1 Piece of Advice

Don't look at your iPhone when you're walking across the Bridge Street Bridge.

You may drop it into the White River.

You may drop it on the sidewalk and crack the screen.

You may miss something happening around you.

4 Things About the Nahda

Tarek El-Ariss                                               DARTMOUTH NEWS

        The Nahda was (is) the renaissance in Arab intellectualism that began, roughly, in the late 19th Century. For historical purposes, it encompassed the early 20th Century, but artificially limiting either its inception or duration is an iffy proposition.
      So says Tarek El-Ariss, a Dartmouth professor who compiled The Arab Renaissance: A Bilingual Anthology of the Nahda and in so doing, revamped academic and practical theory about what the Nahda is, its genesis and its place in its heyday and in the modern world.

1. The Nahda was a response to Ottoman monarchic and absolute rule in a large swathe of Europe, Asia and Africa. Ottoman rule provided governance, jobs, culture and societal structure in exchange for the freedom of its subjects. Sounds familiar.

2. We think Arab, we think Muslim. Arabs are primarily Muslims but are also Christians, Jews, other smaller sects, and secularists - secularism is perhaps a critical part of the Nahda.

3. Kahlil Gibran. yeah, that guy who is most familiar to  Westerners, is part of the Nahda.

4. A key feature of the Nahda is the reconceptualism of time: the idea that there is a past, present and future, which we affect by our present thoughts and actions.

3 Things About Pamela Z

I saw Pamela Z at Dartmouth's Faulkner Hall, which is in the bowels of the Hopkins Center. It's a fitting venue, intimate, acoustically outstanding, and to get there, you think, as you wander a maze lined with rows of lockers, practice rooms, closets and Exit signs, "Surely, I am in the wrong place."

1. Pamela Z most reminded me about Martin Mull's saying, "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture."

2. I can only compare what she does to others, none of whom capture Pamela Z, but who might give you an idea:
       The ethereality of Enya; the experimentalism, especially with her voice, of Yoko Ono; the artistry, delight and straightforwardness of Penn & Teller.

3. Imagine if the theremin, which you know from the Beach Boys' Good Vibrations, were updated to 2019 technological standards. Besides her voice, clear boxes with optical readers (hope I have that right) inside respond when Pamela Z moves her hands or fingers in intricate ways. She has an unerring sense of time.

Here is Breathing, which she performed Thursday night.