Image from Central Station, linked below

This came to my attention recently, through my twitter timeline – and I utterly fail to recollect who it was, else they’d get deserving mention. Utterly superb. Paper sculptures, intricately hewed out of books. And left annonymously at libraries, bookshops, etc, in Edinburgh. With personalised notes indicating appreciation for the work these institutions were doing. E.g. “A gift in support of libraries, books, words, ideas….. (& against their exit)”

No nom de guerre, no subterfuge. Just two XXs indicating hugs.

This harkens to a bygone era, where flair and discretion could make comfortable bedfellows, and cheap publicity was not the norm. Of course, as I say this, 2012 might just be the year the paper sculptor reveals herself and starts marketing her wares. And perhaps such talent does deserve some recognition and monetary compense. But I wouldn’t like it. Her work would lose its mysterious elegance, and aura of Valentine blooms delivered out of season, unexpectedly.

Read the rest here.

There’s also a Guardian article about it, from March 3rd 2011.

Now isn’t that just magnificent?

So Dubai, you think you’ve got New Year‘s nailed eh? The parties, the booze? Abu Dhabi, you’ve got Coldplay. Well, I see you both, and raise you: giant sculptures of Hell Boy and the Hulk in Eucador.

There, they construct large combustible sculptures of everyone’s favourites – from smurfs and the Cat Lair, to a large green Hulk. And then set them aflame and welcome in the turning of time.

Check them out here, as first tweeted by the awesome @Moonbootica. Always awesome to see how people everywhere celebrate the approach of a new set of 575,600 minutes in ways beautiful and quirky.

Tsk tsk tsk. Over a month without an update. Terrible of me, really. But there’s sometimes a distinction to be made between writing and doing – and the past month has been all about the Doing. First there was the Abu Dhabi Film Festival – which I covered for GN (over at hishamwyne.com). Then worked with the awesome gals at Art in the City for Abu Dhabi Art. From there, rolled right into DIPAF – the Dubai International Performing Arts Festival where I did my first stand up comedy gig and poetry in Urdu the next day. All this merits a blog post of its own – and this will happen. I just need to start stealing pictures from miscellaneous FB profiles for that one. But in the meantime, here’s an article I wrote on the arts scene in Barsha. 

Let’s assume for a second that you’re homing in on Barsha on the back of a giant bird. From afar, you see a cross-section of living and shopping spaces, with apartments and villas rubbing corners with little shops, restaurants, and hypermarkets. The Mall of the Emirates, with its protruding ski slope, slides into view as retail lynchpin.

Hover a bit closer and you realize Barsha is a community humming and bustling in its own right. People mill around, cars honk and there are the inevitable traffic jams. From your perch in the sky, you linger over busy street corners. Just a few turns away, villas sit slouching in the very epitome of languor.

As a strictly amateur thespian, comedian, and general noisemaker, I find the arts scene in Barsha figuring ever more prominently within my schedule. And that’s largely due to two enterprises: DUCTAC and the Jam Jar.

Nestled in the Mall of the Emirates, the DUCTAC theatre is home to an artsy generality of people of all ages – some as tiny as kneecap-biting five or six. It offers lessons in music, comedy, tap dance, improv, writing and Arabic, and there is theatre space for all manner of performances. From little girls dressed in pink tutus to people carrying a menacing array of props and scripts, DUCTAC is home for everyone with even a fibre of interest in the arts. Within DUCTAC operate the indomitable duo of Ali Al Sayed and Mina Liccione, the founders of Dubomedy. Mina is an ex-Broadway tap queen and comedienne, and Ali a world-class purveyor of comedy in his own right. I’m currently dabbling in stand-up comedy classes with them, and thoroughly enjoying the bonhomie and camaraderie.

Then, if you were to gain some altitude, and look across to the other side of the Umm Suqeim road dividing Barsha from Al Quoz, you would see the Jam Jar hidden between rows of identical warehouses. Technically, it’s on the wrong side of the street to be considered Barsha. But its influence and proximity means it deserves honorary mention.

One of the true pioneers of Dubai’s homegrown arts scene, it caters to a wide variety of events- musical performances, theatre, and arts exhibitions. It’s a communal space that’s easily accessible, and the all-girl team is genuinely enthusiastic about arts and culture. The Jam Jar, in some manner or other, has been involved with many of the seminal arts and culture events in Dubai and even Abu Dhabi. I have memories of several happy evenings and afternoons there.

Between the Jam Jar and DUCTAC, Barsha’s denizens can rest assured there will always be artsy endeavors to soothe the soul.

Image via Wikipedia

It’s 3 in the morning. I’m relaxing. The week has been tough, what with traipsing up and down to the Abu Dhabi Film Festival. Rewarding, but tough. I’m listening to music. And not classy music.

In point of fact, I’ve decided tonight is when I take a break from my standard jazz, blues and indie fare and sink into the world of autotuned fake Rnb. ‘Mr. Saxobeat’ has been played, as has ‘Put it down on me.’ A couple of detestable 50 cent songs have also been Youtubed. It’s just that kind of night. Not only have I typed incessantly the past week, I’ve also just finished Jason Webster‘s !Guerra, one of the better books I’ve read in 2011. Some mind numbing isn’t going amiss.

Except I can’t. I can’t take it. And I don’t know quite what’s wrong. Apart from the shit lyrics and the utter vacuousness, that is. Then it hits me. I miss the messiness. Of a plectrum singeing worn guitar strings on its way down. The inevitable plunk plunk that announces hand (and plectern) hitting string, announcing a certain honesty. I miss the beauty of the missed note in a live performance. The imperfection. The wabi sabi ethos. I miss the sax, the clarinet, the wind instruments so liable to be overblown to the point their pitch varies. I miss their complexity, their character.

Forget genre for a second. What modern music has done is taken notes, processed them using large iMacs with the latest I7 processors, and assembled them for optimum hearing. Singers’ voices have been purloined, cheese grated and reassembled into perfect robotic utopian tone. Never again will you hear the dying rasps of a diseased Johnny Cash trying to wring the last breath from his napalmed lungs to tell you about the American dream. Or any dream. No, it’s just perfect mollecules of !ucking perfect !ucking sound. And their perfection bleeds away all character till its muzak not music. Music is spontaneity, and joy. Muzak is just a formula. So go to hell Gaga Bieber Black whathaveyou.

And that’s my problem with mixologists too. You’re going to deconstruct my G&T till it melds at molecular level? You’re going to freeze that little ball of cucumber essence in liquid nitrogen so it dissolves perfectly? Well, go have intercourse with a rabid baboon, Mr. mixologist.

See, I like my music imperfect, and I definitely like my drinks asymmetrical. In want my G&T to taste differently depending on which side of the glass I’m drinking. My whisky and lemon bitters is on a gradient of tangy, smooth and pungent depending on how I drink, what the base was, and how I’m sipping. Don’t give me your formulas. We’ve got actuarial tables for that. But no one goes to a goddammned jazz club to practice actuarial tables. Just Sayin’.

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Yup. Cirque del Soleil. That magical, gravity defying show of wonderous proportions glitz and glamour. I’ve been fortunate to catch it in action on more than one occasion. The images embossed on the rear of my retinas have proved indelible.

But now, say hello to Cirque du Souq. The marvelous folk at The Fridge – no, not the London nightclub but  your friendly neighborhood art gallery in Al Quoz near the Grand City Mall – are coming up with their own interpretation. The same high flying, but more community. Cosier, indier. More accessible pricing too, I believe.

I’ve nicked a couple of pictures from their website – visit to read more about what’s going on.

Apparently, the shows are almost sold out. Good on you, The Fridge. They’ve taken their warehouse space and turned it into just about everything one can think of – a musical stage, a bar, a marketing platform, a broadway theatre, Dr. Who’s Tardis (okay, some exaggeration here…).

If you’re so inclined, some of the Fridge crew are around on Twitter. They’re good people, well worth a follow.

Mike Priest – mild mannered, inveterate gentleman, and artist/musician. Seems to have made niceness a career. @MikePriest

Melisa Le Rue – professional musician and pocket sized bundle of fun. @Melisa_le_rue

And see if you can beg, borrow, steal etc, a ticket for the show. If you can’t, try sneaking in any way. What are the chances of being thrown out? Mike Priest is too nice a man.

It was the oldest market in Dubai. Near the Shindagah tunnel area. It’s now been closed down to make space for Carrefour’s expansion.

Emirates Biz 24/7 carried the news – glad to see them inadvertently contribute to the cause of serious journalism.

These traders expected Dubai Municipality to provide them alternative space in the city. However, Dubai Municipality has not announced any plans to relocate them.

“About 1,400 people work here. Most of the employees are uncertain about their future and the municipality has not yet announced plans for a new market.  The closed vegetable market had 30 stalls and 20 kiosks, the fish market had 28 stalls and the meat market had 27 stalls,” one trader said.

According to Municipality official sources, traders were given enough notice and their licences have not been renewed.

So well done, Dubai Municipality, for placing commercial interest over heritage. It’s markets such as these, though not very accessible for tourists, etc, that hold together the fabric of inner city life. Really, must everything go the way of the super-mall – those gigantic totems to consumption that are rapidly becoming untenable?

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Portobello road, Portobello road
Street where the riches of ages are stowed.
Anything and everything a chap can unload
Is sold off the barrow in Portobello road.
You’ll find what you want in the Portobello road.

Don’t take my word for it. Check out the song in its entirety here. Aah, nostalgia.

Early Saturday morning, I drove my groaning way to the Zabeel park, where the erstwhile forces for good, @Flea4Charity and @Voice4Charity were setting up flea market stalls. They’d found donations from all over the emirates, had vetted them, sorted them, and were prepping to sell them. Proceeds would go to charitable causes – in particular the Somalian famine.

Zabeel park is huge. One doesn’t really quite understand how large it is until one parks at the wrong gate and proceeds to walk it. Two gates in the same area seem a good half kilometre apart. On my way to the Stargate area, I came across these lovely people doing early morning calisthenics. Quite enthusiastically, I might add.

Stargate is an atrium like enclosure catering to the gaming and entertainment needs of little and not so little tykes and tykettes. But today was Flea Market day, which meant that much of the space available (and believe you me, there’s a lot of space available) was allocated to stands selling anything and everything.

Flea for Charity, under the watchful eye of the industrious Sajid Ismail, and a girl named Jihad (cue Ride of the Valkyries here), had bagged the first couple of tables from the entrance. Voice for Charity was a few metres down, run by an ex-PR type girl called Dina, aided  by the volunteer Diya Khaleel.

That's Jihad!

When i first showed up, it all seemed a bit empty-echoey and sombre. People were registering and trickling in. But soon enough, the halls were alive with the sound of music – or at least the percussion of heavy boxes being lifted, rolled and dropped.

Roll out!

Piling em high

Working with Voice4Charity, regular charity hound Diya Khalil (@DiyaKhalil) had found himself in the enviable situation of being the only male volunteer in a stall full of women. The self-satisfaction lasted to the exact point he saw a large truck full of supplies pitch up…

Unloading and lugging

Nevertheless, we all pitched in and stuff got done. Come 10 am, and the floodgates were thrown wide.

Throngs of people…thronging. There was hustling, there was bustling, there was elbowing and limbs in all directions. Leopard print bras rubbed shoulders with excellent books; half filled bottles of expensive perfumes nestled up to sandwich makers. Wall art was obscured behind piles of clothing. There were shades, lamps, pens – anything conceivably possible, in the oddest juxtaposition. And there were bargains to be had.

One of the advantages of being a volunteer was that I managed a round of the market before the gates were thrown open to the masses. Picked up a decent hall of paintings, books and the odd toy. Then, as the clock hit opening time, age and nationality was no bar to the avalanche that descended down the Stargate atrium to partake.

I was nonchalantly elbowed out of the way by a large Egyptian woman trumpeting her way through the stalls yelling “Go Tahrir” and “Down with Mubarak,” little realizing she was in the wrong throng of people. I sympathized despite bruised ribcage – after all, used china is just as important a cause as deposing a depot. Eh eh?

There were stalls towards the end in full cry, with vendors yelling out their wares. Not everything at the flea market was used, mind you. At least a couple of stands had purchased wares specifically for the purposes of selling them on.

The Flea Market at Star Gate deserves to be a Dubai institution. There are very few places where you’ll see such a rampaging crowd where abayas mix in with crotch-hugging shorts and kanduras with tank tops, all purchasing wares ranging from dish rags to used golf clubs.

The rather busy Flea4Charity stall, ft. Sajid Ismail and Hamna (somewhere). 

Yeah, the Zabeel Park turns into Dubai’s very own Portobello Road some Saturdays.  All together now:

Tokens and treasures, yesterday’s pleasures
Cheap imitations of heirlooms of old
Dented and tarnished, scarred and unvarnished
In old Portobello they’re bought and they’re sold

Portobello Road, Portobello Road
Street where the riches of ages are stowed
Artifacts to glorify our regal abode
Are hidden in the flotsam in Portobello road.
You’ll find what you want in the Portobello Road

The next Flea Market is on the 17th of September 2011. Gate 4, Zabeel Park Area A. I’ll see you there – once I’ve bagged the good stuff.

More seriously, it occasioned such that I was forced to drive into old Dubai for a photoshoot of sorts. A half hour drive saw me in the vicinity of the old Dubai Museum, near the Arabian Courtyard hotel, and the Bastakiya heritage area.

The place was busy, and most of the Asians in the area had their pristine Eid whites on.From there, t’was a bit of a walk to the aabra station next to the Bank of Baroda, through the Textile Souk. Through nooks and crannies with spaces for crooks and nannies. Er….anyway.

And the closer I got to the water’s edge, the more hordes upon hordes I encountered. This area of town is usually busy, but Eid had lent a special quality of hustle and bustle to proceedings.

The Textile Souk Bur Duabi station is one if the main aabra drop-off points this side of the creek. Those wooden little boats ferry people from the far Deira side to here. The Deira bank of the creek I’m quite familiar with, due to several late night walks there back in the day. The Radisson Blu sits squatly there, with a decent bar called up On on the 10th which offers offers nice vistas of creek life.

The textile souk is not organic – it didn’t grow out of necessity. It was designed  for a specific purpose. All the shops look homogenous, standardized. It’s built for the consumption of tourists as well as people who live in the area. It was funnily incongruous to see white arms and legs occasionally stick out of a sea of brown faces. Those white arms and legs would look around curiously before attaching themselves to shops selling cheap knick knacks at inflated prices.

But boy o boy, did I mention it was busy? As in thronging busy? As in swimming against a tsunami of people? As in Dubai Mall giving away free chocolate, sex and rock and roll busy?

The water was tranquil though. It always is, somehow. The creek makes me happy. And I managed a random opportunistic shot of these lads loitering by the water, chilling with their mates. That made me happy too.

For all its seeming haphazard, full to the brim with random life, teeming with unplanned motion, joie de verve, Dubai authorities have taken a few security precautions. They’ve realized it’s nigh on impossible to get a four wheeled vehicle into these little culverts and cul de sacs. So, they have these, complete with first aid kits, etc. Yup, two-wheeled ambulances. The paramedics were taking shelter in doorways and relaxing on steps. Observing, chatting. Just being.

And we got down to business. A few pictures were taken of me leaning suspiciously casually against various objects that the photographer liked. But this still, taken with my little consumer camera, is my absolute favourite. And it’s quite easy to see why

For he was looking back to see

If I was looking back to see

If he was looking back at me. 

Muchos fun and laughter and hilarity ensued.

Eid down in old town, in the souqs by the creek. It can be frustrating, and there’s really very little chance of finding any sort of parking. But fun in its own way. Like everywhere else in Dubai, everything’s for sale in old town. Including morals. But at least they admit it.

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It’s been mostly fun and awesome. Occasionally it’s been frustrating as all heck. Through it all, I’ve reached some conclusions on the copywriting hustle in Dubai and Abu Dhabi:

a) You can’t hope to rely on journalism and columns alone to survive. Payments are sporadic, and hardly stellar enough to set fire to the third bar. There’s a newspaper that shall stay unnamed that takes a few months to process payments, and then insists on MAILING one a cheque. Can’t believe I’d ever have the chance to honestly tell someone that the cheque is in the mail. Thank you.

If you’re going to be a writer, it’s best to combine corporate work  - where you take on different areas of speciality – be it ad work, PR stints, annual report grinds or brochures. Flexibility is always appreciated by clients, and comes in handy when diversifying revenue streams.

b) Timing is everything: Freelancers have a bit of a bad rep in the market-and i blame those paragons of purported creativity, those craftsmen of curved lines, those gods of graphics, those lords of logos. Yes, those graphic designers. They take on briefs and disappear to the Bahamas.

Clients like to know you’re around and willing to do what must be done. Yes, they will sit on your hard graft for weeks before reverting or following up: because your agency contact is usually in a tear-away hurry, and emails in twenty a day exhorting results, just to appease a boss or a boss’s boss.

Deliver on the day you’ve said. If you can’t, send an email. Above all, keep the client informed of your movements. They feel in control when they know you’re in the area. Sometimes, you can drop into their offices to putter and check facebook. The contended sighs are a joy to behold.

Know your regulars: Hook up with a couple of agencies that offer regular, repeat work, and keep them happy. Once that stream of work is guaranteed, you can look around for offbeat projects and quirky requests. It’s a true truism – far easier to keep existing clients happy than to trawl for new ones.

Payment: The bane of a freelancer’s life. Companies don’t pay on time. Some don’t pay at all! At what point does one hit the nuclear option of withdrawing from a project, threatening legal action, or writing off what is owed?

I still haven’t found that sweet spot. Regular clients obviously get cut a lot of slack – I need them as much as they need me. It can be quite ridiculous when one’s workload regularity is akin to regular payroll staff, but our status as outsiders relegates us to being ‘suppliers,’ which means we get paid about the same time as the Queen of Shiba declares bankruptcy (read: never, or not this lifetime).

With the off-projects, I’m not nearly as kind – a brand new relationship should be exemplified by trust-enhancing gestures. Paying on time is a definitely a trust-enhancing gesture in my book. If I’m being jerked around from the word go, there’s a chance this relationship is not going to end well. It’s not me, it’s definitely you.

More later…particularly on project and time creep, pro bono work, etc.