You made it to the centre but had one hour to find the place.
At The Lebanese Bakery you met an old friend, an Islamic scholar, and over delicious flat breads discussed Ibn Taymiyyah and the importance of agency in the structure of Islamic thought. "I doubt," I said, "that the universal and singularities has ever been discussed here".
"Yes," he replied. I bet it's usually: w'ala..Gucci..al shaikh..Armani..brother.."
Strange to learn that he's into minimalist electro. But then again, that could be because he's a wahabi...voices and lyrics distract him; the slight modifications of the same tune bring an openness with them. Like fiction, I said, so much of it is simply padding for western sensibilities hooked to bourgeois security (paraphrasing Ghosh's thoughts in The Great Derangement). M. Asad had written, all those years ago, that there was something monotonous-almost hypnotic- about the way 'eastern' music circles around a still centre.
Maybe that's what we've always wanted, I suggested..a broken circle..or maybe a spiral?
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Outside of Foyles you saw a man with a shock of henna-dyed hair, suited in the kind of lawyer's garb that one only sees in Lahore. I had to take a second glance to make sure this wasn't an apparition. Am I here when I'm here?
In the time I had I bought Murnane's Plains book and Byung-Chul Han on the expulsion of the other (really good, as usual). there was still time to quietly read the first half of Lavinia Greenlaw's moving poems on her father's dementia.
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Kempowski's book was a disaster. All for Nothing. You said it. The desire to immerse yourself in fictional lives wanes by the hour. It's not that all has been said and done; it's more that there's never any real engagement with reality- just a childish rolling out of cliches. I'll write more about why it was such a poor book later- or maybe i won't.
At The Lebanese Bakery you met an old friend, an Islamic scholar, and over delicious flat breads discussed Ibn Taymiyyah and the importance of agency in the structure of Islamic thought. "I doubt," I said, "that the universal and singularities has ever been discussed here".
"Yes," he replied. I bet it's usually: w'ala..Gucci..al shaikh..Armani..brother.."
Strange to learn that he's into minimalist electro. But then again, that could be because he's a wahabi...voices and lyrics distract him; the slight modifications of the same tune bring an openness with them. Like fiction, I said, so much of it is simply padding for western sensibilities hooked to bourgeois security (paraphrasing Ghosh's thoughts in The Great Derangement). M. Asad had written, all those years ago, that there was something monotonous-almost hypnotic- about the way 'eastern' music circles around a still centre.
Maybe that's what we've always wanted, I suggested..a broken circle..or maybe a spiral?
¬¬¬
Outside of Foyles you saw a man with a shock of henna-dyed hair, suited in the kind of lawyer's garb that one only sees in Lahore. I had to take a second glance to make sure this wasn't an apparition. Am I here when I'm here?
In the time I had I bought Murnane's Plains book and Byung-Chul Han on the expulsion of the other (really good, as usual). there was still time to quietly read the first half of Lavinia Greenlaw's moving poems on her father's dementia.
¬¬¬
Kempowski's book was a disaster. All for Nothing. You said it. The desire to immerse yourself in fictional lives wanes by the hour. It's not that all has been said and done; it's more that there's never any real engagement with reality- just a childish rolling out of cliches. I'll write more about why it was such a poor book later- or maybe i won't.
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