to him again…
I still enjoy reading Bukowski… I love biographies of artist for one thing, and his novels and to some degree, his poems too, read like autobiography, even though I know they are fiction… but the stories of being a great artist, mingling with the down and out sons and daughters of the working class gutters and bars have always been fun to read… I also enjoy Fante’, Celine and Hamsen et al and to some degree Hemingway, all of whom seem to be Bukowski’s progenitors… Is Bukowski a great artist?? I guess that is for history to decide… will people in our problematic future even read novels anymore??? I think they have already mostly given up on reading poetry… Hmmmm….
so, the only response I can really make to a statement like the above, is, of necessity subjective… I enjoyed and enjoy reading Bukowski… that is enough to me… so many in the poetry small press world seem to want to emulate Bukowski’s hard drinking life style… but little poetry of interest seems to come from this crowd… although, the myth of the intoxicated genius is one that was foisted on me by my own parents… who, in spite of the horrors that alcohol had wrought in our family, firmly believed that I could not be a real artist because I did not drink or use drugs… well, that is a myth that mostly pisses me off… I would not have liked being around Bukowski, I think, had I met him, as I have no patience for and little sympathy with people who are intoxicated… addicted and fucked up… I have no interest in telling other people how to live their lives, but when their bad decisions impinge on me, I reserve the right to walk away… as a child, I could not walk away, but I have not been a child for many decades now… so, I enjoy reading Bukowski but have no desire to live or write like he did…
Conversations with Egyptian Music Producer Loay (D.A.R.KK_)
Loay or, as he calls himself, D.A.R.KK
It was summer. I always discovered music through the long summery nights, when I’m wearing as little as possible, ice cream keeps my fingers sticky, and new tunes flow into my stream of consciousness, interrupting my train of thought.
It was summer when I first heard this mashup, this remix. I was aware of the Egyptian rap scene bursting with liveliness, angry music, and young men exploding with expletives, brokenness, and an unexpected fragility talking about everything from drugs to betrayals, sex, getting wasted, and of course, being unbeatable gangsters with stacks of cash and everything at their disposal.
Many names stood out. It started with fellow Alexandrian Marwan Pablo, then -again- fellow Alexandrian Wegz, and the names kept rolling, like mollies on a tongue. There was the mysterious Lege-Cy, Marwan Moussa who was the typical Eminem-like rapper, the more chill drug-hazed Abo El Anwar, and the gritty Moscow with street cred and a bite. Too many Alexandrian rappers, is that a coincidence?
“I am from Madinet Nasr in Cairo, there are a lot of Alexandrian rappers because rap songs revolve in so many ways about the sense of belonging and brotherhood, and that’s something crucial in the lives of people from Alexandria. But it’s important in young men’s lives in general, this invisible bond of belonging and backing each other up, which is in multiple rap and trap tracks.
Then there were talented, young music producers, working their magic with song mixes, remixes, and mashes. That was when I heard “Layali Aloomek” or -literally- “Nights I Blame You” for the first time, a remix that rocked Egyptian summers in 2022. As I dug deeper, I discovered the young prodigy behind it; Loay or, as he calls himself, D.A.R.KK.
Layali Aloomek – Remixed by D.A.R.KK, mixing “Layali” by Marwan Pablo and “Aloomek” by Marwan Moussa
D.A.R.KK is a 19-year-old Egyptian man who loves what’s new in everything, technology, the music scene, travel, etc. He loves to stray from the norm and discover new places, seeks new experiences at the core of his existence, and takes risks. He created his alter ego D.A.R.KK as a reflection of his real self but within the world of music where he found his true passion ever since he was a kid.
There was something about “Nights I Blame You”, the incorrect structure of his wording in which he just stuck both titles of the original songs: “Layali – Nights” by Marwan Pablo and “Aloomek – I Blame You” by Marwan Moussa. Both songs couldn’t be more different as both rappers had a distinctive style. Instead of calling the song “I blame you night and day” or “For Nights I’ve Been Blaming you” to make the remix more coherent, D.A.R.KK simply called “Nights I Blame You” so that listeners wonder; who is he blaming exactly. The nights, the girl, or maybe someone else?
“It all started when I was a kid, I would use anything at my disposal to create a rhythm. This lasted until 2015 when I became interested in knowing how this magical thing “music” works. I wanted to teach myself so I researched on YouTube until I discovered Fl Studio and started making experimental beats in 2018. The turning point came in 2020 when I started uploading my music on YouTube and found unexpected positive feedback. I wanted a change so I made uploading my tracks something that I do regularly.”
Aloomek by Marwan Moussa
It was like Pandora’s box, but what came out wasn’t all the evil and pain in the world, but a mix of feelings, pains, and different forms of expressing infatuation and arousal. These young boys talked about being in love like nobody else, whether it was Db Gad, who wanted to take his girl to Alexandria through the ghettos and show her the inner-city, to Lege-Cy professing his love to his girl as her fiery flames burned his insides. He melts, and betadine cannot disinfect his wounds, infected by her love.
These two songs were different. Moussa’s “Aloomek” was a double-edged blame game between two toxic people, a relationship on equal grounds where two lovers played Russian roulette. But “Layali” was typical Marwan Pablo, an Alexandrian rapper whose poetry always expresses fragile masculinity, Gen Z sense of dissociative identity, and a burden of a man whose surroundings force him to be tough but his artistic self softens him against his will. Moussa talked about a lover who was the drug to his senses and making out on the roof with a bottle of Havana Club and Goose vodka. Pablo talked about offering his love to the fair maiden, his lady, and someone with whom he can be a knight, taking care of her and protecting her from the world. With his remix, the song seemed like an extended inner monologue by a man burdened by darkness and passionate for the woman who haunted his nights.
Layali by Marwan Pablo
They are two distinct worlds that couldn’t be more alienating to each other. But his boldness and musical talent led D.A.R.KK to create a song that somehow seemed genuine and truthful.
“Since I was little, I listened to a myriad of genres, but as the music progressed in the 2010s, I found myself leaning toward genres such as trap, R&B, and hip hop, I was constantly inspired by various artists whether Egyptian or from other parts of the world. I am the kind of person who gets stuck listening to one track on a loop, so the idea wasn’t new to me. I could make a remix for a track I originally loved and try to reach the same vibe through an enhanced technique. My aim was always that the cover track would surpass the original and find its way into the original fans’ playlist.
With [Layali Aloomek] I was already hooked up on the Marwan Moussa Aloomek track and it was on repeat constantly in my playlist so I wanted to create a remix that included Pablo’s track with it using a Lo-fi beat. And I released it and found that audiences loved my track.”
People didn’t just love D.A.R.KK’s track, they devoured it. The track has reached 200k views on YouTube and D.A.R.KK has 30k monthly listeners on Spotify. The young man has since made multiple other remixes but somehow, Layali Aloomek overshadows everything else he has done.
“This was unexpected and it only proved that if you made something unique that you are truly passionate about you would reach your dreams.”
I had to ask the young man about the creative process and how long it takes to make one track,
“I have a musical ear, and for every track, I have to understand the tempo and the key before I start working on it. As soon as I find two tracks with the same key and tempo, I separate the vocals, then put them in a project, finally I build up the melody on the vocals, then drums, and so forth, until I have my track ready.”
Pablo has been the most used artist in D.A.R.KK’s music world, with his tracks being the ones most used in remixes and such, I had to ask him what he found unique about the 27-year-old Alexandrian rapper,
“When I use a certain artist’s songs for remixes a couple of times, his tracks put me through a Sufi trance of sorts. I’m just like a lot of other guys, I listen to Pablo and I try to measure every track on its own, some tracks cannot be remade, remixed, or covered. Some tracks can be standalone in the remix. Pablo’s tracks can have chemistry with many other artists.”
Intrigued by his description of music as Sufi tracks, I asked D.A.R.KK about other artists to whom he reacts similarly,
“Most young men my age listen to rappers because we are from the same age group. We have gone through similar experiences and hardships. They write exactly how they feel, and correlate with things happening in our lives. They are unlike other musicians from years before. That’s why I don’t listen to older music because even if I like something old, I prefer to remix it and create something new out of it.
Haunting has been a word that came to mind ever since watching Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis in 2022. Austin Butler’s voice and eyes haunted me as he stared down at the audience or played tunes on his piano in a dark room. “Layali Aloomek” haunted me with its ethereal qualities and reverberating sounds. I asked D.A.R.KK if he believed some songs were haunting and others were not,
“I believe in that. Whenever I listen to a track, I tie it to the time and place I am in at this stage in my life. It becomes connected with this particular moment. So that if I listen to it later, it immediately transforms me to this stage in my life.”
D.A.R.KK dreams of collaborating with one of his favorite artists. He wants to create a different wave as a music producer, synergistically meshing his talent as a music producer with the artists to create a sound unheard of before. His interest in songs surpassed a musical fascination and hit deep into the themes and elements that shape the current musical scene in general, truth was something that he highly valued,
“Guys my age love rap and trap because the artist writes their songs, it’s unlike other mainstream [Arabic] songs with all due respect where you don’t feel the truth of the singer. I am not convinced when an artist writes about pain or injustice when he’s living a completely different life of luxury. I can’t listen to something that I don’t believe in. Not to mention that other Arab singers only showcase the bright side of their lives, and they also sing it, unlike rappers who are so open and bring you into the heart of their experiences, good or bad, so that means with other singers, I’ll only listen to you if I’m in a good mood, but they can’t sell me their music otherwise.
The real world is not as beautiful as Amr Diab or Tamer Hosny -two veteran Egyptian pop singers- paint it out to be. Rappers do that for us. They sing our feelings, express our anger and frustration, our pain. We’ve all been through the same but they just know how to express it poetically.”
Poetry takes so many shapes and forms, if Bob Dylan is one of the contemporary poets, then I don’t see how Tupac and Eminem cannot be considered the same. And if this applies to the West, then why not consider Pablo, Wegz, Moussa, and other contemporary poets but their street language and gritty expressions of modern-day life can be their gospels.
