MahmoudYakut

I am sitting here, waiting for my last stop… watching my memories accelerating before my eyes, like watching the world from a moving train… trees…  cities and crowds… mountains and meadows…. ruins and barren lands. They all keep coming one after another…. nothing seems in common between any of them except the beholder, I am the only thing connecting all these odds together…. As if all this time I was a spectator to my own life, I was sitting in that corner all the time watching… just like watching the world from a train…. And after all, I think I've enjoyed watching… this is what I was made for…

..........................








..........................

you feel like you're falling
through the cracks in the world
www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_PRRh…

This Journal Skin was designed by Night-Beast

I have always been haunted by this illusion that everything we dream of in our life, even if it never came true, it stays there forever at that moment in time when we have dreamed, trapped in the time continuum in some kind of ethereal world or dimension, we just leave it behind us and go forward on our way. I imagine it as a beam of light breaking the darkness of a long corridor, then you look at the corridor from the other side and see so many dust particles shining and floating within this beam like they are trapped inside... the corridor is life, the beam is our way in life and the dust particles are the dreams we leave behind... they mark the tracks where we have walked…..

I cannot imagine that dreams are just brain chemistry, just biological data stored in our brains on some complex protein molecule, they just lie there inside this brain cell, and vanish the moment this cell dies….. dreams, these mysterious and beautiful entities that feel for a while like a living creature within our souls, they cannot be such a plain material fact, we ourselves we cannot be just a group of cells that live a biological cycle according to a predetermined genetic material, then just “go”….. Life cannot be so meaningless and aimless, just a transient existence of a biological entity in the time-space continuum that just come to an end regardless of what took place, regardless of what this person did in his/her lifetime… if it was like that, then there is no point from anything we do except temporary enjoyment…. Life then would be so ugly and unbearable….

There must be a meaning for everything that happen to us and everything we do…. The universe around us speak for itself with its spectacular equilibrium and engineering, our existence can’t be as well a random coincidence…

Dreams must be there waiting for us, forever….. We live them again and again in our life time when we day dream, then we die, and carry with us all our thoughts, emotions and memories… all the dreams, all the moments of joy and all the sad ones… all our choices that marked our way in life….. All these things displayed like a motion picture along that part of the time-space continuum that we were in….. Just staying there as single consecutive frames, for eternity… marking the sparkle of our existence in the grand life of this universe…. And dreams mark the most ethereal part of this motion picture and the closest to our hearts and deepest within our souls, they embrace our hopes and flourish with our joyful moments…. They are a part of who we are… they are the dust that fall off our souls along the way…. Like the cosmic dust, that gives birth to galaxies and stars… and keep glowing like it will never end…..
Here are some wonderful art pieces that bring this illusion back to me.

:thumb62582604:
:thumb158876155:
:thumb103446990:
:thumb119744169::thumb146128049::thumb118808601:






I will share with you one of my songs that suit this mood in a away, a part of its lyrics is also inspired by this illusion of mine, so here you are www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyVCjc…

i really never expected to get another one so soon, specially that i have not been so active lately....so thanks DA and many thanks to for suggesting it..... one more thing, its really a great feeling to see your work hanging in this little strip down the page and get all these comments and favs, i wish i get a DD every day



#4




#3




#2




#1

This Journal Skin was designed by Night-Beast

Things-Not-Seen l Facebook l Gallery l dA Portfolio l Watch Me l Note Me l Journal Skins: How-To

Friday 28/01/2011, my home in Alexandria, I looked from my balcony to see a crowd of people, less than a kilometer away, they kept marching closer and growing bigger, I started to hear their voice from a distance… as they came closer I started to hear what they were saying…. they were calling for freedom…. Their voice started to be so loud, like nothing I ever heard, it echoed deep inside me, really deep….. It awakened a part of me that I never knew, or maybe I have forgotten about, some feeling that I have never experienced before…. I felt my heart beating strong… their voice was like a call for my soul….I felt something inside me that wanted to jump directly into the crowed and melt with them…… my mum begged me to stay, I told her that I have to go, I have no choice…… she said, ok, but don’t take your cam, I told her I will hide it well, I kissed her, grabbed my bag and rushed down the stairs, not knowing where am I going…. Not knowing what might happen…..

Mid-August 1987, sweet long summer days, playful moods, unlimited trust in the world..... My dad said we are going to the beach…. on our way, it was so crowded, there were so many policemen and soldiers lined on the road…. Things were messy… my dad cursed “the hell with this man” ….. I looked around to see which man he means, but found no one to suspect…. I asked him, what are all these policemen, he answered “the president will pass” …. I thought “wow, what an important event”   and thought how great it would be to be able to see him…. I stood on my knees on the front seat beside my dad, looking right and left to the infinite lines of soldiers on the sides of the road, and the crowed behind them…..  Some waved to us to hurry, before they close the road…..  Many hours passed, the day was near to end, we were on our way back…..the soldiers were still there in their places, but this time they were standing hand in hand, so that no one can pass…. I asked my dad why are they still here, he said they are still waiting for the president….. I paused for a moment and said “why don’t Mr. president just say when will he pass exactly?” he said “because he is the president!” ……..

September 1988, after settling once again in Egypt, as I have spent a deal of my early childhood abroad due to my parents work, joining the Egyptian education was a traumatic experience for me as a child, despite being admitted to a private school, all I can remember are flash backs of a dull humid crowded classroom, 60 students or so, loud noises, two students fighting and me shrinking in my fraying desk…. wishing this was just a bad dream….. few years passed, the flash backs I get are of a small sandy and ugly playground, students running everywhere, chasing each other randomly with no certain goal except letting the energy inside them come out…… I remember a small dull music room in the basement with few crappy instruments that are barely used and barely work, this old piano and that old man who taught my class one year…. He always seemed so sad, I felt so much pity for him, I don’t recall him ever smiling or saying much, or ever seeing his beard shaved, he always had this shabby look, but he did his job from the heart, he believed in what he was doing…. I could see in his eyes a kind person and an artist…. With lots of misfortune….. he taught us an old song about Egypt, a very sweet one, I can still sing it till this day, I can still remember the warm sound of his piano playing harmonizing with the choir of us the children…. The echoes can still ring in my ears…. Although it was just one music lesson a week, just 45 minutes, I always waited for it, and it got better every time when we started to learn the song well….. but…. Before the year ended, they told us the man is very sick and he is not coming back soon, I guess he died later…… and I never went to the music room again………

A life time of frustration and disappointment, no place for dreams to become true….. you are not what you can do, you won’t be what you ought to be or deserve, but you just get what is available for you to get, you don’t decide but rather you get crushed by the system….. no matter what potentials you have it won’t make a difference, no one would care for it, and even those who care cannot do much, and even if they try to do they won’t find the enough or proper tools and if they found they will find a thousand obstacles…..

Generations that were not taught how to enjoy life, how to see the beauty of the world around and appreciate it, a nation degraded from morality and self-respect. Most people struggled desperately for their primary needs, food and shelter, living under constant stress… how can these people be expected to find other meanings in life and other reasons for living than their own survival… time by time art and all sorts of things that address our human soul receded from people’s minds as they receded from schools and every other aspect of life…. Life was so dull and colorless like those ugly dull buildings condensed in the streets of Cairo, covered by layers of smog, the same buildings that they live in…. Innocence was lost…. And for many who tried to find a meaning for their lives, since they had no hope for this life, they had no way but to hope for the other one …. It is living to die… and religion was the only exile… that’s why extremism found its way among these hopeless crowds.

But, despite how I hated the situation and how I hated even stepping out of my home and felt alienated in this society, I never blamed the people, never…. People are all the same everywhere, same souls, same dreams, same needs for a good life, hope, a future for their children….. But when you deal with people as if they are not human beings, they simply lose their humanity…

I was one of the many Egyptian young people who lost hope and stopped believing that dreams can come true, I was one of those people who did not care, I even stopped watching T.V or reading newspapers, on the 28th of January I saw a protest passing under my home and heard the thundering voices of the protesters calling for freedom, it awakened something inside me, something that I have lost a long time ago….. Since that day, the day that I saw my people smiling to each other for the first time in my life (I mean it literally), the day when I felt that I belong to this land, the first time I feel that I am one of them… when we all felt that we owned the streets…. I rediscovered my country and my people and for the first time of my life I was proud to be an Egyptian, for the first time in my life I felt free and knew how wonderful this feeling is.

Egyptian people have amazed me like they have amazed the world, seeing their coherence and sympathy in these protests that went non stopping for 18 days, earning their freedom and breaking the iron fist of this regime peacefully, maintaining their stability for 18 days without any police, any supervision or any authority, a condition that can literally mean absolute chaos, but on the contrary, the society strengthened its binding forces…. And we won the battle! All this happened despite all the harsh conditions that people have been living through the last decades… I have no explanation for this except our legacy and cultural heritage, this civilized behavior that have been passed over from one generation to another and showed itself all of a sudden….. This image of Egypt, the dawn of human civilization that we all carry in our hearts despite the bitter present that we live in, yet we deal with this present like a nightmare that will soon be over and we get back the real Egypt, the Egypt that we have always loved and felt proud of, the one that me myself have always felt to belong to…. this legacy is the torch that lit those dark times…..



CSS made by TwiggyTeeluck
Brushes by gvalkyrie

Things-Not-Seen l Facebook l Gallery l dA Portfolio l Watch Me l Note Me l Journal Skins: How-To

As most of you know, Egypt have gone through a lot of dramatic events recently, which have had a great impact on me and many other Egyptians... the impact I am talking about has nothing to do with economy or politics, its rather a great emotional and ideological impact.... I promised you in my last journal to share my experiences of living in Egypt before and during the revolution, and I am still working on it.... I am just trying to make a collective glance over my whole lifetime experience of living in Egypt and present it to you as one big picture... thats why its taking time, anyway, as an artist going through this turmoil of different and sometimes contradicting emotions, my head is full of ideas and inspirations.... I thought for now I can share with you a little thing I did recently... it's a song I did some years ago actually, but somehow I found the lyrics fitting perfectly with what my people have gone through, so... I made a little slideshow together with the lyrics of the song using some of my own photos and few other photos from here and there... www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb-fSt… .....I felt like I have to dedicate this song for the Egyptian people and the future we are trying to build.... I hope you like it







CSS made by TwiggyTeeluck
Brushes by gvalkyrie