Sheeran / Macklemore

In light of the Ed Sheeran debate or better referred to as ‘debacle’. 

Here is how I do my best to relate. 

I have a friend, one I consider to be a close childhood friend and love. We don’t agree on what happened in Tahrir square when a whole community of peaceful protestors, regardless of their faith party were murdered in plain sight. It was a massacre. I was well acquainted with one individual who was serving his elders juice when he got shot. 

We saw it all on TV and it was all real then, so real that anyone who would have seen it knew it to have happened and yet, this friend of mine said it did not happen. 

Obituaries were dismissed, it did not happen. 

In her eyes the military had simply marched the peaceful protestors away.  Nothing had occurred except perhaps a rogue protestor getting a stray bullet he must have asked, perhaps even begged for. 

In my friend’s mind her perspective was clear, there was nothing more to it. 

We are still friends and will continue to be even though we are both physically and figuratively seas apart. We will wish each other all good things and hope to never talk about it or anything similar again. 

BUT WE WERE NEVER IN THE LIMELIGHT and that’s where everything takes on a very different hue.

Had we both been artists of some kind on stage i don’t know what would have happened but I do know that if she had upheld what I saw as a terrorist regime or if I had upheld what she saw as a terrorist party we could not have but agreed to disagree. 

The one thing I do know is that each of us would have stood firm in our belief. 

There would have been no victim, no bully, we’d simply have divided the audience in two. Not in three or four or five or however many facets there are to political matters .. just in two. 

There would not have been a spinal problem. Instead of harmony cacophony, and yet the show would still have gone on because we are friends. I would never have taken the stage for our art for myself alone and I believe neither would my friend have done so. 

That can only happen when brainwashing is so rife that the brainwashed cannot distinguish between good and bad, wrong and right. 

It can only happen when a person is unable to believe that the power they bow to may not always get it right, moreover one that may in fact be a very dangerous malignant tumour that cannot be cut out and therefore continue to wreak havoc; in disguise for some, blatantly ‘emperor has no clothes on’  for others. 

As If

 

Feeling triggered by AI, by artifice as opposed to art 

Want to say: Use it for art forms if you wish but please stop trying to deceive us … 

Breaking it down to the tangible: 

Fake flower decorations: Either they are clearly fake and often ugly or then we can’t be sure until we take a closer look or physically touch them. Once we know whether they’re fake or real we can admire the craft and accept the deception or dismiss them altogether. 

With AI however, there is only fake and ugly or then total deception which only some instinct or intuition alerts us to. We become suspicious of every single photo or clip we see. 

Why so much AI floating around is the question. After all nothing compares to the awe we feel when coming across true wondrous nature we can never improve upon and then AI becomes a more suitable acronym of AS IF 😅

A lost perspective

 Moderation is key to everything viewed from a Muslim perspective as it promotes balance ~ highly prized ~ for addressing and readdressing it is key to our spiritual development. But I do feel and think you are either a Muslim or not ~ so I don't like all the various terms that are used to describe Muslims such as 'moderate' & 'extremist'.

Islam is after all about surrender to the One & Only and basically pure & in no need of adjectives to define it. 

Bad & good are human qualities & not definitive of faith ~~ 

My perhaps somewhat simplistic argument may well appear to be semantically motivated however it goes a bit deeper.

Forgo

Image: The Spruce Eats / Cara Cormack

On her walk back home she saw a woman struggle trying to lift a tv set out of her car. She stopped and asked if she could help. The woman’s bandana had slipped off her head in the attempt to hoist the tv through the car door, displaying a gold earring dangling from one ear. The tv brought to the front door, the woman muttered numerous thank yous before unlocking and pushing the door open, adding she would take it from there. 

Glancing in through the clear window she could see piled up cardboard boxes in an otherwise drab bare room, a sight that filled her with arid thoughts.

Back on her walk home, she purposefully visualised herself getting a cup of tea and a piece of toast lavishly spread with the extra thick cut marmalade she had just purchased and suddenly remembered her favourite soap was soon on.

On arrival she noticed she had forgotten to lock her front door so was thankful to find all seemed to be as she had left it. Kettle boiled, she buttered her toast and spread the marmalade as evenly as she could without being tempted to pile it on too thick. 

She walked over to her usual spot and sat down, retrieving the tv remote which unsurprisingly had slid down the side of the sofa. She clicked it on and sat back to watch her soap which was just about to air. 

In clear sight sat a vase with purple flowers, usually hidden behind the tv. 

Dangling from its neck glistened something golden. 

She allowed her marmalade with orange undertones of warm golden sunshine to take over and to think of nothing else. 

Moral of the story? 

Never regret having helped someone if help you could for you are not to know how they might manage or not manage to help themselves 😉

Like’s consequences.

 … if you’ve had enough of the plastic expressionless faces, the fake pretend to be real eyebrows, the in-your-face fat lips that are I am told like kissing a ‘thing’ not a person ~ then join the club.

Refrain from ticking ‘like’ and sending hearts on posts about celebrities who rely on their plasticity as role models whilst what they in truth invite should rather be compassion for being clear victims of trend dictates. 

Click ‘Like’ only when valuing a celebrity for skills that may have earned them their status not for their ever more plastic appearance serving little other than to blaze a trail for young impressionable people. 

This is damaging on a very broad scale affecting not only people’s appearances but their very spirit and attitude towards life and the essence of living that can only be enhanced through spiritual growth throughout time. 

There’s no denying the advance of plastic surgery is amazing. It can help so many who have serious disfigurements to function better in life. However with plastic surgery readily available for whatever age so long as money is present the good from the practice is overshadowed by the unwholesomeness of it. 

If we lived in a world where people respected balance I would be tempted to leave those who choose to have minor unnecessary tweaks which are barely noticeable and who keep it on the quiet, out of the equation. They do not flaunt it or want praise for it. Their role in society is not governed by it. They are not too different from anyone who chooses to enhance their looks and thus morale without the use of invasive surgery, so for those I say ‘to each their own’. Having said that however, we as a society fail to respect balance and so it must be made very clear that invasive surgery should not be encouraged by ethical surgeons nor by ordinary folk but rather left for whenever it is truly needed. It should not be seen as a tool to correct the diverse wonders of natural appearance functioning perfectly in the first place. 

Meddling with a face and a body or both and permanently changing a person’s features is always going to be accompanied with huge consequences. 

Consequences not for the person alone but for a whole society’s make-up, figuratively speaking. 

So many of us know it but feel helpless to do anything about it. 

It always feels time to say STOP.

And yet the time never comes for it to stop.

Not ticking ‘like’ would just be a start.

Without a balanced outlook in favour of the wholesome attributes of life we have deformity creep in wherever it can and cloud the clarity otherwise unobscured.

amiT flicker thoughts: Arabic, not just another language

amiT flicker thoughts: Arabic, not just another language: The following is quite naturally a very personal point of view from an angle that relates to little things that count. To be understood b...

The MEAT Feast

Eid-elAdha or as it is now referred to in slang terms : Eid el-Lah’ma:

THE MEAT FEAST

She slapped a large thick flat piece of red meat onto her marble worktop with her well rounded forearm; extension as it were in semblance of colour and volume. In her other hand she held a long sharp knife and with a glance in my direction she muttered angrily and audibly about how annually she had to cut it all up to give to those less fortunate.

I stood some distance away in the dark hallway and saw the sweat creep onto her brow, sensing her anguish and frustration escalate as my silence mounted.

Recoiling at the physicality of it all I could not help but be in awe at how so dutiful an act, selfless in principle, could inspire her to feel such pure resentment. Was the purity of the selflessness infectious or was it the other way round? How adulterated was each?

Idle onlooker as I felt myself to be, with the question gathering its own beads of perplexities I slunk further into the shadows of the dark hallway from where I could just about manage to escape into the light of day.