Trained eyes don’t function like untrained eyes, because they are trained to see more. It is never simply a chair, a website, a ketchup bottle, or a printed word. It is grids and geometry. It is a series of decisions made by someone else. It is technical limitations in a world that inherently hates limitations.

Visual training is a strange process with no expiration date. You are not born with the ability to see. Yes, your system perceives shapes and colors around you, because your biology is built that way. Inherently though, you are blind, because your brain fills in what it wants to see, ignoring everything else.

Growing up with an artist and an art educator for a mother helped me develop my visual skills from a young age. I don’t remember when I started drawing, and I took my first advanced painting class at the age of 13. I would spend days trying to imitate the light play taking place on the faceted surface of a crystal water vase.

Yet, even with that, when I was a freshman art student, I sat in the studio of Jordan University horrified at my own blindness. I could see that the surface of the Venus I was trying to replicate on paper was more curved at the bottom because of the light and shade, but my eye perceived it as straight, because the actual sculpture was straight. I yelled at my brain a lot that semester, going into conversations with myself about the insanity of how humans are built. The brain imagines the way things look based on per-conceived notions, and it’s hard to unimagine. Drawing is actually really easy when you convince your stupid brain to stop seeing on its own. It took a while, but I was eventually successful.

You are not born with the ability to see. Your eyes don’t see anything. Your brain is the one working.

I am lucky to be able to see how the beveled shadows beneath modal boxes on websites give an impression of depth. I am lucky to be able to see how the serifs on that sign make it more legible from a distance. I am lucky to be able to see that that color isn’t orange at all, it’s actually a combination of cyan, white, and magenta.

Being able to see is poetic. Life becomes much more beautiful, and much more ugly. Start training yourself, because you could be blind right now.

The best way to start training is to add a layer of “why?” to your thought process. Of course, not everything around you is built with intent, but many things are, especially in nature, thanks to evolution. Why is the tree curved like that? Why is the website based on three columns? Why is the poster using that particular typeface? Why does the shadow look like it’s curved?

Why?

Toronto, 1968

<3

As a huge El Morabba3 fan, November was really good to me: two unplugged gigs and one regular show make Roba a very happy woman (with a sore throat from too much cheering).

Here’s a peek into their Canvas gig that we went to on the 21st, where the absolutely awesome Tareq Abu Kweik wooed the audience with “Hada Tani”:

Gash3ara. Jad.

I love you guys. Love. Love. Love. Yalla, put up the recording of “Asheeq”.

Want to smile? Then head over to Jabal Al-Qalaa this week where art meets happy kids. It is hard not to smile when the neighborhoods’ children (dressed in their Eid clothing) excitedly explain to you how they helped with that mural or what they like about that graffiti piece.

It is inspiring. Beautiful. Joyous.

This initiative, taking place in Jabal Al-Qalaa, is the first chapter of the Urban Reflections project. Several artists participated by editing the environment with colors and paintings. From their Facebook page: “We are a non-profit community arts residency program, here in Amman, connecting artists with communities to produce great works of art.”

For the most part, the project is composed of artistic interventions. There were some that went beyond that though, like libraries of children’s book in lockers scattered around the area.

Our tour guides were Abdullah and Zeyad (pictured above), two seventh graders who live and go to school in Jabal AlQalaa. The boys spent the two hours with us, walking us around and introducing us to the neighborhood.

Abdullah, Zeyad, and the rest of the neighborhood’s kids were the best part. Their excitement at having helped paint and at having “cool guerrillas” in the neighborhood is worth gold.

I. Can’t. Stop. Laughing.

From the BBC:

An elderly parishioner has stunned Spanish cultural officials with an alarming and unauthorised attempt to restore a prized Jesus Christ fresco.

Ecce Homo (Behold the Man) by Elias Garcia Martinez has held pride of place in the Sanctuary of Mercy Church near Zaragoza for more than 100 years.

The woman took her brush to it after years of deterioration due to moisture.

Cultural officials said she had the best intentions and hoped it could be properly restored. The woman, in her 80s, was reportedly upset at the way the fresco had deteriorated and took it on herself to “restore” the image.

BBC Europe correspondent Christian Fraser says the delicate brush strokes of Elias Garcia Martinez have been buried under a haphazard splattering of paint.