Your name : Yahia Lababidi (1973), Aphorist, Poet, Essayist
Place of birth : Cairo, Egypt
Residence : Washington, D.C.
Artist’s statement -
Looking to use words, to lose words. To harness the spirit that swims through them. To get words to echo our silences. Interested in art that triggers an ecstatic moment, and the role of the artist as secular mystic.
MV – Favourite book(s) & author(s) -
Nietzsche, Rilke, Kafka, Dostoevsky, Wilde. The ones who did me in as a late teen and from whom I’m still recovering. Among the living, John Banville. Recently, as a juror for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, I nominated Banville as a modern master and heir to the greats. He didn’t win, and came in as a close second, but I do hope he goes on to bag The Nobel…. On the strength of three of his novels alone – The Untouchable, The Book of Evidence, and The Eclipse – he’s peerless. Poet, philosopher, and psychologist rolled into one, and posing as a novelist.
I’m frothing at the mouth, I realize; here he is speaking for himself on what good art can do: “It takes a pebble in the road, or a human being, and it concentrates on them until they begin to glow. I think the concept and the notion of blushing is very important in art, and in my kind of art. You know, the artist concentrates on the detail of the object until it blushes in the way the love object blushes when a lover gazes at it with that particular intense gaze. That is what art should do. It should make the world blush and give up its secrets.”
MV – Your most aesthetically (sensual/ spiritual/ intellectual) inspired experience -
I owe my most transformative experiences to words, and am most intensely in the presence of Beauty in their company. Which is to say I cannot extol enough the pleasures of the text and its spiritual edification. To quote Sontag, a heroine of mine and another apostle of literature, “[Reading is] that disembodied rapture… trance-like enough to make us ‘feel’ egoless.” Writing is merely an extension of this beloved pastime. To continue with Sontag: “to write is to practice, with particular intensity and attentiveness, the art of reading.”
MV – Artist/character (in any field) with whom you identify the most -
The contradictory ones, philosopher-clowns, seekers that are half mad and tormented by an Ideal…
CAIRO by Yahia Lababidi, read by Tim Pieraccini
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MV – Most inspiring city -
I fantasize about that open air museum, Florence, but I’ve never been. Such timeless Beauty was forged there that I imagine it must linger in the air… Paris is up there for more or less the same reasons, and I’ve been, but lifetimes ago. Most recently, I was smitten by Prague, a dark jewel of a city with real vitality. The mix of old world and the new really captured my imagination, along with that whiff of danger…
MV – Most challenging aspect of working in the entertainment/ art world (& its institutions) -
Paying the rent? Man cannot live by poetry alone… I do not teach, as many writers do, and am still learning how to strike a balance between the demands of the inner world and the outer. Another quote, this time from Kafka’s journals: “This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.”
MV – Most gratifying aspect of being a part of the entertainment/ art world (& its institutions) -
Being an artist is a bit like being a street prophet. A figure of fun, or someone spewing crazy wisdom. Ultimately, I think it an honour to belong to this (mostly invisible) tribe of outcasts.
It’s like running away to join the circus, or living as a gypsy. You make your own rules really.
As Blake put it, you must create your own system, or be enslaved by another man’s. And, there are perks to this radical (and sometimes overwhelming) freedom. One of them is that instant recognition, or connection, when you meet one of your own tribe: the wink, the nudge, the special handshake. I’ve been fortunate to collaborate with kindred spirits this past year; for example, with artist John Tillson, on the illustrations in Fever Dreams, my new poetry book. Also, with composer and video artist, Swoon, whose made several short films based on my poems that have been shown in many films festivals just this year, throughout Spain, Croatia, Mexico, Vancouver and the US. [ You can see these collaborations here]
Lastly, as an act of solidarity with Egypt and her birthpangs, I’ve been asked to read poems of mine as part of a musical play (to be performed in DC) celebrating our rich cultural diversity. In addition to our historical inheritance, the performance will weave together Sufi chants, Coptic hymns, and Nubian song. So that aspect of being an artist is rewarding too, as well as being invited to participate in festivals and creative events.
MV – Always carry with you … -
Tao Te Ching. That would be my desert island book. An inexhaustible (pre-religious) source of lived wisdom, rich in fruitful contradictions or paradox. I’ll end with a quote I keep returning to:
If you want to become full,
Let yourself be empty.
If you want to be reborn,
Let yourself die.
If you want to be given everything
give everything up.
