Voices in crowded urban terrains, the sonic shock of fighter jets. Some music can evoke ideas of the life it is made in – and create relationships. Read an essay by Majd Shidiac inspired by both listening to his city and the sounds of Maya Al Khaldi, Saint Abdullah, and Liliane Chlela (each performing at Rewire Festival, The Hague, 2024). The text is accompanied by a playlist.

In a city rummaged seven times over, daily life becomes an eroding timelapse in anticipation of the eighth. Any search for continuity, then, is rendered futile. But, nonetheless, possible.

The wake of morning (Maya Al Khaldi - ب​ق​ل​م «By Numbers»). A suspended moment for a soon-to-be-busy shopping district. Once one of the revered merchant routes connected all the way to the city center. Now, gentrified, but still keeping its cobblestones.

The wake of morning. Storefront metal gates are cranked upwards, a form of daily morning prayers to the god of abundance. «We rise, and the rising is for god», some of the (older) shop owners whisper in their hearts. Teenage store-clerks unbox and dust off crinkly bags of chips. Plastic crates are dragged from the serenity of indoor tiling to their exhibition on seething asphalt.

«(May God) grant you wellness», «expel my worries about you», «may your goodness proliferate». All idioms we grew up on repeated, mindlessly; pleasantries, sometimes pleasantness, but mostly pleasantries. Double honks followed by «where to?». Followed by «no, thanks».

The insides of taxi cabs are synthetic societal pockets (Maya Al Khaldi - «Other World»). Melhem Barakat,1 the smell of cheap espresso and freshly killed cigarettes. The regurgitating cycle of the afternoon news; distorted crackling of the FM waves in confluence with the somber, sharply articulated narrative of horror on the border and stagnation on the inside. «I used to change both filters for 10 dollars; now it’s a used one for 25? I just picked up a passenger from the (refugee) camp, just now before you came in, drove all the way here – and you know what he tells me?» It’s always something ironic.

There is no silence to highways. Not during rush hours, when those in the city want out, and those out come back. Not on evenings when the dwellers are speed-thrilling into the night, exhausts blasting self-proclamation «I am heeeeRRRREEE…rrreeee….eee» followed by the bystander affirmation of car alarms sounding off «You are here! They are HERE! You are there! There! There! Where? Right here! You ARE here!»

The city is a needle-thread of what or who is «happening» and what or who is observing. It’s not clear-cut. It is as easy for the happening to engulf the observer as it is for the observer to become «the happening».

You pay attention, and every passing car sounds the same. You’re taken aback by the slowing of time, almost to a halt (Saint Abdullah - «Blurring Of Management Theory»). Only moments ago, time was so fast you hadn’t noticed that you watched your father age. Or that you almost forgot the robotic sequence that sounded when you «fired off» the internet. Or the ticking of the rotary dial that brought you satisfaction as a child. Or that you’ve heard one too many bombs.

The city is loud again. Sirens and honks as a backdrop of an erratic soundscape. Chatter, chatter, chatter (Saint Abdullah & Eomac - «In One Corner the Male Relatives») – pedestrians trying to make sense of blurred phone conversations. A colloquial cacophony. Motorbikes whizz in a hurry, always in a hurry, a dwindling solo, loud cooling systems on the rhythm section (Saint Abdullah & Eomac - «Frequently Fugitive»). Everyone seems to be agitated – especially the steel box drivers. Busy, busy beggars, catcalling the brick walls to get their voices back.

It’s almost impossible to hear the airplanes flying above you over the sound of frustration – but that doesn’t apply to fighter jets. Fighter jets are meant to be heard (Liliane Chlela - «Zaybak W Rsas»).

So is gossip and laughter billowing from street balconies in the evenings. When the cool kids are out, and the bars are ambient noise (Liliane Chlela - «Zaybak W Rsas»); clinks and tinks and stomping of feet. The drunkards commence with a soft hum before the pervasive repertoire of slurred folk songs into the night. «(Put you) atop my head!», «Forward and break right!» the valets squirm to sublet you a spot of land to park your vehicle in a neighborhood of underpaid mechanics, like popcorn in a pressure cooker.

The dead of night. A wicked rest for the smothered. You think to yourself, «what is it that still oils the gears of this failed urban project?» You get lost in the gradual detuning of music from moving cars. Proximity alters the lived experience, and time is the ultimate denominator. «The world is held together, really it is, held together, by the love and the passion of a very few people.»2

Silence remains. The tacet weaves collective memories into a continuous composition.

«In the soil memory is a cave
Where everything returns and nothing returns the same.»3

Playlist

• 1. Melhem Barak is one of the most popular Lebanese singers and composers known for his ingenious compositions and improvisations, and for being an unfiltered «man of the people».
• 2. Dixon, Terence, director. Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris. 1970.
• 3. Maya Al-Khaldi. «الضوء – Al Daw’ (Nothing Comes Back the Same).»