Skip to main content

Posts

Pains of Birth

He screams. He cries. He tries to see through but sees nothing.  A cold sensation spreads over his skin. Chilling matter goes through his wide open mouth and stings his lungs before he exhales again another scream.  Giant creatures standing there scare him. They are unproportionally bigger than anything that could fit in the world he was living in till very recently. His world was comfortably dark, cozy and warm. Constantly fed through the cord tied to his belly, he didn't even have to worry about chewing anything but his thumb.  He cries as the will to go back to his comfort zone, fails him.  Those giants were holding him and anyway, he couldn't move in this totally new, unknown world.  New rules apply. He has no idea what's ahead, and he doesn't know whether he should trust, or not, the new nature, the new present, the new valiants tutors.  So he screams.  He kicks.  He waves his fists around in all directions.  Little did he know that noth...

Ya Ya Ya Ya!

8 am, at the restaurant floor of the Four Seasons Resort. The breakfast tables line up, mostly unoccupied, on that large floor, where I chose to leave my stuff by the fountain and go pick a plate, lay some slices of smoked salmon and capers on it, grab a glass of grapefruit on my way and come back sit to the table. By now there’s another occupied table not very far on the other side of the fountain, but I really didn’t care much about identifying whom the silhouettes sitting on it belongs to.. As usual, I was very careful not to make noise with my fork on the plate. I don’t like to break that classy, shiny, breakfast silence. Suddenly, a child sings really loud and broke the silence that I was safeguarding: “ Ya ya ya ya! ”.. okay... someone is cheering the morning lights.  that’s it, he didn’t add a word. and I resumed my meal, repeating in my head.. “ Yeah yeah yeah.. ” but visualizing it written as “ jajajaja ” like in Spanish comments you read in some posts.. A colleagu...

I Want to Eat!

Act 1 He walks in a fine-diner... an usher rushes to greet him and managed to get him a very good table. He doesn't make him wait long before he brought him a few handouts, covering the restaurant's long heritage and how it's digging its roots deep in history to the last century. He takes care of thanking him of finding this cozy place that actually belongs to a well-known chain of restaurants offering all sorts of international food with local touch in each location. " We know customers come to us with high expectations, and I am positive you won't be disappointed, Sir! " The customer is very happy and overwhelmed with how the whole floor is at his service, and he fought the idea that is silently popping in his mind " they would add a hefty service charge on the bill! ". While he is absorbed in that thought, the usher calls the floor manager, who invites the guest to another table, even better than the first one. " You are ou...

أبيات

جفاف جفَّ شِعري مات لما أنَّ قلبي أنّات وافت قريحتي الوفاة وتكسرت أبياتي شتات ناديتها بآهات أن ارجعي يا أبيات لكن هيهات هيهات ولّى إلهامي وفات سرت قبله خطوات وتأخر عني سنوات أجابني أنه آت سألته  أنى لي الكلمات رد علي بصدى أصوات من وادي الأموات أن اعذرني، لا آتي إليك إلا مع العبرات ------------------ الرامي والقلم سهامها سود قطع ظلام وعيد ووعود أفراح وآلام تسديد وشرود إحياء وإعدام جرحها أخدود مليء بالآثام صوتها ودود يبهج الأيام تأتي من لدود تدمي الأكلام أو بالحب تجود تحّي بالإبهام تُضيع الردود أو تنير الأفهام قصدي يا مسعود عن كلام الأقلام

Brief me, pleaaaaase!

"I need a break brief" "Brief" is becoming a word to kill for nowadays. I just have to say " give me a brief " to trigger a raffle of weird looks from my interlocutor, and sometimes it goes like " but we're discussing now! "... well, I can let go and get an affirmation that our discussion IS the brief. But truth doesn't take time to show up: " why don't we do a promotion or offer something? ", or " can we say some other message? ", or some other person comes and tell the team they were wrong in their approach, and that a brief would be re-written...! I would have loved to be the cool dude who helps you leave on time, but it's not up to me.. when it starts becoming a habit, and the cool dude is not that cool if one day he calls halt to the bad habit, then you should know it's for the sake of the client, the agency, the artists, the creatives, and the industry centennial learnings. Some might d...

Is Computer.. a Blessing?

I was writing those thought for my own journal, but then I thought: "Why don't I share them with the peers who are digging into the same trench?" I started my career near end of the last century, prior to the apparition of the famous G3, and when Photoshop3 was a hit. I stepped in a studio where most of the artists learned computer art years after they started their career. Internet resources were still scarce and we had at many occasions to shoot for presentations; make physical mock-ups of our work; present TV commercials on giant black foam boards; team up together for a campaign… our production manager was jumping 10 times between the colour separation house and the printing press to check chromalines and print-proofs… I still feel the glue-spray odors from the overnight " charettes " before any important presentation. We often used to go home at 8am to dress-up decently and head to the presentation. It's not the nostalgia that I want to d...

Forgiveness

A friend of mine asked me to write anything about "forgiveness", and it took me two weeks to decide that at the end I can write what I feel, not what I think. Because writing is only sincere when it's talking on behalf of your heart, just like forgiveness is only true when it's coming from the heart as well. And hey! That's the equation: I can't write about forgiveness. It almost left my heart and made estate in my mind. I'm consciously forgiving every one, in every day and in every moment. I deliberately know that I won't carry my grudge further after my death, and that no matter how big is my anger if one day they stand before me I will let go. That's what "I" will do. But "me" have a different point of view and can only keep it inside. Because what has marked several situations between some people and "me" was mostly that "I" didn't insist on getting, "I" always favorited gi...

Burden

Isn't it the most descriptive word humanity has ever invented? When I hear someone saying "I'm carrying a burden", beyond letters I feel his pain, I hear his scream, I see his silent cry. Humanity tried to draw feelings on walls, write them on papyrus, play them on instruments, and tell them in audible sounds. But I believe that amongst all feelings, "burden" knew how to become the widest understood imagery. Is it because humans are all fine through that, they feel each other when they hear it? They demonstrate compassion by understanding it? Is this word what's gonna be the only common fine line between all sapiens when other species will come and document our past existence? Anyways it's a pure human invention. Exclusivity that only can register. To be continued.

"Out of sight"

I've just watched the best 5-minute anim and it made my day, a Japanese one about a blind little girl who lost her dog guide for a while. It inspired me one thought: "we become creative only after closing our eyes to the outer noise and focus on our internal voice. Only then we can isolate a different perspective of the world, not like everybody else sees it, not like we are told to see it, but how we imagin it. How would things look if we see them through only our creative mind? Anything could happen then, and that's the impossible and magic world of creativity. Then only, "Resist the usual" or "be different" or "think different", will make sense. I would say that it's good to plan our plan according to real data, in a real world and to fit perfectly in the tangible and conventional world, but we should incept this plan creatively, in a borderless world of no limits. How many times you were faced with an "a...

خط الزمن

خط الزمن هذه همساتي، أخطها لك كلمات فاسمعها بأذن عقلك. لا أدري إلى أين تأخذني خواطري، فأنا لا أدري إلى أي مدى هي عميقة دواخلي. أسبر غياباتها بشمعة وأقرأ على جدرانها، وتأخذني دهاليزها في غياهب يعلم الله إلى أين. إن شئت قرأت، فستضحك قليلا، وقد تبكي، أو تسخر أيضا، لكن الأهم، سأحاول، أن تعلم . المستقبل الحاضر في الماضي جلس على شرفة بيته المتهالك يهامس النجوم الساكنة في حلكة سماء صافية على غير عادتها في ليلة شتاء قارس، كأس شاي فقدت دفئها في يمينه تغازل شماله المتدللة على حافة الكرسي الأزلي الذي رافقه في حله وترحاله، وتترامى إلى مسمعه موسيقى اللاونج المفضلة لديه في أحسن أماسيه . لم يكن يعد النجوم، بل كان يغازل تلك النجمة القاصية على قمة برج الأسد . نجمة تعرف إليها وأحبها مذ كان في العشرين، وأعطاها من الأسماء بعدد من عرف في صباه من النساء، حتى بات أكيدا لديه أنها ليست أيا منهن، بل هي هو لا غيره، تنتشي بحلة ما في قلبه من ألوان . فتارة هي بسواد شعر هذه أو ببياض وجه ...