This Monday, I was able to head over to the Palace in order to experience Arcade Fire live.
By all means I am not at all a frequent attendee of concerts, however, I was very happy with my decision to go to this energetic performance.

In general, from the predictable concert finale of Wake Up, to the rotating man wearing all mirrors, to the odd break in the performance where they played two Stevie Wonder songs, to Win Butler mocking Wrecking Ball, to the pulsating music throughout the approximately two hour performance, the concert never seemed to really let up in terms of pure fun and energy. It was enjoyable through and through.

The set list was…for those who are curious…

Reflektor
Flashbulb Eyes
Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)
Rebellion
Rococo
The Suburbs
Ready to Start
Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
We Exist
Normal Person
Intervention
Keep the Car Running
Haiti
Afterlife
Hey Orpheus
Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
Superstition
Uptight (Everything’s Alright)
Here Comes the Night Time
Wake Up

Here is the music video for Afterlife, a song off of their newest album, Reflektor.

You know sometimes I think it’s funny. I’m supposed to be this right-brained, creative thinker, stick it to the man type of person. People employed in creative fields are often portrayed as rule breakers, giving the public “groundbreaking” or “daring” things. They do “art for arts sake,” and if no one likes their art who cares because it’s mine. No one can take that away.

And really, I do wish that were me. I wish I could sit back and let people decide what they think, and if what they think is negative, then by gone they’re just wrong and my art is amazing and who cares. But that just isn’t me. That’s never me.

I don’t mind bending the rules a little bit. I don’t mind having new, innovative ideas that some people might consider weird or out there. But getting completely rejected is something I’m not comfortable with. I can’t do my work and say “here it is, whether you like it or not.” I have to have that qualifier, something that tells me that yes people will approve.

But really, it’s my own mind game. I’m my own worst critic, and truthfully, it’s hard for me to say that I’ve ever thought that my art (whether it be performance or my writing) is actually good. I mean I still get uncomfortable when people ask “what have you written?” and I say that I’ve been working off and on a “book” for a little over 3 years. It makes me feel uncomfortable just typing it. I don’t think I deserve to even call my writing a book.

There’s plenty of my writing that I’ve liked. There’s writing that I’ve shared. And there;s writing that I’ve gotten approval on from multiple people.

But unfortunately, I’ve never truly believed them. I smile, nod, say thank you and that it means a lot, because it does. Each type I receive a compliment, I get a little brick in my self-esteem house. It comes along slowly.

But there’s more things working against me than there are working for me. I had to give a presentation today, and I did so much more badly than I could have imagined (and I already knew I’d struggle). And even though that has nothing to do with writing, it’s just a school assignment and I do well in that class normally, I can’t help but to think that if I can’t do one presentation, who am I to think that I can be a writer, that I can be successful and independent when I mess up a simple thing that the rest of my class does fine with.

It’s awful to face, but it’s the bitter truth. My inadequacy can be crippling, and in turn it destroys my self-esteem.

I apologize for the downer, but sometimes being creative comes with harsh realities. The tortured artist might by a silly cliché but the struggles people face are still real.

I recently spent ten days in Morocco, not because I have family there or had any artistic background in Morocco, but because I knew almost nothing about it.

After trekking through gorges, medinas,and endless mazes of souks (markets), I reached a new level of understanding of their art, cuisine and culture as a whole.

Morocco is situated on the northwest tip of Africa and through the years has been a Berber kingdom, French colony, Spanish holding, and is now under Arabic rule. It presents an artistic conundrum with its Portuguese turrets, Muslim minarets, and endless Francophile references that linger in its cafes.

In a series of posts, I hope to introduce anyone who is curious (or simply confused, like I was) about Moroccan culture and history. As a point of entry, I’ll start with Moroccan doors, almost all of which beg you run your hand over their intricate designs before opening the latch into another world.

 

The first thing to know about Moroccan doors is that they serve a functional purpose. They let people into your home, but they also do a great job of keeping hot winds out of your inner courtyard oasis. This top photo is a perfect example of a typical Moroccan door of entry into a school or Mosque. It sits within a typical Muslim horseshoe arch that tapers at the top into a point (unlike Roman arches) and has two options for entry. The large doors serve as barn doors to let loads of air (and people!) inside, while the smaller doors serve merely to let smaller crowds and small gusts of wind inside.

 

Typical house doors that offer entry from the street are often another matter. They lack the larger barn style door, but make up for their lack in size by providing the pedestrian with a visual feast for the eyes. Incorporating stars, circles, squares, and triangles blended together in a myriad of ways, the Moroccan front door acts as an excellent precursor to the intricately tiled Moroccan interior.

Moroccan riads (or large houses that can host many visitors) are largely interior-focused. Since the temperatures can drop thirty degrees in one day and the winds have been known to blow Saharan sands, Moroccans have become masters of home climate control. This is why you will see very few windows in the typical Moroccan home.

Moroccan doors also incorporate the common West African practice of ‘fractal scaling’ or the repetition of a theme on large and small scales. This door (above) incorporates the Jewish six-pointed Star of David, frequently featured in Jewish districts of Moroccan cities such as Marrakech and Essaouira.

 

An important thing to know about any Muslim architecture is that animals and people are strictly forbidden. There is some leeway in a culture like Morocco, where European and Berber influences bring animals and body parts to the table (e.g. the hand Hamza symbol) but largely, figures are prohibited.

Some exceptions are below:

 

 

The swan’s head is barely a figure. From far away, it merely appears to be a curved line with an arrowhead. No harm of being heretical there.

The second object (the hand pictured above) is a ‘Hamsa’ (simply meaning ‘five) to Arabic speakers or ‘the hand of Fatima’ to Muslims. It serves an apotropaic function to ward off evil when the fingers are open and to bring good luck when the fingers are closed. The symbol pre-dates Christianity and Judaism, believed to have been found at sites of Mesopotamia.

Either way, it makes an enticing door knocker.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Moroccan doors can be any color and any design. They often bear a resemblance to the architecture of the building they occupy and more often are the most ornate and functional parts of a building. They ward off evil and let in guests. They can be symbolic, beautiful, and powerful.

 

Or, if you happen to be staying in a Berber camp in the Sahara desert, they can simply be a piece of fabric that keeps unwelcome sand gusts from disturbing your slumber.

Once upon a time this is how I cooked: look in fridge, see all the colors vegging – red green yellow pep, translucent white onions, sunset tomato, garlic (also white ish), earthy orange carrots, more green broccoli and of course pale root potato – chop it all up into rainbow dice, throw it in tortilla wrap with lunch meat, or a quesadilla (basically the same but cooked and folded rather than raw rolled), sauce on the outside over lettuce bed, salsa rice side dish instead of chips or fries and the point is everything went in all at once and always with cheese because why not?

Whatever it was, breakfast lunch or dinner it all went in – I said it’s healthy, keeps my colors nice and crisp and lucid like the nuclear reactor my brother saw at Indiana University, a small cube two feet all around submerged in a deep circle well and the water is the cleanest around and it vibrates – that’s how I picture my mind after a meal with all the vitamins present and glowing and I don’t eat enough as it is – got no time to coordinate ingredients into cohesive meal, all it is is protein, veg, fruit, grain and alcohol, five groups, mostly grain and booze, so when there’s room for one veg everyone tags along and I developed a blanket veg taste in everything I ate and I stopped enjoying food. Call me picky but life is just too short to eat the same taste for every meal, to take a thing like food and make it consistent and I thought of the movie Wall-E and how they drink food out of straws and that’s the least of their problems.

And it’s not just about food, if I can’t enjoy a simple meal and have to rush to get it down and on to this or that, then what else is flying over my head, under the radar? And if not I then who’s there to enjoy anything little and sparkling and insignificant anymore, and I see my future self in a dream never being impressed with visions and sounds and strange tastes and sooner or later I am on the edge of the grand canyon and I’m trying to locate the exact spot where a high resolution digital photograph I saw on the internet was taken and there it is and I’m seeing it with my own eyes and I am disappointed – I can’t zoom in or sit down and it’s hot out and I wish I had stayed home and known this place strictly through the laptop window, and it’s all been seen and lost its shimmering newness. And I wake up and wish future Josh had walked off the edge of that cliff.

Back to food, I had thoughts of how there are words between lines on pages, there’s music in the silent bars of a classical symphony or wild bop ride, and there are knives hanging from strings off of the end stops of poems stacked in my bookshelf, there is color and beautiful silence in the shy spots of a painting or the empty white of a fresh canvas – this applies to food because if everyone cooked everything together for every meal we would all be eating the same rainbow mush from a blender (for convenience) and our tongues would devolve and forget about how things taste better next to other things like colors and words vibing and rhyming and rolling off the tongue and eyes just right and you can tell – it’s cooking as a process of elimination, what not to cook, that’s the real question and it’s really what not to see and I ask myself all the time when I’m walking around outside and looking down at all the little colored stones in the sidewalk and my portion control is much better these days. I probably still don’t eat enough but I’m enjoying meals and sticks and puddles and little tricks of light in windows at dusk and passing moments with strangers and smiles and I think what a shame it would be if I threw these things into a blender and ate them all at once.