It rang in our heads like church bells. 

Constantly, in every class, our Spanish professor repeated the phrase as he swung his arms and hands as if to orchestrate our thoughts. 

“Tanto monto, monto tanto!”

Meanwhile, the class would burst into laughter, in complete ignorance of what he was on about. 

“Tanto monto, monto tanto!”

All is equal, equal is all.

Several weeks later, as I drowned in sheesha smoke and observed the people like busy ants around me, something deviously simple struck me about that statement…

Yes.  All of us are individuals.  Yes.  Each of us have different ideals, principles, and interests.  Yes.  We are different. 

But we’re not.  We are all the same.

Look past the tough exteriors.  Look past the difference in how we think and what we support.  Look past all boundaries of religion, race, or nationality.  Strip yourselves of your identity or labels society has cast down upon you.  Forget the idea that we are very complex individuals… because what is left when you have stripped away all of that, is the same basic individual…

We all love.  We all hate.  We all need.  We all want.  We all judge.  We all cry.  We all bleed.

“Tanto monto, monto tanto!”

Then again… why are we all so complex, with these constant whirlwinds of emotion, always tugging and tearing away at us, pulling us from mood to mood day in and day out? 

Maybe it is that our complexity lies in our simplicity?   Is that why we can’t understand each other?   Because we cannot accept how simple we really are?

Another view on this might be interesting…. That same night, I was entering my unlit apartment from my balcony.  Outside, laid construction lights and the moon – the only sources that threw light into my room… and then on my issue. 

At a certain angle, this enlightenment threw my shadows all over the walls surrounding me.  I counted seven.  Seven shadows thrown across the room, all originating from me. 

Boom.  Inside this simple little individual you see before you, there are seven different individuals.  Seven different characters that act in different ways in different situations with different people…. Yet all of them…or all of “us”, when stripped away from the light, melt back into one shadow – me. 

I don’t think I suffer from multiple personality disorder… I think we all have several “shadows” hidden within our souls. 

All of them different, and yet all of them the same. 

“Tanto monto, monto tanto!”

Shed a little moonlight on your views of the people around you and you might be surprised to see how much you have in common with them…or how many shadows you may count…

“If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

 - Shakespeare, A Merchant of Venice

It just hit me… like a stack of bricks, really.

I’m standing up here on my balcony, letting my thoughts hang in the wind, and then it just hits me.

I’ve been violated.

You’ve been violated.

We’ve all been violated.

Capitalism has stolen our virginity.

Draw in a deep breath. Close your eyes. Take a stroll with me down memory lane. Do you remember being 5? Not a care on the world, jumping from tree to tree, letting your imagination literally run away with you…that was the life wasn’t it?

Memories. Like footprints in the sand. You should be careful not to let the tides of time wash up all of them.

It all seemed just like it was yesterday. We were all so innocent. Getting into trouble with teachers. Sitting in detention. Nap time. Snack time. “Cooties”. Your first crush…your first crush on a teacher. The excitement of getting your first hand-written letter. Getting away with anything and everything at all, yet too young to understand that you can get away with murder, if you’re cute enough. Picture day…the barely combed hair; the clip-on ties. The dashingly innocent smiles and the big eyes that can light up the world.

Ah, yes. Life was so simple back then.

We did not pre-judge. We used to share. There was no back-stabbing or gossiping. Our opinions were our own. There was no such thing as class or race or gender or anything. We were just…free.

And, Oh! The games! How could I forget the games?! Recess. Playtime. The bruises, scabs and scraped knees. The grass stains on your uniform. Hide and go seek. Cops and robbers. Dodge ball. Tag. Kickball. Simon Says. Hopscotch. Wall-ball. Marbles. Not to mention the countless games that we made up as we went along… games where everyone had there turn to be a star on any given day.

But alas. Those days are gone. Paradise lost. Innocence forgotten. I would give anything to return to those years, to play those games once again, to receive another hand-written letter.

The scariest part of it all is that our kids will never experience what we did.

Never.

Lost are those days for us and for generations of kickball stars to come. Lost is their imagination and their creativity…

All at the hands of evil technology and “globalization”. All at the hands of the green-eyed capitalist.

Now they will be playing Sony Playstations and surfing the internet. Now they will receive emails and mass forwards. Now they will depend on the T.V. to supply them with an imagination and a story, rather than live their own.

So sad, so sad.

Yet the battle is not over. Youth and the free-spirit cannot give in so easily to these greedy multinationals. For in these children and generations to come, is the chance to rekindle the human spirit – to rekindle our childhoods and pass the torch on to our kin.

Never allow the child inside you to die.

Never forget how to play your favorite games.

And most importantly, never, never deprive your children from the liberating experience you were lucky enough to experience.

Open their eyes as you re-open yours.

“The glamour of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast down in the flood of remembrance.”

-D.H. Lawrence

It’s beautiful up here.

Sixth floor.  Facing the backside of a barren parking lot.  Behind Burjuman Centre.  Open air all season round.

This is the view of my humble balcony, my view from above – my refuge from the world. 

Every single night I begin to daydream and wander off into some strange world of thought.  I find myself suddenly standing in the midst of the wind herself, caught up in thought and watching a busy little world below.   Ironically enough, although it happens every night, it’s rather spontaneous.  I just find myself there.

I feel comfort.  I feel distant.  I feel warm and free.

As I lean on the dusty railing and let my weary head hang over the fragile world that lay beneath my feet, I gaze at all the busy people moving frantically like ants. 

Fascinating.  All of them with places to go, people to meet, trivial issues to worry about, conversations to carry…much like myself. 

Incredible.  You can almost see the way that there’s a little world surrounding each and every one of them.   

The young girl studying at her desk in her room.  The woman walking her dog.  The gentleman picking up his elegant date for dinner.  The man who drives while making an important phone call on his mobile….the young aspiring artist watching the world from his balcony.

It’s beautiful up here.  

I’m lost in thought.

Now and again the wind will pass by and start a conversation.  She carries so much, the wind.  Every night she has a different mood, while swaying and howling impulsively.  With her she brings the thoughts and whispers of other wanderers like myself.  We often talk for hours on end. 

Sometimes, she does all the talking.  I’d just listen.  Some nights, I’ll sway with her.  Close your eyes, you can do it to.  Just listen to her and then let loose.  Don’t think, just become fluid.  Wait to see where she might take you.

It’s beautiful up here.  I feel like I can soar.

The coals are almost hot enough.  I walk in briefly to get them from the stove.  As I step back out to put them on the sheesha head, they glow.  They glow and sizzle because they’re excited by the wind.  As I sit back, my attention drifts from the land below to the sea above.  The clouds above slowly sift and roll like the tide slowly creeping on the shore.  The moon smiles while the stars wink at me.  I take a deep breath as a smile stretches across my face.  Notice how the smoke is exhaled into the surrounding air in its own pattern… swirling, writhing, aching to break out before being caught by the wind. 

She weaves and spins once more before vanishing and moving on to meet other drifters.  To meet another land, another sea, other thoughts and other winds…much like I will.

Follow where the wind takes you.

 “The duty of art is to elevate us from the beast.”

-Anonymous

No.  This article has nothing to do with Austin Powers. 

No.  Mike Myers is not the one who coined the phrase.

Yes. Mojo does exist.

For millions of the world’s privileged, mojo springs only from one well – MUSIC.

Music gets my mojo workin.  And mojo is what gets my soul workin. 

Everybody has their own way of getting into the groove.  R&B, hip-hop, classic, whatever ‘floats your boat’.  But for me, mojo spells one word:

B-L-U-E-S

For those of you that know me well, you’ll know that every Thursday, I love to find my groove at a cozy lil’ blues/jazz bar, Bunkers.  Just sit back and watch how the people start to roll in, tired and overworked and in all sorts of moods at around nine o’clock.  I LOVE to observe the miraculous turn-around as people start to leave the world we live in and begin to break off into the world of the blues.  Beer glasses begin to cling in cheer, buttons are unbuttoned, ties come off and so do your worries.

 They become loose, they become fluid and they become music in motion. 

 Musicians at this place will randomly get up and just start playin.   The beauty of it is that these guys don’t practice at all with each other. 

They don’t plan a single note

They don’t plan what song to play next.

They don’t know which musician will bust out into the next solo. 

Everybody just gets up and grooves together.  Beautiful.  Next thing you know, the whole place is in the clouds. 

If I could only put into words the liberating tingle and shiver I get when hear the blues. 

Every single beat and note replaces each motion and breath that travels through my body.  Oxygen doesn’t get to the rest of my body through a heartbeat, it gets delivered through the rhythm and pumping of a bass line.  The little nerve impulses shooting across my brain and up my spine from all the sensations filling the room now shoot out following the lead of the improvised and electrifying notes the guitar screams out. 

That’s right.  In my world, a guitar does not “play” a note, its cries it out like the wailing soul dying for escape.  Harmonicas and saxophones aren’t blown into – musicians breathe through them.  Classic vocalists like B.B. King, Muddy Watters, and Buddy Guy don’t just sing, their shrilling voices send a shiver up my spine that can leave me shuddering for days.

I need the blues.  I live the blues.  No matter what kinda mood I’m in, my mojo gets workin.  It has never failed me, even when I expect it to.  It’s like magic, really.

The most fascinating observation through all this though, is that it doesn’t have to be the blues that gets you goin. 

Everyone out there…everyone truly living out there breaks free when they hear music.  It’s the only language that all our souls can speak.  It’s a phenomenon that science will never be able to explain and a state in which the laws of physics become null and void. 

Music, my dear friends, is the language of the floating world.

Live it.

Breathe it in.

Flow with it into the night.

Find your mojo or cease to exist.

“You gotta roll roll roll, you gotta thrill my soul, alright.
You gotta roll roll roll, you gotta thrill my soul, alright.
cuz the future’s uncertain and the end is always near.
Let it roll, baby roll,
let it roll, baby roll,
let it roll,
all night long!” 

- The Doors, Roadhouse Blues

Not in my world.

I don’t believe in planning. It is only for the real world. Once the sun scorches the sky and bleeds into a palette of crimson red and blazing orange, my spirit must break free.

I can’t plan.

I prefer to flow, letting my soul seep like water – always drawn towards the path of least resistance.

Planning. Arranging. Scheduling.

The mere mention of these words sends a cold shiver down my spine. To plan a night of enjoyable entertainment would be like tying myself to a ball and chain, where not even the wind can carry my soul to that comforting, care-free world distant of all my worries.

I do not plan to go to the beach next week. I do not pre-arrange trips to other cities. I only buy tickets to the movies before I walk in the cinema.

I cannot tell you what I expect to do next weekend.

I cannot tell you what I expect to do tonight.

I cannot tell you what I expect to do five minutes from now.

If I did, it would be blasphemy.

I escape at night so that I can loosen the noose, my friends, not tighten it.

You see, when I am in this world, I just go with what I feel. I ride my emotions like tsunami waves. I use all five senses to create a sixth sense – to float.

Sure planning does have its moments in life – buying a car, choosing your classes fall semester, marriage and raising a family. However, as Oscar Wilde so brilliantly put it “I try not to worry too much about the future; it tends to come soon enough”.

Spontaneity. Impulse. Instinct.

These are words I live by and breathe through. They are what add spice to my life. They revive me from this world’s trivial mundane routines and procedures that drain me from energy and creativity. Without them I cannot truly be.

Expect me to call you at 10 p.m. and ask you if you’d like to journey with me to Abu Dhabi.

Do not be taken aback when at 5 a.m. I go for a walk on the beach.

Do not be surprised when I decide to stay home and sleep to dream.

Wait for the days when I go dancing to the “musical oil paintings” of Café del Mar and The Doors until the rays of sunlight shatter the morning sky.

Friends, I am an overjoyed prisoner of this blissful world and when in its clutches, a slave to my heart and emotions.

Never will I regret this and never have you truly lived until you have experienced it.

“Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.”
- Agnes de Mille

I’m on a quest.

After months of sleepless nights, tossing and turning, and talking in my sleep, I’ve discovered that I’m on nothing more than a quest.

I used to blame my curse of insomnia on the distressing feeling that there’s something out there that’s missing in my life; that some psychological bomb submerged in my head was constantly ticking and waiting to go off.

The strangely obvious truth, however, is that the root of my restlessness was insanely evident all along – I’m on a quest.

I’m on a journey to discover “The Floating World”.

You may not quite know this world that I relentlessly yearn for. Yet oddly enough, you’ve been there. All of us drift to the floating world night after night, endlessly seeking its comforting marvels.

The Floating World is a world we all escape to when the sun dips past the horizon and the moon glows like a lantern in the sky. It’s a world where we are all free of the physical world, its responsibilities and the trivial concerns that gray our hair. In this surreal “place”, we leave behind all our problems, work and stress. It is where your soul can drift freely and mingle wherever the wind may carry it.

You don’t plan.

You don’t think.

You don’t worry.

You just…flow. You flow wherever the crying wind may lead you.

Every night, we all escape to this world in one way or another. We have to. Some drift further than others. Some take longer to get there than others. Yet when that sun comes down, we all yearn for it. We thirst for the quenching feeling of unadulterated relaxation and peace of mind – we gasp for oxygen.

You may think I’m crazy.

You may be one of the people who don’t believe in its existence. That’s fine. But I want you to go out tonight. I want you to wander out into the streets, the coffee shops, the bars or even the beaches and do nothing more than…observe. Watch as the people slowly seep in from work or school or wherever they maybe coming from. I want you to watch them loosen their ties and their characters as they mingle, laugh, drink and smoke.

You can feel it. You can see it as the sheesha smoke coils and weaves to break free and tail the wind. You can hear it in the laughter and the way the wind howls as it changes direction. You can almost taste it as wine glasses cling in cheer and celebration. You can watch it all happen from your balconies or feel it through your music…and before you know it, suddenly you’re drifting too.

It exists. It exists in that barely tangible place between dreams and reality, where all the drawn lines are blurry.

Every night when the dusk creeps in upon the land and the mad world we live in, I cannot rest until I go out into this world. I will not sleep until I’ve had a chilling cup of coffee or have liberated myself with the bubbling of sheesha pipes and the course of the wind. I won’t rest at ease until I step out onto my balcony and observe the world from above, letting my thoughts drift out with the open air.

I seek it.

I long for it.

And I must capture it before the sun again rises, and robs us of our freedom.

That, my dear friends, is what I am on a quest for. That is what I yearn for. I yearn to capture it and its beauty. That is why I am sleepless. I seek to seize it, indulge in it, before it dissolves and surrenders itself to the sun and the burning morning light.

I am an artist of the floating world, and I am compelled to bring this world to you.

Join me.

“The best things are put together of a night and vanish with the morning, what people call ‘the floating world’…the finest, most fragile beauty an artist can hope to capture drifts within this world after dark…” -Kazuo Ishiguro, An Artist of the Floating World